Friday! [Clashes giant cymbals.] Hope you have a dynamite weekend, everyone. See you Monday.:)

Top News

Top News A Google minivan in “autonomous mode” was just involved in a crash in Arizona. It wasn’t fatal, but it wasn’t pretty.

Sponsored By . . .

Treble is the PR firm working at the speed of business. We’ve achieved results for VC firms including Silverton Partners, Mercury Fund, OpenView, Signal Peak Ventures and Dundee Venture Capital since inception. Our website captures our value prop and results from Bloomberg TV to Forbes to The Wall Street Journal. The Treble model maximizes portfolio funding launches and elevates brands into Tier 1 publications via trendjacking and our INK content arm. We win across a wide spectrum of tech including blockchain, IoT, DevOps, cybersec, cloud, fintech and consumer tech – contact us here.

New Fundings

Divvy, a two-year-old, Lehi, Ut.-based provider expense management solution, raised $10.5 million in funding led by Pelion Ventures, with participation from Josh James, CEO of Domo; Aaron Skonnard, CEO of Pluralsight; and Jeremy Andrus, CEO of Traeger Grills. More here.  Freeda Media, a two-year-old, Milan, Italy-based millennial-focused media organization, has raised $10 million in Series A funding led by Alven Capital, with participation from U-Start and numerous angel investors. TechCrunch has more here.  StratiFi Technologies, a 2.5-year-old, New York- and San Francisco-based fintech startup that makes software for wealth advisors, has raised $7 million in Series A funding led by Anthemis Group, with participation from Wolverine Holdings, Cboe Global Markets, HOF Capital, and AngelList, among other investors. More here.  Swift Health Systems, a four-year-old, Washington, D.C.-based maker of an invisible orthodontic treatment, has raised $20 million in Series B funding from disclosed sources. The company says it has now raised $25 million altogether. More here.  UBTECH, a five-year-old, Shenzhen, China-based maker of humanoid robots for entertainment and educational purposes, has raised an astonishing $820 million in Series C funding led by Tencent. Other investors in the round include the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, Minsheng Securities, Telstra Corporation, Haier Group, Green Pine Capital Partners, CreditEase, and earlier backers, including CDH Investments. China Money Network has more here.  Wunder Capital, a five-year-old, Boulder, Co.-based financial firm that lends money to solar projects, has raised $112 million in Series A funding led by Cyrus Capital Partners, with participation from earlier backers, including Techstars Ventures.  More here. Wuxi Vision Pro, an eight-year-old, Shanghai, China-based ophthalmic medical device maker, has raised $12.6 million, including from Qiming Venture Partnersand Ruijian Capital. China Money Network has more here.

New Funds

Indaco Venture Partners, a new, Milan, Italy-based venture capital firm, says it has raised €130 million euro from Intesa Sanpaolo, Fondo Italiano d’Investimento and Fondazione Cariplo. The firm, which plans to invest the capital in 20 to 30 later-stage startups, says it is targeting more than €200 million for a final close. More here.

IPOs

Carbon Black, a 17-year-old, Cambridge, Ma.-based cybersecurity company, just had a very solid first day of trading. MarketWatch has more here.

Exits

Allscripts, one of the country’s largest provider of electronic medical records, has snapped up a patient engagement platform company, HealthGrid for $60 million, plus $50 million in potential earn-out payments based on certain revenue targets. Healthgrid was founded in 2014 in Orlando, Fla.; we aren’t sure of its funding situation. (It doesn’t appear to have raised venture capital.) FierceBiotech has more here.

People

Nathan Hubbard, a former Ticketmaster CEO who most recently ran Twitter’s now-defunct commerce initiative, has raised more than $30 million over the last 18 months for a new startup called Rival that aims to modernize how teams and arenas manage ticket sales. Hubbard insists that he wants to partner with Ticketmaster, not compete with it. Who lost the most on Theranos.

Essential Reads

Amazon and Walmart are fighting to control Flipkart, a company that both see as central to winning the Indian market. Facebook is weighing an ad-free subscription model. This small college’s endowment manager beat Harvard . . . with index funds.  An argument for Uber and Airbnb to follow Spotify with a direct listing.

Detours

Why there won’t be a Nobel Prize in literature this year.  The upside of envy.  A look at the reason dogs have floppy ears.

Retail Therapy

School performance, check. One too many meetings, check. Double-barrel vaporizer? Bring it.

Thursday! Another busy one around here, though we’re looking forward to joining GV partner MG Siegler on TechCrunch’s “Equity” podcast a little later this afternoon. Sure, we’ll talk about earnings and revenue and blahdy blahdy. As fellow native Clevelanders, you can also expect plenty of talk about King James. (Cavs are still in it!) More tomorrow.:)

Top News

Get ready to shop on Instagram.

Sponsored By . . .

Are you winning with your PR firm? Do weeks – or months – go by with zero articles? Treble is the PR firm working at the speed of business. Our new websitecaptures our value prop and results from Bloomberg TV to Forbes to The Wall Street Journal. Founded in 2013 to elevate brand visibility for venture-backed startups, Treble also partners with VC firms to launch portfolio funding investments. Our scalable model aligns with new rounds of funding so startups can win early – and often – from seed stage to IPO. We crush IoT, DevOps, cybersec, cloud, fintech and blockchain – with a growing consumer tech practice. Contact us here.

Wedding Startup Zola Just Received a Lavish Gift: $100 Million in New Funding

Zola, a fast-growing company that invites newly engaged couples to register their guests, shop from 600 different brands, and create customizable checklists, has itself received something a bit extravagant: $100 million in Series D funding.  Earlier investor Comcast Ventures led the round, which also included new investors NBCUniversal and Goldman Sachs Investment Partners. The five-year-old, New York-based, 110-person company has now raised $140 million altogether.  We talked last night with founder and CEO Shan-Lyn Ma to learn more. Ma is a former executive with the e-commerce companies Gilt Groupe and Chloe + Isabel who originally started Zola to reinvent the traditional registry process but who now sees an opportunity to eventually address every need a young couple may have, from caterers to Cuisinarts, to eventually, perhaps, even home mortgages. Our chat has been edited lightly for length.  You’re a decent size-company at this point. Is everyone in New York? The vast majority, though we also have a small number in Charlottesville, Virginia. Earlier this year, we acquired the assets of a small wedding startup that had shut down and brought some of that team into Zola.  Have you made other acquisitions? Will you now with this giant new round?  No, and it’s possible, but the bigger vision is to cater to couples from the day they get engaged, into their first years of marriage. We’ll be using the funding to accelerate the product development of more wedding planning tools for couples, so we can be that go-to destination.  How are people learning about Zola?  The biggest growth driver has been people who’ve gone to a wedding where Zola  was the registry that the couple used. One hundred and fifty people on average see the registry, and if those visitors believe it’s a better product, [they come to us, too]. It’s built-in virality. We also picked Comcast Ventures to be our lead investor because Comcast and [fellow investor] NBC are market leaders in media with wide reach. They’ll help us with our marketing and awareness goals, which is a big opportunity and area of focus for us in the coming year.  How many people have used the site to date?  More than 500,000 couples have used our wedding registry or else managed their guest list through Zola.  Zola started as a wedding registry product. Now, it’s a full-fledged marketplace, connecting engaged couples to 600 brands and 60,000 products. Are you making a percentage off each sale?  More here.

New Fundings

Casma Therapeutics, a new Cambridge, Ma.-based biotech company that plans to develop new medicines based on Nobel prize-winning discoveries about how cells detoxify and repair themselves, is launching with $58.5 million in Series A funding from Third Rock Ventures. The Boston Globe has more on the company — and the decades-long friendship of its founders — here.  Cera, a three-year-old, London-based home-care startup advised by former Deputy Prime Minister Sir Nick Clegg, has raised $17 million in Series A funding in equity and debt from Guinness Asset Management, Yabeo, and Kairos. TechCrunch has more here.  Frontier Car Group, a two-year-old, Berlin, Germany-based used car marketplace targeted at countries outside of Western Europe and North America, has raised $58 million in Series B funding, including $41 million in equity funding and another $17 million in debt. The round was co-led by Balderton Capital and TPG Growth, and included participation from Fraser McCombs Capital and Autotech Ventures. More here.  IronNet Cybersecurity, a Fulton, Md.-based cybersecurity company that was founded by Keith Alexander, the retired four-star general and former NSA director, has raised $78 million in Series B funding led by C5 Capital, with participation from ForgePoint Capital and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. Reuters has more here.  The Outline, a two-year-old, New York-based digital media company, has raised $5.15 million in fresh funding led by RRE Ventures, with participation from Red Sea Ventures, Tegna, Advancit Capital and NextView Ventures. The company has now raised just more than $21 million altogether. The WSJ has more here.   SoundHound, the 13-year-old, Santa Clara, Ca.-based maker of voice-enabled AI and conversational intelligence technologies, has raised $100 million in new funding to help fuel its international growth, as well as put its Hound voice assistant in everything from home appliances to cars. Investors in the round include Tencent, Hyundai, Orange S.A., and Daimler AG. TechCrunch has more here.  Station, a months-old, France-based SaaS startup that’s setting out to create a browser for businesses that gathers all their cloud-based web applications into a single portal, has raised $3.25 million in seed funding led by Accel. VentureBeat has more here.

New Funds

7wire Ventures, a Chicago-based venture firm led by former Allscripts execs Glen Tullman and Lee Shapiro, has raised $100 million for a “connected consumer” fund, reports Crain’s Chicago Business. Backers include insurers Arkansas Blue Cross & Blue Shield, Cigna, and Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Jersey, among others. One of its first investments is Livongo, a health-software company led by Tullman that recently raised $105 million. More here.  Foresite Capital, a five-year-old, San Francisco-based multi-stage healthcare and life sciences investment firm, has closed its fourth and largest fund with $668 million in capital commitments. (We’ll post more on the firm and fund over at TechCrunch a little later today.) Salesforce Ventures just announced the Trailblazer Fund, a $100 million pool of capital that it intends to invest in startups out of Canada, with a special focus on those working in enterprise cloud computing. TechCrunch has more here.

IPOs

Xiaomi, the Chinese gadget maker that has become one of the world’s largest smartphone companies, has picked Hong Kong to list its shares in what is widely expected to be a major IPO.

Exits

Pocket Casts, widely considered to be one of the best mobile apps for podcast listening, has been acquired by a collective group that includes NPR, WNYC Studios, WBEZ Chicago, and This American Life. The Verge has more here.

People

Cambridge Analytica may be shutting down, but company executives, along with the Mercer family that backed them, have moved to create a new firm, Emerdata, based in Britain.  Elon Musk turned a Tesla call yesterday into a sparring match, cutting off two analysts and saying to another that “boring, bonehead questions are not cool.” Wall Street did not love the performance.

Essential Reads

Goldman Sachs is moving ahead with plans to set up what appears to be the first Bitcoin trading operation at a Wall Street bank.  Telegram‘s ICO was going to be historic. Instead, unsurprisingly, it has turned into a mess.  Wired looks at a dying scientist and his rogue vaccine trial.

Detours

The wolves of Instagram.  Good lord, Charlie Rose.  Watched while walking Brodie. (Not new but so funny.)

Retail Therapy

Eight new books that dish the dirt on show business.

Hi, everyone, happy Wednesday.:) We’ve been typing away while on calls today, so if you see any major screw-ups, that’s why. (We’re not so great at multitasking.)  Also! We have a couple of announcements coming up about SVC events. Stay tuned.

Top News

Tesla just beat analysts’ expectations. More here in TechCrunch.  Cambridge Analytica, the data firm that worked for Trump’s 2016 campaign, is shutting down following disclosures about its use of Facebook data and the campaign tactics it pitched to clients. The WSJ has more here.

Sponsored By . . .

Are you winning with your PR firm? Do weeks – or months – go by with zero articles? Treble is the PR firm working at the speed of business. Our new websitecaptures our value prop and results from Bloomberg TV to Forbes to The Wall Street Journal. Founded in 2013 to elevate brand visibility for venture-backed startups, Treble also partners with VC firms to launch portfolio funding investments. Our scalable model aligns with new rounds of funding so startups can win early – and often – from seed stage to IPO. We crush IoT, DevOps, cybersec, cloud, fintech and blockchain – with a growing consumer tech practice. Contact us here.

A CEO Known for the ‘Power of Smiling’ was Ousted Yesterday for Intimidating Employees

Ron Gutman, the co-founder and CEO of HealthTap, a venture-backed medical advice startup, was reportedly elbowed out today by his board of directors. The reason, the board said in a letter to employees, was that it had finally heard too many complaints about Gutman’s behavior inside the company.  Recode published the news of his termination earlier, along with excerpts of an explainer provided to Gutman that alleges he “committed acts of intimidation, abuse, and mistrust, and that [he] repeatedly mistreated, threatened, harassed and verbally abused employees.”  “This leaves us with no choice but to fire you,” reads the letter. “The toxicity you introduced into the workplace ends now.”  The development may seem curious to those who followed Gutman’s earlier career. Back in 2011, Gutman was on the TED speaking circuit, talking passionately about the power of smiling and attracting a great deal of publicity in the process. His presentation has been watched nearly five million times; it later spawned a book, published by TED, called Smile: The Astonishing Powers of a Simple Act.  Gutman, a Stanford grad, has denied that he abused his employees in a public statement.  More here.

New Fundings

BenchSci, a  three-year-old, Toronto-based developer of an AI-powered search engine for biological products, has raised $8 million in Series A funding led by iNovia Capital, with participation from Gradient Ventures and earlier investorsGolden Venture Partners, Afore Capital, Real Ventures and Radical Ventures. More here.  C2RO Cloud Robotics, a two-year-old, Montreal-based startup that uses cloud-based AI services to augment the cognitive and collaborative capabilities of service robots, has raised $1.1 million in seed funding led by Harbor Street Ventures, with the participation of Fonds InnovExport, TandemLaunch Ventures and several angel investors. More here.  Humu, a year-old, Mountain View, Ca.-based behavioral change software startup co-founded by ex-Googlers Laszlo Bock and Wayne Crosby, has raised $30 million in Series B funding led by IVP, with participation from earlier backer Index Ventures. Forbes has more here.  iBeat, a two-year-old, San Francisco-based health tech company whose smartwatch perpetually monitors and analyzes users’ heart activity, has raised another $5.5 million in seed funding, bringing the total round to $10 million. New investors include Kairos, 8VC, City Light Capital, Plug and Play Ventures, ChinaRock Capital Management, as well as numerous angel investors, including renowned life coach Tony Robbins. VentureBeat has more here.  Parallel Domain, a 10-month-old, Palo Alto, Ca.-based startup that says its virtual world tech can enable the large-scale training and testing of driverless cars before they hit public roads, has raised $2.5 million in seed funding co-led by Costanoa Ventures and Ubiquity Ventures, with participation from RRE Ventures and Bessemer Venture Partners. TechCrunch has more here.  Soft Robotics, a six-year-old, Cambridge, Ma.-based industrial robotics company whose soft robotic gripping systems can grasp, manipulate, and conform to items with the same dexterity of the human hand, has raised more than $20 million in funding round led by Hyperplane Venture Capital, with participation from Scale Venture Partners, the venture capital arm of Honeywell International, and earlier investors, including ABB Technology Ventures. The WSJ has more here.  Soothe, a five-year-old, L.A.-based message-on-demand service, has raised $31 million in Series C funding from the late-stage and growth capital investment firm,The Riverside Company. TechCrunch has more here.  Washé, a three-year-old, Boca Raton, Fla.-based startup whose mobile app connects users to on-demand mobile car washers, has raised $3.5 million in seed funding led by a local tech entrepreneur and investor named Ron Zuckerman. More here.

New Funds

Fusion Fund, a four-year-old, Palo Alto, Ca.-based early-stage venture outfit that closed its first fund with $17 million, says its looking to raise up to $85 million for its second fund. TechCrunch has more here.

Exits

Birchbox, the subscription beauty-in-a-box startup, has sold the majority of its business to earlier investor Viking Global Investors for roughly $15 million, says Recode. The deal, which keeps cofounder and CEO Katia Beauchamp at the helm and preserves the jobs of its employees (for now), means earlier investors  are getting wiped out, reports Recode. Birchbox, which had earlier held talks with Walmart and QVC, among other potential buyers, had previously raised $90 million altogether.  Cisco is acquiring Accompany, a five-year-old, Palo Alto, Ca.-based startup that uses AI to build databases of people and relationships at companies. Cisco is paying $270 million in cash and stock and plans to incorporate Accompany’s tech into its collaboration products. Accompany had raised roughly $40 million, including from Cowboy Ventures, CRV, and Iconiq Capital. Its founder and CEO, Amy Chang, was notably on the board of Cisco, a role that she is resigning as a part of the transaction. (Local Bay Area readers might have caught Chang’s appearance at an SVC event early last year in San Francisco, soon after she’d become a director.) TechCrunch has more on the sale here.  Nokia says it plans to sell its small digital health business, including activity trackers and smartwatches, to a co-founder of the venture after it failed to meet the company’s growth expectations. Reuters has the story here.

People

Last night, at his L.A. mansion, Jim Belushi charmed a crowd of diners with jokes and harmonica playing. But the actor and comedian wasn’t there as the entertainment: He was on a mission to promote cannabis entrepreneurs.  In an unusual move for a Silicon Valley company, Zynga chairman Mark Pincus has given up voting control of the social gaming company he founded more than a decade ago. (You might remember that Pincus had an unusual degree of voting control to start with.)   Pritzker Group Venture Capital has brought aboard three venture partners: Pat Basu, David Schonthal, and Craig Wortmann. More here. Former Twitter M&A executive Jess Verrilli is headed to GV to become the firm’s newest (and only) female general partner.

Essential Reads

Wall Street doesn’t like Spotify‘s first-ever earnings report. Amazon is reportedly offering to pass along the discounts it gets on credit-card fees to other retailers if they use its online payments service. The move is consistent with Amazon’s penchant for sacrificing profitability in order to grow.  A four-year-old outfit, Nikola Motor Company, has filed a $2 billion lawsuit in Arizona alleging that Tesla’s all-electric semi infringes on the hydrogen truck startup’s patents.

Detours

Photos by Stanley Kubrick.  There will be a season three of “The Handmaid’s Tale.” If you can take it.  Why an expert in counterterrorism became a beat cop. C hristie’s new AR app can help you visualize where to hang priceless works of art.

Retail Therapy

This is the final straw.

May? Mais oui! (Sorry.)   Sending out a slightly abbreviated issue today as we race off to a fourth grade field trip. More tomorrow.:)

Top News

Apple is scheduled to report its second-quarter results today after the market closes and expectations are . . . not high, notes Recode.  Facebook is separately kicking off its F8 developers conference today in San Jose and Mark Zuckerberg has already dropped a bit of news: the company will soon launch a new privacy feature that will allow users to see and delete the data Facebook has collected from websites and apps that use its ads and analytics tool. TechCrunch has more here.

Sponsored By . . .

Treble is the PR firm working at the speed of business. We’re looking to collaborate and win with VC firms. Our new website captures our collective value proposition and results from Bloomberg TV to Forbes to The Wall Street Journal. Treble has partnered with VC firms including Mercury Fund, OpenView, Signal Peak Ventures and Dundee Venture Capital to-date. Our model allows us to maximize your portfolio funding launches across your investment portfolio. We love blockchain, IoT, DevOps, cybersec, cloud, fintech and consumer tech – contact us here.

New Fundings

Algolux, a four-year-old, Montreal, Canada-based company at work on machine-learning stacks for autonomous vision and imaging, has raised $10 million in Series A funding led by General Motors Ventures, with participation from Drive Capital,Intact Ventures, and Real Ventures. More here.  AMCS, a 15-year-old, Limerick, Ireland-based maker of software and vehicle technology for the waste, recycling, and material resources industries, has raised an undisclosed amount of funding from Insight Venture Partners and Ireland Strategic Investment Fund. More here.  Attenua, a three-year-old, New York-based developer of new treatments for chronic coughing, has raised $35 million in Series A funding led by Omega Funds, with participation from Abingworth, OrbiMed and Redmile Group. EndPoints News has more here.  Covee, a 1.5-year-old, Zurich, Switzerland-based network for decentralized data science collaboration, has raised $1.6 million in seed funding led by LocalGlobe, with participation from Atlantic Labs, among others. TechCrunch has more here.  Hustle, a four-year-old. San Francisco-based personalized mass texting tool, just raised $30 million in Series B funding led by Insight Venture Partners, with participation from GV and Salesforce Ventures. TechCrunch has more here.   MasterClass, the five-year-old, San Francisco-based online education platform known for celebrity-taught classes, is working to finalize a Series D round that could raise around $70 million at a valuation north of $300 million, reports Axios, which says to expect it to be insider led. To date, the company has raised roughy $56 million, shows Crunchbase. Backers include IVP, New Enterprise Associates, Bloomberg Beta, and Javelin Venture Partners, among others.  Namogoo, a four-year-old, Boston- and Israel-based ad blocking technology company, has raised $15 million in Series B funding led by Hanaco Venture Capital with participation from GreatPoint Ventures, Blumberg Capital and Inimiti Capital. More here.  NovellusDx, a 7.5-year-old, Jerusalem-based precision medicine company at work on an early cancer detection technology, has raised $6 million in funding, including from Helsinn Group, Bio Capital Impact Fund and Windham Venture Partners. Globes has more here.  Paragraf, a U.K.-based graphene technology development company, has raised roughly $4 million in seed funding led by Cambridge Enterprise, with participation from Parkwalk Advisors, Amadeus Capital Partners, and IQ Capital Partners. TechCrunch has more here.  Sentenai, a three-year-old, Cambridge, Ma.-based data science company that organizes and stores sensor data to make it more useful, has raised $2 million in seed funding from One Way Ventures, TechNexus Venture Collaborative, and several angel investors. More here.  Substack, a year-old, San Francisco-based startup that provides users with tools to publish paid-for subscription newsletters, has raised $2 million in seed funding from The Chernin Group, Fifty Years, Zhen Fund, Garage Capital, Twitch CEO Emmett Shear, and Zynga co-founder Justin Waldron. More here.  Suki, a year-old, Redwood City, Ca.-based maker of a voice assistant for doctors (it was formerly known as Robin AI), has raised $15 million funding round led by earlier backer Venrock. Other participants in the round included First Round,Social+Capital, Nat Turner of Flatiron Health, Marc Benioff, and other individual investors. The company has now raised around $20 million altogether. TechCrunch has more here.  ZeroCater, a 8.5-year-old, San Francisco-based startup that provides office catering and snacks, has raised $12 million in Series B funding led by Cleveland Avenue, with participation from Romulus Capital and Struck Capital. TechCrunch has more here.

New Funds

Andra Capital, a two-year-old, Bay Area-based investment firm, has raised $500 million in funding for a new digital currency that investors can use to back a group of late-stage venture capital firms, says the firm’s managing partner, Haydar Haba. The new token is called Silicon Valley Coin (SVC) and it’s built on the Ethereum blockchain. Reuters has the story here.  Goodwater Capital, co-founded in 2014 by former Kleiner Perkins partner Chi-Hua Chien and Eric Kim, formerly of Maverick Capital, is looking to raise up to $350 million for its third fund, shows a new SEC filing. It’s a pretty fast return to the market. Goodwater closed its second fund just 14 months ago with $250 million. It closed its debut fund with $130 million. More on the consumer-tech focused firm here.

Exits

Marketo, a once publicly traded software company that’s now owned by the private equity firm Vista Equity Partners, has acquired Bizible, a Seattle-based marketing performance management software maker. Terms aren’t being disclosed. Bizible had raised about $19 million in equity and debt financing, including from Scale Venture Partners, Madrona Venture Group and Square 1 Bank. GeekWire has more here.  In 2012, Cisco made one of its biggest-ever acquisitions when it acquired video and security specialist NDS for $5 billion. Now, the company is selling part of that business to one of its previous owners, the private equity firm Permira, as it looks to refocus itself and boost growth in networking, multi-cloud, security, data, and collaboration services. TechCrunch has more here.

People

A U.S. jury yesterday convicted Sushovan Hussain, the former CFO of software company Autonomy, of wire fraud and other crimes related to the company’s sale to Hewlett Packard. Reuters has more here. WhatsApp CEO Jan Koum is leaving Facebook’s board — and potentially up to $1 billion — as he walks away from the social media juggernaut four years after it acquired his company.   Some big investors see warning signs ahead for markets but are holding their positions. Egyptian billionaire Naguib Sawiris is taking action: He just put half of his $5.7 billion net worth into gold.  Rachel Star has joined Shasta Ventures as an associate. She was previously employed by Nordstrom, where she worked in corporate strategy. More here.  The U.K. parliament has issued an ultimatum to Facebook in a last-ditch attempt to get Mark Zuckerberg to take its questions: Come and give evidence voluntarily,  or the next time you fly to the U.K., you’ll get a formal summons to appear.

Essential Reads

Facebook wants to prove it can earn businesses money, not just build their social media audience. Now it has an app for that, too.  Apple has deleted a revealing job listing that hints at plans to cut Qualcomm and Intel chips from its future phones.  More than 100 Uber drivers in the U.S. have been accused of sexual assault or abuse over the last four years, says CNN.  A similar CNN review using the same methodology found 18 cases of Lyft drivers accused in the past four years.

Detours

“The Simpsons” just surpassed “Gunsmoke” as America’s longest-running scripted TV show. Can anyone catch London’s serial cat murderer? What’s inside Mars?

Retail Therapy

One of the most opulent homes in the 90210 zip code is looking for a buyer. Its marketing materials describe it as “an authentic Italian village” to give you some sense of its scale(!).

Monday! Welcome back.:)

Top News

Sprint and T-Mobile are officially looking to merge. If the deal is approved, the resulting company would be the nation’s second-biggest wireless carrier after Verizon, controlling roughly 100 million customers. That might not sit so well with policymakers who are already concerned about the growing power of some U.S. companies. The Washington Post has more here.  The U.S. Supreme Court today agreed to hear an internet privacy case involvingGoogle that could put the brakes on an increasingly common form of settlement in class action suits that funnels money to unrelated third parties and charities instead of to those affected by the alleged wrongdoing. Reuters has the story here.  WhatsApp CEO Jan Koum, is reportedly planning to leave the company after clashing with its parent, Facebook, over WhatsApp’s strategy and Facebook’s attempts to use its personal data and weaken its encryption.

Sponsored By . . .

Treble is the PR firm working at the speed of business. We’re looking to collaborate and win with VC firms. Our new website captures our collective value proposition and results from Bloomberg TV to Forbes to The Wall Street Journal. Treble has partnered with VC firms including Mercury Fund, OpenView, Signal Peak Ventures and Dundee Venture Capital to-date. Our model allows us to maximize your portfolio funding launches across your investment portfolio. We love blockchain, IoT, DevOps, cybersec, cloud, fintech and consumer tech – contact us here.

SoFi’s Mike Cagney is Back with a New Startup and a Whole Lot of Funding

Mike Cagney, who was ousted last summer from the lending company he founded, is back with a new startup and a whole lot of funding from at least one of his previous investors.  Per a new report in Bloomberg, Cagney who earlier this year formed a new lending startup called Figure, has raised $50 million to grow the company, which plans to use the blockchain to facilitate loan approvals in minutes instead of days.  According to the company’s site, its lending products will include home equity lines of credit, home improvement loans and home buy-lease back offerings for retirement. The round was led by DCM Ventures and Ribbit Capital and included participation from Mithril Capital Management, Cagney confirmed to Bloomberg.  Ribbit Capital in Palo Alto, Ca., has been leading investments in the world of fintech and digital currencies from nearly its founding nearly six years ago. Others of its many bets include the online consumer lending company Affirm and Point, a startup that buys equity in U.S. homes.  Mithril, cofounded by Peter Thiel, prides itself on funding companies that take time to build, with funds that have longer investing timelines than do most traditional venture vehicles. The cross-border firm DCM Ventures, meanwhile, is perhaps the most interesting participant in this round.   More here.

New Fundings

A-Mansia, a young, Belgium-based microbiome company, has raised $15.7 million in funding led by Seventure Partners. More here.  Datavant, a healthcare data company spun out of Softbank-funded Roivant Sciences last year, has raised $40.5 million in funding co-led by Roivant and Datavant’s CEO, Travis May. FierceBiotech has more here.  Dugout, a two-year-old, London-based social network for football fans, has raised $11.7 million in funding led by sports owners David and Frank McCourt. More here.  Flexport, a five-year-old, San Francisco-based software-powered freight forwarder, quietly announced $100 million in funding from the Chinese courier company SF Express. The deal aims to help the company expand its operations into China. Flexport has now raised a little more than $300 million altogether, including from First Round Capital, Bloomberg Beta, Founders Fund, DST Global and Y Combinator. More here.  LeaseLock, a three-year-old, L.A.-based company that’s looking to replace security deposits with insurance, has raised $10 million in Series A funding led by Wildcat Venture Partners, with participation from Hivers & Strivers, Liberty Mutual Strategic Ventures, American Family Ventures and Moderne Ventures. More here.  Minim, a year-old, Manchester, N.H.-based IoT platform for in-home cybersecurity, raised $2.5 million in seed funding co-led by Flybridge Capital Partners andFounder Collective. American Inno has more here.  SAMCO, a three-year-old, Mumbai, India-based firm discount brokerage firm that says it’s building mutual fund, lending, and research and advisory businesses, has raised $7.5 million in Series B funding from earlier backers and the London-based investment firm Bay Capital Investment Partners. Inc42 has more here.

New Funds

New Funds Baidu is reportedly establishing a new, $500 million fund to invest in internet and AI companies in China. Named Changcheng Investment Partners, it will be the third tech-focused venture fund that Baidu has established. China Money Network has more here.  Sky9 Capital, a venture capital firm founded by Ron Cao, formerly of Lightspeed Venture Partners, has closed its third fund with $200 million in capital commitments. The capital will be invested mainly in early-stage, China-based startups. China Money Network has more here.

IPOs

Alzheon, a Framingham, Ma.-based pre-revenue developer of small-molecule therapies for Alzheimer’s disease, just withdrew its IPO registration. FierceBiotech has more here.  GreenSky, an Atlanta, Ga.-based online loan platform that’s backed by Pimco and the private equity firm TPG, filed on Friday for an IPO, listing its initial offering size as $100 million, a placeholder amount. Bloomberg has more here.  Kiniksa Pharmaceutical, a Lexington, Ma.-based biotech company focused on inflammatory disease, has filed to go public. The company’s lead drug is an already-approved rare disease treatment. Boston Business Journal has more here.  Scholar Rock, a Cambridge Ma.-based startup focused on muscle-wasting disorders, disclosed in a filing on Friday that it’s looking to raise up to $75 million by listing its shares on the Nasdaq under the ticker “SRRK.” Its backers include Fidelity, Polaris Partners and The Kraft Group. Nasdaq has a bit more here.

Exits

Exits Marriott Vacations Worldwide has agreed to buy publicly traded ILG for about $4.7 billion in a stock and cash deal, creating the largest luxury brand for timeshare vacation resorts. More here.

People

People Jonathan Faerber has left his job as CFO at GV to take the same position with Section32, the venture firm launched last year by former GV CEO Bill Maris.  Larry Harvey, the founder of the Burning Man event now held in Nevada, just passed away at age 70 after suffering a stroke earlier this month.   Alexa exec Charlie Kindel says he left Amazon last week to spend more time with, well, his smart home. (He’s also just fried, he said.) Oops. Twitter sold data access to Aleksandr Kogan, the Cambridge University academic who also obtained millions of Facebook users’ information that was later passed to a political consulting firm without the users’ consent.  Microsoft’s chairman and former Symantec and IBM exec John Thompson has joined Lightspeed as a venture partner.

Data

According to a new report on voice assistants released today by PwC, younger users are adopting voice technology at a faster rate than their older counterparts — but they’re somehow using voice assistants less often.

Essential Reads

Forget the Facebook leak. China is mining data directly from workers’ brains on an industrial scale. Volkswagen and ride-hailing giant Didi Chuxing say they’re are closing in on a joint venture to share technology and develop mobility services in China. The WSJ has more here.  Thanks to Warby Parker, whose founders met at Wharton, the school is becoming a sort of incubator for direct-to-consumer startups.

Detours

Harsh but  funny.  NBA playoff predictions.  Trafficking in vintage scents.

Retail Therapy

Pssst. A number of Bose products are $50 off today.

Friday! [Pushes over side table.] Hope you have an amazing weekend, everyone. More soon.:)

Top News

Sequoia Capital is well on its way to closing an $8 billion growth-stage fund, according to a report in the WSJ. The Menlo Park, Ca., firm has already raised $6 billion for new investors, in increments of $250 million. (At least, that’s reportedly the smallest amount that an investor can contribute to the fund.) It now plans to tap it existing investor base for the rest. More here.

Sponsored By . . .

Treble is the PR firm working at the speed of business. We’re looking to collaborate and win with VC firms. Our new website captures our collective value proposition and results from Bloomberg TV to Forbes to The Wall Street Journal. Treble has partnered with VC firms including Mercury Fund, OpenView, Signal Peak Ventures and Dundee Venture Capital to-date. Our model allows us to maximize your portfolio funding launches across your investment portfolio. We love blockchain, IoT, DevOps, cybersec, cloud, fintech and consumer tech – contact us here.

Why the Tech Industry Should Care About the Farm Bill Being Drafted Right Now

For some food stamp recipients, 2018 could shape up to be a particularly aggravating year, including for one of the only startups trying to find ways to innovate on the ways that food stamps are delivered and managed.  It’s not something that’s talked about much in tech circles, but perhaps it should be, given that 42 million Americans rely on the more than 50-year-old, anti-hunger program behind the stamps — called the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP — for basic food assistance.  What’s the problem? It’s twofold essentially. First, let’s take a look at the farm bill, which subsidizes SNAP.  The farm bill, which got its start in 1933 as part of FDR’s New Deal legislation, expires and is updated and passed anew by Congress every five years, after which the sitting U.S. president signs it into law. The last bill was signed in February of 2014, so Congress is working on the next version now. But things aren’t looking very promising for SNAP recipients. Already, the first draft of the House Republicans’ farm bill, which passed through one committee, looks to cut $20 billion from the program over the next 10 years, potentially cutting off two million people in the process.  The cuts will be debated on the House floor beginning early next month, meaning it’s far from clear what happens from here. While Republicans argue they want to promote self-sufficiency (the cuts are expected to come via tightened work requirements), poverty experts see the proposal as chipping away at the already shrinking safety net for America’s most vulnerable. As an article about the bill in Vox notes, half of the 42 million people who are living below the poverty line and relying on SNAP for food assistance are children.  But what do startups have to do with any of this, you may wonder. More here.

New Fundings

EcoFlow, a two-year-old, Shenzhen, China-based hardware firm that sells portable power stations, has raised $4 million in Series A funding. Investors include battery makers Guangzhou Penghui Energy and SCUD Group, industrial design tooling factory ESID, and supply chain-focused firms Delian Capital and Chunjia Assets. TechCrunch has more here.  Innovent Biologics, a nearly seven-year-old, Suzhou, China-based biotech company, has raised $90 million in Series E funding, including from Capital Group Private Markets, Cormorant Asset Management, Rock Springs Capital, Ally Bridge Group, Temasek, Hillhouse, Legend Capital, Lilly Asia Venture andTaikang Insurance. More here.  Knowbox, a four-year-old, China-based K-12 online education platform, just raised $100 million in Series C funding led by Yunfeng Capital, the latest in a string of investments in China’s online education market. China Money Network has more here.  Traackr, a nine-year-old, San Francisco-based SaaS platform that powers so-called influencer programs for both business-to-business and business-to-consumer companies, has raised $9 million in Series B funding. Workhorse Capital led the round, and was joined by You & Mr Jones, among other investors. More here.  TradeDepot, a three-year-old, Lagos, Nigeria-based SaaS platform that connects retailers in emerging markets with consumer-goods platforms, has raised an undisclosed amount of money led by Partech Ventures. More here.  VIPKid, a five-year-old, Beijing, China-based company that connects Chinese children with North American tutors, is nearing a deal to raise $500 million in funding at a valuation of more than $3 billion, according to Bloomberg. (We’d reported on Wednesday that VIPKId is looking to hire thousands of teachers and tutors in the U.S., as is one of its competitors; they flooded job boards earlier this week with their postings.)  Wellness Lifestyles, an eight-year-old, Vancouver, Canada-based owner and operator of healthcare and wellness centers, has raised $7 million in funding led byHorizons Ventures. More here.

IPOs

Sonos, the 15-year-old, Santa Barbara, Ca.-based speaker maker, filed confidentially for an IPO slated for June or July, according to the WSJ. Its sources say the company is seeking a valuation of rough $3 billion. More here Enterprise tech IPOs continue to roar in 2018. Today, not one but two enterprise tech companies, DocuSign and Smartsheet, saw their share prices pop as they made their debuts on to the public markets. TechCrunch has more here.

Exits

BlaBlaCar, the French carpooling platform, is acquiring Less, an 18-month-old carpooling platform based in Paris that focuses only on urban rides. Terms aren’t being disclosed. TechCrunch has more here.

People

Michael Zeisser, Alibaba’s top dealmaker in Silicon Valley, has quietly left the Chinese giant over an apparent disagreement over investment strategy. Recode hasmore here.

Essential Reads

Now Apple is working on a VR headset, too.

Detours

Know who’s not using instant pots? Chefs.  Our early ancestors stalked terrifying eight-foot-tall sloths.

Retail Therapy

A kitchen utensil set for the great outdoors, because it’s spring and you should get out there.

Thursday! There’ve been so very many calls today. [We’re feeling a little this.]

Top News

Amazon is increasing the price of its Prime membership in the U.S. for the first time in four years, it announced on a call with analysts earlier today. More important to Wall Street, Amazon reported that its first quarter revenue was up 43 percent over the first quarter of last year.  Intel‘s earnings also beat analysts’ expectations.

Sponsored By . . .

Got exits? We’ve got 8 under our belt at Treble – with a brand new website that captures our collective value proposition and results. Founded in 2013 to elevate brand visibility for venture-backed startups, Treble partners with venture capital firms to launch your funding investments and maximize brand visibility for your firm and your investments. Our scalable model aligns with new rounds of venture capital funding so startups can win early – and often – from seed stage to IPO. We love IoT, DevOps, cybersec, cloud, fintech and blockchain – with a growing consumer tech practice. Ready to win? Contact us here.

New Fundings

Africa’s Talking, an eight-year-old, Nairobi, Kenya-based developer of business APIs, just raised $8.6 million in new funding led by IFC VC, with participation from Orange Digital Ventures and Social Capital. TechCrunch has more here.  Etleap, a five-year-old, San Francisco-based company creating what it describes as next-gen data pipelines, has raised $1.5 million in seed funding, including from First Round Capital, SV Angel, Liquid2, BoxGroup and other unnamed investors. TechCrunch has more here. CampusLogic, a seven-year-old, Chandler, Az.-based student financial services platform, raised $55 million in funding led by JMI Equity. More here.  Cardiac Dimensions, a 17-year-old, Kirkland, Wa.-based developer of minimally invasive treatments for patients with heart failure, has raised $39 million in Series B funding, including from Hostplus, Oxford Finance, M. H. Carnegie & Co., Arboretum Ventures, Lumira Capital, LSP Health Economics Fund and Aperture Venture Partners. More here.  Corvidia Therapeutics, a three-year-old, Waltham, Ma.-based drug startup focused on chronic kidney disease, has raised $60 million in Series B funding led by Venrock, with participation from Fresenius Medical Care Ventures, Cormorant and founding backer Sofinnova Partners. More here.   Dosh, a two-year-old, Austin, Tex.-based app that offers cash back to consumers for shopping within its retailer network, has raised $44 million in Series A funding from Goodwater Capital and PayPal, among others. Built in Austin has more here.  IFTTT, an eight-year-old, San Francisco-based company that was an early mover in API integrations b enabling developers to write easy scripts to tie together different apps, has raised $24 million in Series C funding. The round was led by Salesforce, with participation from IBM, the Chamberlain Group, and Fenox Venture Capital. TechCrunch has more here.  Improvado.io, a three-year-old, San Francisco-based data aggregation company, has raised $3 million in seed funding, including from Bessemer Venture Partners, Greylock Partners and Katana Capital. More here.  Innovium, a three-year-old, San Jose, Ca.-based company that makes fast data center networking chips, just raised $77 million in Series D funding from Greylock,Walden Everbright, Walden Riverwood Ventures, Paxion Capital, Capricorn Investment Group, Redline Capital, S-Cubed Capital and Qualcomm Ventures. EETimes has more here.  NuMat Technologies, a five-year-old, Skokle, Ill.-based product commercialization company, has raised $12.4 million in funding led by OS Fund, with participation from Osage University Partners and Tin Shed Ventures.​ More here.  Rallybio, a months-old, Farmington, Ct.-based biotech that’s aiming to develop therapies for patients with severe and rare disorders and was founded by veteran pharmaceutical executives, has raised $37 million in Series A funding. 5AM Ventures, Canaan Partners, and New Leaf Venture Partners led the round, with participation from Connecticut Innovations, among other investors. FierceBiotech has more here.  Religion of Sports, a year-old, Santa Monica, Ca.-based sports content startup whose co-founders include Tom Brady and Michael Strahan, has raised $3 million in new funding from Advancit Capital and Courtside Ventures. American Inno has more here.  Revolut, a three-year-old, London-based digital banking startup that offers a digital banking account and sprawling set of other financial services, has raised $250 million in new funding at a $1.7 billion post-money valuation. (That’s reportedly a fivefold increase in less than a year.) DST Global led that round, with participation from Index Ventures and Ribbit Capital. TechCrunch has more here. SidelineSwap, a four-year-old, Boston-based online marketplace for athletes to buy and sell sports gear and equipment, has raised $5 million in Series A funding led byGlobal Founders Capital, with participation from Admiral Capital, Peak6 Sports, RiverPark Ventures, FJ Labs and The Player’s Impact. More here.

New Funds

Pinnacle Ventures, a 16-year-old, early-stage Menlo Park, Ca.-based firm that provides startups with both venture and debt funding and was co-founded by Ken Pelowski, formerly of Redpoint Ventures, is raising its fifth fund. So shows an SEC filing that doesn’t list a target amount. More here.

Exits

Hearst Magazines agreed to acquire a minority stake in Gear Patrol, a digital media and e-commerce company that’s focused on enthusiast communities and makes nearly a quarter of its revenue from e-commerce and affiliate links The WSJ has more here.  Square just announced that it’s reached an agreement to acquire Weebly, an 11-year-old company that makes website-building tools, for $365 million in cash and stock. According to Crunchbase, the company had raised less than $36 million over the years, including from Sequoia Capital. (We still remember meeting the company’s founders, then college seniors, in San Francisco, when Weebly was based on the “ninth floor in a three-bedroom apartment littered with desktop computers, mounds of cords and stray athletic shoes.”) More on the sale here.  Teradyne, a company that provides automated testing equipment for industrial applications, has acquired the Danish robotics company MiR for $148 million, with $124 million on the table after meeting performance goals. The company had raised what appears to have been a very small amount of capital. (At least, we aren’t aware of further funding right now.) TechCrunch has more here.

People

Greg Coleman, a media executive whose most recent role was as president of BuzzFeed, has joined Lerer Hippeau as an executive-in-residence. More here.  Former U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry has joined TPG’s Rise Fund as a senior advisor. Fourteen women who say they were assaulted by their Uber drivers are asking Uber’s board to allow them to proceed with their lawsuit against the company in open court. They originally filed their lawsuit seeking class action status last November. While Uber employees can, as of 2016, opt-out of mandatory arbitration agreements, riders remain bound by them and don’t right now have the option of a jury trial. Recode has the story here.

Jobs

Iconiq Capital, which manages money for numerous powerful families, is looking to hire an investment analyst. The job is in San Francisco.

Essential Reads

Essential Reads Amazon has quietly launched a portal offering home security services — which include all the equipment you would need and in-person visits from Amazon consultants to advise and install the kit.   Amazon’s Alexa will soon gain a memory, converse more naturally, and automatically launch skills.   Snap has made a new version of its camera glasses, Spectacles, that people might actually wear.  Sorry, folks. Sounds like MoviePass is ending its whole 30-tickets-for-the price-of-one offering (though for now, earlier subscribers keep the deal they made with the company).

Detours

In a medical first, drugs have reversed an inherited disorder in the womb.  How sneaker brands create hype.  Donald Trump called into “Fox & Friends” this morning; they hung up on him to stop him from talking.

Retail Therapy

A “new offshore living experience.”

Wednesday! No feature story today. More tomorrow.:)

Top News

Perhaps you’ve noticed? The world’s most popular email service received a big overhaul today.  So much for that user data scandal hitting Facebook’s bottom line. The company just reported its quarterly earnings, revealing that revenue is up a whopping 50 percent over this time last year.

Sponsored By . . .

Got exits? We’ve got 8 under our belt at Treble – with a brand new website that captures our collective value proposition and results. Founded in 2013 to elevate brand visibility for venture-backed startups, Treble partners with venture capital firms to launch your funding investments and maximize brand visibility for your firm and your investments. Our scalable model aligns with new rounds of venture capital funding so startups can win early – and often – from seed stage to IPO. We love IoT, DevOps, cybersec, cloud, fintech and blockchain – with a growing consumer tech practice. Ready to win? Contact us here.

New Fundings

BigCommerce, a nine-year-old, Austin, Tex.-based company that powers e-commerce sites for Sony, Toyota and 60,000 other merchants, has raised $64 million in fresh funding led by Goldman Sachs. Other participants in the deal include General Catalyst, GGV Capital and Tenaya Capital. The company has now raised more than $200 million from investors. TechCrunch has more here.  Castbox, a 2.5-year-old, San Francisco-based podcast app, has raised $13.5 million in Series B funding led by SIG China, with participation from earlier backers IDG Capital, Qiming Venture Partners, and GSR Ventures. The round brings the company’s total funding to $29.5 million. TechCrunch has more here.  Catalyst, a 16-month-old, New York-based platform that integrates numerous, major SaaS services like Salesforce and Zendesk to create a unified dashboard for “customer success” data, has raised $2.4 million in funding led by True Ventures, with participation from Ludlow Ventures and Compound. TechCrunch has more here.  Clark, a nearly three-year-old, Berlin and Frankfurt, Germany-based insurance robo-advisory firm, has raised $29 million in Series B funding co-led by Portag3 Ventures and White Star Capital, with participation from earlier investorsCoparion, Kulczyk Investments and Yabeo Capital. The company has now raised $45 million altogether. More here.  Doctor on Demand, a five-year-old, San Francisco-based video telemedicine company, has raised $74 million in fresh funding co-led by Goldman Sachs andPrinceville Global, with participation from earlier backers, including Venrock,Shasta Ventures and Tenaya Capital. The company has now raised $160 million altogether. TechCrunch has more here.  Fat Lama, a two-year-old, London-based peer-to-peer rental marketplace for almost anything, has raised $10 million in Series A funding led by Blossom Capital, with participation from Atomico and earlier backer Y Combinator. TechCrunch has more here.  GitPrime, a three-year-old, Durango, Co.-based software engineering analytics platform, has raised $10.5 million in Series A funding led by OpenView, with participation from earlier investor Data Collective. More here. Hasura, a year-old, Bangalore- and San Francisco-based startup that’s developing managed Kubernetes software that’s designed to make life easier for developers (Kubernetes is a tool that helps companies that are running containers manage them), just raised $1.6 million in seed funding. Nexus Venture Partners led the round, with participation from GREE Ventures. TechCrunch has more here.  Kidbox, a three-year-old, New York-based monthly subscription box filled with kids’ fashion items, has raised $15.3 million led by Canvas Ventures, with participation from earlier backers Firstime Ventures and HDS Capital, and from numerous individual investors. TechCrunch has more here.  PlaySight Interactive, a five-year-old. Cresskill, N.J.-based startup that aims to make courts, gyms, fields and ice rinks “smart” by installing high-performance software and camera technology to record and analyze all sports action, has added $21 million to the $11 million in Series C funding that the company had raised in June of last year. New backers include SoftBank Ventures Korea and CE Ventures. More here.  Pusher, a seven-year-old, London-based startup that provides tools and cloud infrastructure for developers to add real-time functionality to their apps (like push notifications), has raised $8 million in Series A funding. The round was led by Balderton Capital, with participation from Heavybit. TechCrunch has more here.  Rocketrip, a five-year-old, New York-based startup that encourages employees to travel more cost effectively by giving them some of the savings they generate, has raised $15 million in Series C funding. GV led the round, participation from earlier backers Bessemer Venture Partners and Canaan Partners. TechCrunch has more here.  Techtonic Group, a 12-year-old, Denver, Co.-based development services firm that operates an outsourced apprenticeship program to close skill gaps in high-tech fields, has raised $2 million in funding from University Ventures and Zoma Capital. TechCrunch has more here.  Weimob, a five-year-old, Shanghai, China-based company that provides official account operation, training, marketing and other integrated supporting services for enterprises on WeChat, has raised $160 million in Series D funding. Backers include Tencent Double-Hundred Plan, Oriental Fortune Capital, Bohai Industrial Investment Fund Management Co., Chentao Capital, and PreIPO Capital. More here.

New Funds

Sinovation Ventures, one of China’s prominent funds (it’s helmed by former Google China head Kaifu Lee), has announced publicly that it is targeting $900 million for its newest fund, which will be its fourth vehicle and its largest to date. TechCrunch has more here.

IPOs

DocuSign just raised the price range of its pending IPO to between $26 and $28 per share, up from $24 to $26. With plans to sell 21.7 million shares, the IPO should raise $586 million and give DocuSign a fully diluted market value of $5 billion. GeekWire has more here.

Exits

Digg, the content aggregator more recently owned by Betaworks, has been sold to the little-known Boston-based ad-tech company called BuySellAds. According to Fast Company, it bought Digg’s assets, as well as its editorial and revenue teams, for an undisclosed amount. More here.

People

VC Bill Gurley would go long on Facebook and probably short Tesla, he said Monday night at a conference in New York. Here are some of his other picks.  E-waste innovator Eric Lundgren has to spend 15 months in jail for producing tens of thousands of Windows restore disks intended to extend the lifespan of aging computers. (Argh.) More here and here.  VC Peter Thiel has agreed not to bid on the assets of bankrupt Gawker Media in exchange for the web publisher’s promise to end an investigation into Thiel’s role in funding the lawsuit that led to its demise. Peter Thiel has separately agreed to take a meeting with entertainment mogul Kanye West, said Kanye West, in a series of seemingly unhinged tweets today.   Uber remains mostly white and mostly male.

Jobs

E-cigarette maker JUUL Labs is looking to bring add a senior associate to its strategy and operations team. The job is in San Francisco.

Essential Reads

The U.S. startup visa, passed with much fanfare during the twilight of Barack Obama’s presidency, was supposed to draw thousands of foreign entrepreneurs. Instead, just 10 people have applied. Says one immigration lawyer who talked to Bloomberg, “It’s a waste of time and money.”

Detours

The company that Michael Cohen kept.  Meet the new guru for the Goop set.  The art of the feel. (In calling out Macron’s alleged dandruff, she said, Trump “did something called primate grooming.”)

Retail Therapy

There’s an Echo Dot for kids now.  A newly completed “marvel” in Atherton, Ca., if you have $30 million to spare.

Hi, happy Tuesday, all!

Top News

Instagram has launched a “data download” tool to let you leave.  Earnings were supposed to lift stocks, but they wound up dragging them lower today. Dealbook has more here.

Sponsored By . . .

This month marks the 5th anniversary of Treble – built in 2013 to elevate brand visibility for venture-backed startups. We’ve achieved 8 exits to-date with our clients being acquired by Google, Oracle and VMware. Our scalable model aligns with new rounds of venture capital funding so you can win early – and often – from seed stage to IPO. Treble executes news announcements with precision, trendjacksbreaking news, and transforms ideas into articles. Check out our new website hereor contact us at newbiz@treblepr.com.

New Numbers Illustrate How Fast Fundraising Has Changed for Young Startups

Fundraising is never easy, but it’s even harder when the goal posts are being moved around. Such is the challenge facing today’s youngest startups, which are looking at very different fundraising metrics than new startups did just six or seven years ago.  We explored the issue yesterday with Peter Wagner, who spent more than 14 years with Accel as a managing partner before cofounding the early-stage firm Wing Venture Capital in 2013 with another veteran investor, Gaurav Garg, formerly of Sequoia Capital.  Wagner has an obvious interest in how rounds are changing. Wing has to know how much is reasonable to expect to invest in a company, even while it prefers to invest in companies that don’t yet have revenue or customers. In a competitive funding landscape, its now four-person investing team is also looking to raise the firm’s profile by publishing smart industry research, including, not so long ago, on the state of IoT.  Whatever Wing’s motivations, its findings are worth tracking if you’re a founder who is thinking about raising either a seed or Series A round any time soon. More from our chat with Wagner, along with Wing’s data, follows.  Your second fund, $300 million, was nearly twice the size of your $160 million debut fund. Do you expect your third fund will be even larger? Is this going to be an Accel-size firm some day?  No, we’re actually working hard to keep a lid on our fund size. Early-stage investing doesn’t scale. For us to grow, we’d have to change our investing strategy.  So many firms are doing exactly that, with the notable exception of Benchmark, which has maintained its fund size for the last 18 years roughly.   I was at Accel when we were [expanding into] having a later-stage practice. We sought out different skills [from potential hires] because it’s a different process. It fact, the more we learned about it, the more realized how different a discipline it is.  Given that you’re so focused on early-stage financing dynamics, tell us what you’ve learned. How did you put together this new report?  We looked at companies that were funded by the 20 or so leading venture firms between 2010 and 2017. It’s 2,700 companies all together, and 5,800 financings. If a company raised a seed fund from another firm, but Sequoia led its Series A, all of its financings rounds, including that seed round, were incorporated into our research. We also focused on these companies’ downstream financings [no matter the investors].  So some of these companies are pretty new. Others are eight years old. What should founders know about the numbers?  More here.

New Fundings

Après, a nearly two year-old, San Francisco-based startup that makes a plant-based protein beverage marketed for “post workouts,” has raised $1.1 million in seed funding led by Rocana Venture Partners. More here.  Brud, the four-year-old, L.A.-based company behind one of Instagram’s most popular virtual influencers, has quietly raised $6 million, including from Sequoia Capital, SV Angel, and BoxGroup. TechCrunch has more here.   Cowboy, a 16-month-old, Brussels, Belgium-based startup that trying to build a new, smarter electronic bicycle, has raised $3 million in seed funding led by Index Ventures, with participation from France’s Hardware Club and Kima Ventures. TechCrunch has more here.  Crypt TV, a three-year-old, L.A-based digital horror network that calls itself the “Marvel for Monsters,” has raised $6.2 million in Series A funding from Blumhouse Productions, Lerer Hippeau, NBCUniversal and Advancit Capital. Deadline has more here.  Culture Trip, a seven-year-old, London-based travel site that relies heavily on local content creators, has raised $80 million in Series B funding led by earlier investor PPF Group out of the Netherlands. The company has now raised $103 million to date. TechCrunch has more here.   Extend, a 1.5-year-old, New York-based company whose mobile app lets businesses share temporary access to their corporate credit cards with freelancers, has raised $3 million in seed funding led by Point72 Ventures, with participation from Plug and Play Ventures, Reciprocal Ventures and WorldQuant Ventures. The New York Post has more here.   Guesty, a five-year-old, Hillsborough, Ca.-based startup that makes property management software for Airbnb and vacation rentals, has raised $19.75 million in new Series B funding, suggests a newly filed SEC form. TechCrunch has more here.  Leanplum, a six-year-old. San Francisco-based mobile marketing platform, has raised $5 million in new Series D funding led by Beijing-based Waterwood Group. Last November, the company had raised $47 million in Series D in funding led by Norwest Venture Partners. More here.  Marble, a three-year-old, San Francisco-based company that makes little courier robots with last-mile delivery in mind, has raised $10 million in Series A funding from Tencent, Lemnos, Crunchfund and Maven Ventures. More here.  NuProbe, a two-year-old, Boston-based molecular diagnostics company, has raised $11 million in Series A funding, including from Sequoia China, Serica Partners, and WuXi AppTec Corporate Ventures. More here.  One Championship, a seven-year-old, Singapore-based mixed martial arts firm, is reportedly raising funding at a valuation of about $1 billion. The deal is expected to close in July. Bloomberg has the story here.  Revolution Medicines, a four-year-old, Redwood City, Ca.-based developer of cancer drugs, has raised $56 million in Series B funding led by Nextech Invest, with participation from Casdin Capital, Schroder Adveq, The Column Group and Third Rock Ventures. More here.  SalesHero, an 11-month-old, San Francisco-based provider of an AI-powered sales assistant, has raised $4.5 million in seed funding, including from Baidu Ventures,CometLabs, CherryVentures, and Signals Venture Capital. Its CEO, Stefan Groschupf, was the founding CEO of another venture-backed company, Datameer. More here.  Savari, a 10-year-old, Santa Clara, Ca.-based startup whose technology is designed to create a shared communications web among cars, personal devices, and roadway signals, has raised $12 million in Series B funding led by Aviva Ventures, the corporate venture capital arm of London-based insurance company Aviva. Xconomy has more here.  SEMrush, a 10-year-old, Philadelphia, Pa.-based search analytics firm, has raised $40 million in funding from Greycroft, Siguler Guff, and e.ventures. The WSJ has more here. Templum, a year-old, New York-based developer of a trading system to sell digital assets and the secondary trading of digital assets offered as securities, has raised $10 million in funding, including from SBI Holdings and Raptor Group. More here.  Uberflip, a six-year-old, Toronto-based content marketing platform, has raised $32 million in Series A funding led by Updata Partners. More here.  Yunji, a three-year-old, China-based social e-commerce platform, has raised $120 million in Series B funding led by CDH Investment, with participation from Huaxing New Economic Fund. China Money Network has more here.

New Funds

New Funds Silicon Valley venture firm Andreessen Horowitz is preparing to launch a separate fund for crypto investments, says Recode. More here.  Eight Roads Ventures, an investment arm of Fidelity International that has been in China since the 1990s, has launched a $275 million fund dedicated to China-based tech startups. More here.  A new Seattle-based venture firm, Flying Fish, has held a first close of $23 million on a debut fund that it hopes will reach $80 million in capital commitments. TechCrunch has more here.  Venrock, founded in 1969, has raised $400 million for its third biotech-focused public and crossover investment fund, shows an SEC filing first flagged by Axios. More here.

IPOs

Carbon Black, the venture-backed, Waltham, Ma.-based maker of endpoint security software, has set its IPO terms, disclosing in a new filing that it plans to offer 8 million shares at between $15 and $17, which would give it a fully diluted market value of $1.3 billion at the midpoint. Seeking Alpha has more here.  China’s Didi Chuxing, one of the world’s largest ride-hailing companies, is holding discussions about a multibillion-dollar IPO that could happen as soon as this year, according to the WSJ.  Smartsheet, a Bellevue, Wa.-based SaaS platform for managing and automating collaborative work, just increased its IPO price range from between $10 and $12 per share, to between $12 and $14. The company plans to sell 11.6 million shares. GeekWire has more here.  Unity Biotechnology, a Brisbane, Ca-based developer of anti-aging therapeutics, plans to sell 5 million shares at between $16 and $18, it revealed in a new filing. Nasdaq has more here.

Exits

According to TechCrunch, Amazon is interested in venturing into TV home shopping. Specifically, its sources say Amazon has talked with Evine Live, which operates a pay-TV home shopping channel of the same name and may even be interested in acquiring it. More here.  Groupon founder Andrew Mason’s audio tour startup Detour has been sold toBose. The acquisition, which involves only the software and tour content — not the team — was quietly announced on Detour’s blog a few days ago, followed by an email to customers. TechCrunch has more here.  Mitel, the enterprise communications company that tried but failed to buy the voice communications company Polycom for $2 billion, is now being acquired for $2 billion itself. The company today announced that it has agreed to be acquired by Searchlight Capital Partners in an all-cash transaction, a deal that will also see the company going private. TechCrunch has more here.  Oracle has acquired Grapeshot, a startup out of Cambridge, England, whose platform helps brands, agencies, publishers and ad platforms match ads to more specific placements overall. Terms of the deal aren’t being disclosed. The startup, which had raised $22.4 million, according to Crunchbase, will become a part of the Oracle Data Cloud. TechCrunch has more here.

People

Google CEO Sundar Pichai is poised to have a highly lucrative week. Tomorrow, an award of 353,939 restricted shares he received before a promotion in 2014 will vest, and as of the end of last week, that grant was worth about $380 million, reports Bloomberg. That apparently makes it one of the largest single payouts to a public company executive in recent years.  Tia Silas has been named Chief Diversity Officer at IBM, which Silas joined in 2015 as the head of HR for its Watson Health division. Previously, she held executive roles at Pitney Bowes, Macy’s, and JCPenney.

Jobs

Aflac — as widely known for its duck mascot as its insurance products — is looking to bring aboard a venture capital associate. The job is in Charlotte, N.C. Car-hail giant Lyft is looking to add a director to its operations strategy team. The job is in San Francisco.

Essential Reads

To circumvent porch thieves, Amazon will now deliver packages to the trunk of your car.  Facebook’s hand-picked watchdogs, including the global accounting firm PwC,  gave it high marks for privacy — even as it lost control of users’ data.  Sequoia Capital has accepted up to a $350 million commitment to its new global growth fund from the Washington State Investment Board. The move signals a departure from its longstanding policy not to include U.S. public pensions as limited partners owing to their transparency around fund-level performance data. (Back in 2004, Sequoia said it was forced to part ways with the University of California system, after a court ruling said the university would need to disclose the performance of the funds in which it invests.) H/T: Axios and peHUB for flagging the development.

Detours

Why Malta became a hub of the cryptocurrency world.  How a fake heiress made a photography editor’s $62,000 disappear.  Quick facts about the Silicon Valley microschool that’s disrupting education.

Retail Therapy

Low-level light therapy. It works maybe.

Well, hey there!

Top News

Careem, the Middle East rival to Uber, had the data of its 14 million customers and drivers stolen in a cyberattack, the company said today. The cyberattack apparently took place in January. More here.

Sponsored By . . .

This month marks the 5th anniversary of Treble – built in 2013 to elevate brand visibility for venture-backed startups. We’ve achieved 8 exits to-date with our clients being acquired by Google, Oracle and VMware. Our scalable model aligns with new rounds of venture capital funding so you can win early – and often – from seed stage to IPO. Treble executes news announcements with precision, trendjacksbreaking news, and transforms ideas into articles. Check out our new website hereor contact us at newbiz@treblepr.com.

Orchid Labs is Raising Tons of Money for Its Surveillance-Free Layer Atop the Internet

Orchid Labs, a San Francisco-based startup that’s developing a a surveillance-free layer on top of the internet, has raised a bunch of funding, according to a newly processed SEC filing that shows the year-old startup has closed on $36.1 million. The money comes just five months after Orchid closed on a separate, $4.5 million in funding from investors, including Yes VC, cofounded by serial entrepreneurs Caterina Fake and Jyri Engeström.  Others of its earliest backers include Andreessen Horowitz,  DFJ, MetaStable, Compound, Box Group, Blockchain Capital, and Sequoia Capital, according to its site.  The stated goal of the Orchid is to provide anonymized internet access to people across the globe, particularly individuals who live in countries with excessive government oversight of their browsing and shopping. Part of the point also seems to be to insulate users from the many companies that now harvest and sell their data, including walled gardens like Facebook and other giants like AT&T.  In a world where one assumes the Cambridge Analytica scandal is merely the tip of the iceberg when it comes to data abuse, it’s easy to see the project’s appeal. So far, says the filing, the company has raised that $36.1 million via a SAFT agreement, an investment contract offered by cryptocurrency developers to accredited investors (42 of them in this case).  But the filing shows a target of $125,595,882 million, and based how hot particular blockchain ideas are getting, and how aggressively they’re being funded (see the Basis deal of last week), you can imagine more money will flow to the company if it hasn’t already.  More here.

New Fundings

Bluedot Innovation, a 5.5-year-old, Melbourne, Australia-based location services tech company, has raised $5.5 million in Series A funding led by Transurban, a giant urban toll road manager and developer. TechCrunch has more here.  Capital Float, a five-year-old fintech startup that says it is India’s largest online lender, says it just raised $22 million in new funding from Amazon. TechCrunch has more here.  Formlabs, a seven-year-old, Somerville, Ma.-based maker of 3D printers, has raised $30 million in Series C funding led by Tyche Partners. The financing puts the company’s total funding at north of $85 million. TechCrunch has more here.  LeEco, the 14-year-old, Beijing, China-based company, may be in the middle of a le comeback. According to the Financial Times, Tencent and JD.com are part of a consortium of 10 private investors that have agreed to buy a $437 million stake in a LeEco’s ailing smart television unit. Separately, Faraday Future, the U.S. electric vehicle startup run by LeEco founder and former chairman Jia Yueting, has received a $2 billion in fresh funding from an unnamed Hong Kong-based businessman in return for a 45 percent stake, says the Chinese outlet Caixin. More here.  Manbang Group, a China-based truck hailing company that was created by merger of major players in the sharing economy, is raising $2 billion in funding fromSoftBank Group and Google’s late-stage venture investment fund, CapitalG, among others, says the WSJ. Manbang, whose mobile app platform matches truck drivers with shippers looking to transport cargo, is raising more money than it originally set out to fetch, according to the Journal, which previously reported that the company was looking to raise between $500 million and $1 billion. The WSJ also notes that this deal marks CapitalG’s first investment in China in roughly four years. More here.  Pear Video, a two-year-old, Shanghai, China-based online short video platform, has raised a whopping $98.2 million in Series A funding led by Tencent Holdingsand Baidu. South China Morning Post has more here.  RapChat, a five-year-old, Columbus, Oh.-based app that enables users to make and share raps, has raised $1.6 million in funding from unnamed investors out of Oakland, Ca., and the Midwest. TechCrunch has more here.  Slite, a two-year-old, Paris, France-based maker of collaborative documents that passed through Y Combinator’s accelerator program earlier this year, has raised $4.4 million in a round led by Index Ventures. VentureBeat has more here.

New Funds

8VC, the venture firm founded by entrepreneur-investor Joe Lonsdale, has closed its second flagship fund with $640 million, says Axios. The firm had registered the fund with the SEC back in February. It closed its debut fund with $425 million in 2016. More here.  Data Collective, a San Francisco-based venture capital firm, is raising a $250 million biotech fund, according to an SEC filing. Largely overseeing it are two investors formerly of Monsanto Growth Ventures: John Hamer and Kiersten Stead. More here.  NIO Capital, a private equity fund established by Chinese electric car company NIO, is reportedly close to completing a first close of $500 million in capital commitments for an offshore fund that will invest in new automotive technologies. China Money Network has more here.

IPOs

China streaming giant Tencent Music is getting ready for what would be one of the largest tech IPOs ever, according to the WSJ, which says the company plans to interview underwriters next month and that the offering could value the business at more than $25 billion. More here.

Exits

Flickr, which was owned by Verizon, has been acquired by photo sharing and image hosting site SmugMug, a family-owned online photography firm. SmugMug does not have any plans to lay off any employees nor fold Flickr into SmugMug. The price of the deal has not been disclosed. Business Insider has more here.  Gaming hardware maker Razer, which went public in a big IPO in Hong Kong last year, is doubling down on payments after it announced a deal to acquire MOL, a company that offers online and offline payments in Southeast Asia. Razer had made an initial $20 million investment in MOL last June to supercharge its zGold virtual credit program for gamers. TechCrunch has more here.  The ink is barely dry on SoftBank Vision Fund’s purchase of a stake in Flipkart — it invested $2.5 billion in August, and already it’s about to sell a substantial part of the fund’s 20-percent-plus stake to Walmart, allowing the U.S. retail giant to take a majority interest, says Bloomberg. Should the deal go through, say Bloomberg’s sources, Flipkart would be valued at around $20 billion, up from $12 billion last year.

People

Aleksandr Kogan, the Cambridge University academic whose app has set off the firestorm about online user data, says he’s considering suing Facebook. BuzzFeed has more here.  San Francisco venture capitalist Jillian Manus throws the most outrageous parties in Silicon Valley; Business Insider takes a look here.  Goldman Sachs has brought on a former crypto trader, Justin Schmidt, to explore creating a bitcoin trading desk. More here.

Data

Despite a volatile market and regulatory uncertainty, investors and consumers will continue to buy more cryptocurrencies this year, according to a new SharesPost cryptocurrency and blockchain survey. More here.  Streaming music revenue was up 39 percent year-over-year to reach $7.4 billion, or 43 percent of all global recorded music revenue last year, according to a new industry report from MIDiA Research. More here.  Some 20 percent of Americans believe Amazon is having the most positive impact on society out of any other major tech company, according to a joint SurveyMonkey/Recode poll. More here.  Assets under management for sovereign wealth funds now totals $7.45 trillion(!), up 13 percent from last year, according to a new report from Preqin. (H/T: Axios.)

Essential Reads

The many ways that Google harvests your personal data.  Amazon is reportedly working on a domestic robot codenamed Vesta that can navigate inside homes like a driverless car.  Uber will go head-to-head with Didi again — this time in Mexico.  How China is buying its way into Europe.

Detours

Donald Trump’s approval rating is basically fixed, no matter how crazy the news cycle feels on a daily basis.   What happened to Matthew Mellon?  Driving through a waterfall.  Why Amy Schumer’s “I Feel Pretty” is quietly revolutionary.

Retail Therapy

A kitchen island, by . . . Bentley?