Hi, everyone, we don’t have a column today (kid stuff). Hope you have a great morning! Web visitors, here’s an easier-to-read version of what you see below.

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Top News in the A.M.

A message from Tim Cook about Apple’s commitment to your privacy. “Our business model is very straightforward: We sell great products. We don’t build a profile based on your email content or web browsing habits to sell to advertisers. We don’t ‘monetize’ the information you store on your iPhone or in iCloud. And we don’t read your email or your messages to get information to market to you,” Google, cough.

Scotland heads to the polls. (Related: Nine questions about Scottish culture answered.)

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New Fundings

Augmate, a 1.5-year-old, New York-based wearable platform that accelerates the development of digital eyewear applications, has raised $2.8 million in seed funding from Tim Draper and others.

Beyond Verbal, a two-year-old, Tel Aviv, Israel-based company whose technology can extract, decode, and measure a full spectrum of human emotions in a person’s voice over any voice-enabled device, has raised $3.3 million in Series A funding, reports Venture Capital Dispatch. The company, whose earlier investors include Genesis Angels and angel investor Kenges Rakishev, has raised $7.1 million to date.

Chobolabs, a two-year-old, mobile gaming startup that brings competitive synchronous multiplayer gaming to smartphones and tablets, has raised $1.3 million in funding led by Innovation Endeavors, with XG Ventures and numbers angel investors participating. Chobolabs is part of Stanford’s StartX community. (Meanwhile, here is a list of 11other startups that are just emerging from the StartX accelerator program.)

ClassPass, 1.5-year-old, New York-based membership program for fitness classes across multiple gyms and studios, has raised $12 million in Series A funding, led by angel investors Fritz Lanman (who led ClassPass’s seed round) and Hank Vigil. Other investors in the round include SV Angel, Gordy Crawford, Owen van Natta, and Blake Krikorian. The company has now raised $14 million altogether, shows Crunchbase.

Colorescience, a 14-year-old, Carlsbad, Ca.-based makeup company that sells through medical and resort spa channels, has raised $15 million in Series B funding led by Longwood Fund, with existing investors contributing half the capital. The company had previously raised $10 million in Series A funding from Montreux Equity Partners and Split Rock Partners.

CrowdFlower, a seven-year-old, San Francisco-based platform to help data scientists collect, clean and label data to make it useful, has raised $12.5 million in Series C financing led by Canvas Venture Fund, with participation from earlier investors Bessemer Venture Partners and Trinity Ventures. The company has raised $25.7 million to date, shows Crunchbase.

CyActive, a 1.5-year-old, Be’er Sheva, Israel-based cybersecurity company takes existing malware strains and mutates them into every possible format to predict and head off future attacks, has raised an undisclosed amount of funding from Siemens Venture Capital. Venture Wire Dispatch has more on the company here.

EatWith, a two-year-old, Tel Aviv, Israel-based company whose community marketplace offers dining experiences in people’s homes around the world, has raised $8 million in funding from Greylock Partners. Part of the funding will be used to relocate the 18-person company to San Francisco, says the company, which currently has 500 “hosts” on the platform who’ve cooked for guests in more than 160 cities worldwide.

HowGood, an eight-year-old, Brooklyn, N.Y.-based app that rates grocery products according to both their nutritional content and how sustainably they were created, has raised $2 million in funding from FirstMark Capital, Highline Ventures, Great Oaks Venture Capital, Serious Change LP, Jake Lodwick and Joanne Wilson.

Jack Erwin, a 1.5-year-old, New York-based men’s footwear company, has raised $9 million in Series B funding led by the footwear companyBrown Shoe Co., with participation from earlier investors CrossLink Capital, Shasta Ventures and FundersGuild. StrictlyVC talked with the company in February, when it raised $2 million in Series A funding. The company had raised $750,000 in seed funding in 2013.

JW Player, a seven-year-old, New York-based online and mobile video platform and player technology company, has received $20 million in Series C funding led by Greycroft Growth and Greenspring Associates, with participation from Cue Ball Capital and e.ventures.

LightSpeed Retail, a nine-year-old, Quebec-based company that makes point-of-sale software for retailers, has raised $35 million in funding led by iNovia Capital, with participation from earlier Accel Partners. The company has now raised a total of $65 million.

PeerSpace, a year-old, San Francisco-based startup whose online platform facilitates the rental of short-term space (from offices to theaters to exercise studios), has raised a seed round of $1.5 million led by Structure Capital. Individual investors, including Ran Makavy, Michael Horowitz, and Ron Pizzuti, also participated.

Ping Identity, a 12-year-old, Denver-based company that sells cloud-based identity management software to companies and government organizations, has raised $35 million in new funding led by KKR, with participation from Ten Eleven and numerous earlier investors. The company has now raised $110 million to date, including from SAP Ventures, DFJ Growth, W Capital Partners, Avista Partners, Triangle Peak Partners, General Catalyst Partners, and Appian Ventures.

Porch, a two-year-old, Seattle-based startup that helps homeowners make decisions regarding home improvements, has raised $27.6 million in Series A funding from Lowe’s, the home improvement giant told Dow Jones yesterday. Porch had previously raised $6.25 million in seed funding from SV Angel and a long list of individual investors.

SocialChorus, a 6.5-year-old, San Francisco-based brand marketing company that puts employees and “brand ambassadors” to work to share a company’s content, has raised $7.5 million in Series B funding led by earlier investor Kohlberg Ventures. The company has raised $15.5 million to date, including from Windforce Ventures.

Splice, a 1.5-year-old, New York-based music production storage and collaboration startup, has raised $4.5 million in Series A funding led by True Ventures, with participation from Union Square Ventures. The company was founded by Steve Martocci, who previously cofounded the messaging app GroupMe. (As a reminder, GroupMe was acquired by Skype in 2011 for a reported $68 million, including earn-outs.)

Swrve, a three-year-old, San Francisco-based company whose app marketing platform helps mobile product teams optimize their applications and games, has raised $10 million in Series B Capital from Acero Capital, with participation from earlier investors, including Intel Capital and Atlantic Bridge. The company has now raised $22 million from investors.

TouchPal, a six-year-old Shanghai-based company whose keyboard app is among several third-party keyboards coming to the iOS for the first time, has raised “significantly” more than $20 million in new funding, reports TechCrunch. Sequoia Capital led the deal, with earlier investor Qiming Venture Partners and Qualcomm Ventures participating. The company had previously raised $5 million in funding.

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New Funds

Lowe’s, the 68-year-old, North Wilkesboro, N.C.-based home improvement company, is in the early stages of forming a venture arm,says VentureWire. The company has already made four bets, including on smart energy and home monitoring startup AlertMe; membership-based workshop TechShop; the solar services company Sungevity; and Porch. (See more about the last above, in New Fundings.) “We are starting to build the capacity for a fund,” a company executive tells the outlet. “We don’t have a dollar amount attached to it.”

Nova Founders Capital, a two-year-old, Hong Kong-based firm that builds and invests in companies, has raised $50 million from Pacific Century Group, one of Asia’s leading investment groups. The firm, run by Mads Faurholt-Jorgensen and Raphael Strauch, two former partners of Rocket Internet, has disclosed a handful of investments to date, including GlassesGroupGlobal, a two-year-old Asia-Pacific online eyewear retailer that has so far raised $3 million, and Lion & Lion, a year-old, Jakarta-based digital advertising company that has raised an undisclosed amount of seed funding.

Top Tier Capital Partners, the San Francisco-based fund-of-funds manager, has raised $202 million for its seventh fund, which is targeting $404 million, according to an SEC filing. The company held a $441 million final close on its sixth fund just earlier this year, in January.

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IPOs

About $8 billion worth of Alibaba shares are not locked up and could be sold as soon as the e-commerce company goes public later this week,reports the WSJ.

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Exits

FeedHenry, a four-year-old, Waterford, Ireland-based provider of a platform for mobile app developers, specifically for enterprises to build apps, has been acquired by Red Hat, the open source company, for $82 million in cash. TechCrunch has more here. FeedHenry had raised $9 million in funding from Kernel Capital Partners, Intel Capital, VMware,Enterprise Ireland, and ACT Venture Capital.

Metacloud, a three-year-old, Pasadena, Ca.-based company that powers enterprise-grade cloud platforms for its corporate customers, has been acquired by Cisco. Financial terms of the deal weren’t disclosed, but Metacloud has raised at least $25 million in funding over the past few years, including from Pelion Venture Partners, Silicon Valley Bank, UMC Capital, AME Cloud Ventures, Canaan Partners, and Storm Ventures.

GitHub, the six-year-old, San Francisco-based web-based repository hosting service company, is shutting down the Easel website-designing service it acquired back in January. VentureBeat has more here.

Stonestreet One, a five-year-old, Louisville, Ky.-based developer and licensor of Bluetooth software, was acquired yesterday by Qualcomm Atheros, the networking and connectivity subsidiary of Qualcomm. Terms of the deal weren’t disclosed, but a Stonestreet investor tells StrictlyVC it was a “great strategic exit.” The company has raised $3.4 million from local angels and seed funds.

Ubersense, a three-year-old, Boston-based company specializing in interactive video analysis and instruction, has been acquired by the privately held sports video software company Hudl. Terms of the deal weren’t disclosed. Ubersense had raised a small amount of seed funding from BDS Venture Fund, Google Ventures, Atlas Venture, and Boston Seed Capital. Recode has more here.

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People

Apple CEO Tim Cook talks with BusinessWeek in what’s a must-read profile. Reports BW: “Cook says he wishes he could make [Apple Watch, which starts at $349] more affordable, particularly since the company boasts of its potential to help customers manage their health and wellness (‘that’s the humanitarian coming out’), but he won’t compromise Apple’s large profit margins to make it happen.”

Uber has David Plouffe. Now former House Democratic Leader Dick Gephardt’s lobbying group is working with Lyft to “advocate for the removal of barriers that inhibit ride sharing,” according to Recode.

Hightail, the cloud storage and file-sharing company that last week parted ways with CEO Brad Garlinghouse and brought back cofounder Ranjith Kumaran to run the show, is cutting roughly 100 people, which is roughly half its employees, reports Recode.

Microsoft is also reportedly laying off a lot of people today.

Sequoia Capital’s Michael Moritz talks with the WSJ, telling the paper that Sequoia owns shares in Alibaba (news to us) and that he thinks U.S. companies have a disadvantage right now to their China-based counterparts. “Over the next decade, to some extent, I think the advantage lies with the Chinese companies. The Chinese companies will have an easier time competing in the West then the Western companies will have competing in China.”

Google cofounder Larry Page has a lot of things on his to-do list, including creating a second major research lab alongside Google X and, well, also building a model airport and city. The Information has more here.

Bill Pescatello has been promoted from principal to partner at Lightbank, the Chicago-based investment fund started by Groupon co-founders Eric Lefkofsky and Brad Keywell. Pescatello had joined the firm in 2011 from NBCUniversal in New York, where he was a VP and founding member of Peacock Equity Fund, NBCUniversal’s venture capital arm.

Uh oh. Roughly one week into his new post as chief strategy officer at Hampton Creek, serial entrepreneur Ali Partovi has abruptly left the company, which has raised $30 million from Founders Fund and Khosla Ventures and others (including Partovi and his brother, Hadi) to develop egg-free food alternatives. The WSJ has the story here, including an email that Partovi sent friends, confirming his departure. “This will surely come as a surprise to you, and I’m sorry for waiting so many days to share the news,” he wrote. “We parted ways with mutual respect. The people at Hampton Creek are incredible, and we’ll continue to wish each other well.”

Investor Peter Thiel doesn’t think Alibaba is such a great long-term investment. He tells CNN: “Alibaba is sort of this protected Chinese company – it will do well, but it is fundamentally a political entity that is somehow very deeply connected with the Chinese government . . .You’ll get a pop and you’ll do well if it continues to stay in the good graces of the Chinese government, but it’s fundamentally a political investment.”

George Zachary of CRV had talked with investor Semil Shah about Silicon Valley bubbles on the eve of Facebook’s May 2012 IPO, and it’s an interesting discussion — particularly in light of the current bubble chatter. Shah just reposted it here if you’re interested in browsing the transcript.

The most powerful people in tech at every age, including an eight-year-old who is clearing more than a million dollars a year by reviewing games and toys on YouTube(!).

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Job Listings

Credit Suisse is looking for an equity capital markets analyst in New York.

Prosper, the peer-to-peer lending marketplace, is looking for a senior business development manager. The job is in San Francisco.

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Essential Reads

Apple has partnered with everyone who’s anyone in the payments world for its new Apple Pay service, including Visa, MasterCard, and American Express. Then there’s Stripe, the five-year-old, San Francisco-based payments company.

Even San Francisco International Airport has startup fever. It just opened a “place for travelers to innovate and collaborate while waiting for their flights,” reports Government Technology. Adding the space just made sense, according to the airport’s public relations officer, who was presumably not joking.

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Detours

The scourge of “relatability.”

The 20 colleges with the most billionaire alumni.

A man and his dog.

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Retail Therapy

The best first-class airline seats in the world.

Do you need a $199 e-reader? Because Amazon thinks you do.

Hi, good Wednesday morning, everyone! (Web visitors, here‘s an easier-to-read version of today’s newsletter.)

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Top News in the A.M.

Investor Peter Thiel appeared on CNBC this morning and had some provocative things to say about Twitter, calling it “hard to evaluate. They have a lot of potential. It’s a horribly mismanaged company—probably a lot of pot-smoking going on there. But it’s such a solid franchise it may even work with all that.”

Yet another firm, Battery East, wants to convince start-ups to let it arrange secondary transactions in their stock. It opens its doors today.

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The Best-Funded Connected Home Startup You’ve Never Heard of

You probably haven’t heard of Leeo, a 1.5-year-old, San Francisco-based maker of smart home products and services. But investors are well aware of it, along with a growing number of engineers. Indeed, the now 60-person company has quietly raised $37 million in financing, including from Formation 8; E.ON, one of the world’s largest investor-owned power and gas companies; and Visionnaire Ventures, the fund of billionaire Taizo Son, who is the youngest brother of Softbank magnate Masayoshi Son.

The attraction isn’t surprising, given the murderer’s row of operators that Leeo has assembled. Cofounder Adam Gettings was cofounder and CTO of RoboteX, a maker of first responder robots that he launched with his brother Nathan, who also cofounded the data analysis company Palantir Technologies and is now Leeo’s chief data advisor.

Adding product development smarts is chief operating officer Charles Huang, who with his brother founded RedOctane, publisher of the best-selling videogame franchise “Guitar Hero.” And on the form factor side, Leeo’s chief designer is Robert Brunner, who was Apple’s first design chief and most recently the chief designer at Beats Electronics.

It sounds like a winner. Just don’t ask what the company is making. (It’s not saying yet.) I talked with Gettings and Huang last week about their secretive company.

Why start Leeo?

Gettings: It was largely inspired by a friend who saw a fire from a distance and realized it was her home. She wound up losing the house and all of her pets and it was tragic for our circle of friends to be so close to the situation. [Afterwards], we started wondering how we could create a connection between the home and people so people could be better linked to their homes when they’re away. Our first product coming out [will address the issue], then a series of other products [will follow].

Is this a smoke detector? Is it something that exists in the market that you’re improving on or is this a new device entirely?

Huang: It’s a product that takes advantage of existing infrastructure. It isn’t difficult for consumers to use in their homes yet uses the benefits of connected devices.

That was quite a non-answer! Should Nest Labs be nervous?

Gettings: I don’t know. I think our design chops are pretty good. It’s an interesting space and relatively early when you consider how long Nest Labs has been around. Every day there seems to be new entrants into the [Internet of Things] market. The space will be very big in the future – it’s the next big evolution of the Internet.

Huang: One thing we’re excited about is getting enormous incumbents involved through strategic investors, like E.ON [for which we’ll create] custom-designed smart home products and services. [E.ON has roughly 35 million customers in more than 10 European countries.] We’re also working with Softbank, which owns Sprint and has more than 180 million mobile phone subscribers to which they want to provide more products and services, including through their Sprint stores in the U.S. and their Softbank stores in Asia.

Why this staggered launch announcement, with details about your funding but not about your product?

Gettings: We’re very excited about building the team and assembling the product and it’s a chance for us to say hello to the world.

Huang: There are a lot of interesting parts to this story, so we’re trying to tell it chapter and chapter and not overload people with one massive press campaign.

Okay, tell us this: You’ve both formed companies with your brothers. What’s it like to work with your sibling?

Huang: Great. You have an instinctive trust. You can almost know what he’s thinking before he says it. But you do behave just like you did as kids. One of you will say something and the other will respond, “That’s just the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard,” like you’re eight years old. [Laughs.]

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New Fundings

Bellabox, a three-year-old, Singapore-based company that has become Australia’s biggest beauty subscription site, has raised $2.7 million in funding from Allure Media, a digital publishing company owned by Fairfax Media. The company has raised $4.1 million altogether. TechCrunch has the story here.

Daojia, a four-year-old, Shanghai, China-based restaurant food delivery startup, has raised $50 million in new funding co-led by Chinese e-commerce giant JD.com and Macquarie Capital. Morningside Ventures and CDH Venture also participated in the round. To date, the company has raised roughly $75 million. Venture Capital Dispatch has more here.

eJiaJie, a 1.5-year-old, Beijing-based platform centered around hourly housekeeping services, has raised $4 million in funding from Shanda Capital and Tencent. According to Tech in Asia, the company had previously raised $650,000 in seed funding, including from Tencent.

eSentire, a 13-year-old, Cambridge, Ontario-based cyber security company, has raised a $12.7 million in Series C funding led by Georgian Partners, with participation from Cisco Investments and Northleaf Venture Catalyst Fund. Earlier investors Edison Partners and VentureLink also participated in the round, which brings the company’s total funding to $19.6 million, shows Crunchbase.

Fastly, a three-year-old, San Francisco-based content delivery network, has raised a $40 million in Series C funding led by August Capital. Earlier investors Battery Ventures, O’Reilly AlphaTech Ventures and Amplify Partners also participated in the round, along with new investor IDG Ventures. To date, the company has raised $54 million, shows Crunchbase.

Gousto, a two-year-old, London-based online web application that sends customers the ingredients they need to cook meals they’ve pre-selected, has raised $8.3 million from Unilever Ventures, with participation from earlier investor MMC Ventures. The company has now raised $11.4 million altogether, shows Crunchbase.

Jet, a six-month-old, Montclair, N.J.-based e-commerce company that was founded by entrepreneur Marc Lore, has raised $20 million in growth capital from Western Technology Investments and a $5 million asset-backed facility from Silicon Valley Bank, bringing its Series A round — which also includes $55 million from New Enterprise Associates, Accel Partners, Bain Capital Ventures and MentorTech Ventures — to a whopping $80 million. Lore, whose company is operating in stealth mode for now, previously cofounded Quidsi, parent company of Diapers.com, which sold to Amazon for $550 million in 2010. He’s building Jet with his Quidsi co-founders, former VP of special operations Nathan Faust, and project director Mike Hanrahan. TechCrunch has the story here.

MileIQ, a two-year-old, San Francisco-based mileage tracker app, has raised $3 million in seed funding led by CRV, with participation from Salesforce founder Marc Benioff, SV Angel and others.

Newsela, a New York-based education tech startup that provides daily news articles that are extracted from national and regional newspapers, has raised $4.1 million in Series A funding led by Owl Ventures, a new venture firm that solely backs ed-tech startups. Other participants in the round include Knight Foundation’s Knight Enterprise Fund, Cambridge Information Group and earlier investors NewSchools Venture Fund and Kapor Capital. The company has raised roughly $5.7 million to date. Venture Capital Dispatch has the story here.

RightCare Solutions, a three-year-old, Horsham, Pa.-based company whose software helps hospitals and other health care providers optimize their discharge planning process, has raised $4 million in funding from NewSpring Health Capital. The company had previously raised $6.8 million from Domain Associates and Compass Partners.

Semmle, an eight-year-old, Oxford, England-based business analytics platform that aims to optimize other companies’ IT projects by analyzing the quality of their developers’ code and how much they’re spending on software development, has raised $8 million in Series A funding led by Accel Partners. TechCrunch has more here.

Synereca Pharmaceuticals, a five-year-old, Chapel Hill, N.C.-based company that develops drugs that restore the effectiveness of existing antibiotics, has raised $1.4 million in convertible debt led by Accele Venture Partners. i2E, a not-for-profit corporation focused on growing small businesses in Oklahoma, also participated in the round along with individual investors.

Talkdesk, a three-year-old, Mountain View, Ca.-based company that says its software enables companies to create a call center in the browser in less than 5 minutes, has raised $3 million in seed funding from Storm Ventures.

TrueAccord, a year-old, San Francisco-based company that uses behavioral engineering and machine learning to automate the process of debt collecting, has raised $5 million in Series A funding from Khosla Ventures, Homebrew, serial entrepreneur Max Levchin, and Braintree founder Bryan Johnson.

WeiChaiShi, a 20-month-old, Shanghai, China-based Chinese mobile task outsourcing platform, has raised $3.2 million in funding led by ClearVue Partners, with Nokia Growth Partners participating. The company has raised at least $6.2 million to date, shows Crunchbase.

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New Funds

Providence Health & Services, a not-for-profit Catholic health-care ministry in Renton, Wa., says it will invest $150 million in early- to mid-stage companies that aim to improve patient care. The fund is being led by Aaron Martin, who came to Providence earlier this year from Amazon’s publishing and print-on-demand business. He reportedly led Amazon’s content acquisition Kindle’s North American trade publishing business. The Puget Sound Business Journal has more here.

Stem, a five-year-old, Millbrae, Ca.-based energy storage startup whose battery systems are meant to be used when grid power is too expensive, has created a new fund to finance up to $100 million in new projects featuring its technology. More here.

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IPOs

Proteon Therapeutics, a 13-year-old, Waltham, Ma.-based biopharmaceutical company that develops drugs for renal and vascular disease, has filed to go public. The company has raised at least $126 million over the years, shows Crunchbase. Its principal shareholders include TVM Capital, which owns 19.4 percent; Abingworth Bioventures, which owns 19.1 percent; Prism Venture Partners, which owns 15.6 percent; Skyline Venture Partners, which owns 15.3 percent; Deerfield, which owns 10.5 percent; Pharmstandard International, which owns 10.5 percent; Intersouth Partners, which owns 10.4 percent; and MPM Capital, which owns 10.3 percent.

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Exits

Darjeelin, a 1.5-old, Paris-based startup whose online flight search engine is powered by “flight hackers” who tell users when there are cheaper flights available, has been acquired by Voyage Privé Group-owned L’Officiel des Vacances, a site that offers travel deals from around the web. Terms of the deal weren’t disclosed. TechCrunch has more here.

Mail.ru, a publicly traded Russian Internet company, confirmed yesterday that it has acquired the remaining shares of “Russia’s Facebook” Vkontake that it didn’t already own for $1.47 billion. The deal means Mail.ru now controls Russia’s two most popular social networks, VK and Odnoklassniki (“classmates”). Circa has more here.

Ostrovok.ru, a Russian travel booking site that raised $28 million in a Series B round last year led by General Catalyst Partners, has seen a change in ownership, reports Venture Capital Dispatch, which says both General Catalyst and earlier backer Accel Partners have quietly divested their holdings, likely owing to continuing conflict in neighboring Ukraine. (They aren’t saying.) Whatever the case, they wanted out. Lev Leviev, a co-founder of Vaizra Investments, which recently invested in Ostrovok.ru, tells the outlet that Accel and General Catalyst “didn’t sell their shares, they gave them up.”

Pounce, a two-year-old, Tel Aviv-based mobile shopping app that surfaces deals from retailers, has been acquired by visual search company Slyce for $5 million in shares, cash and earn-out incentives. TechCrunch has more here.

Virtual, a Delray Beach, Fla.-based pre-launch virtualization platform for both Android and iOS, has been acquired by Citrix, reports TechCrunch. Terms of the deal aren’t being disclosed.

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People

The 30 most important women under age 30 in tech, according to Business Insider.

Scott Bartlett, the technical lead behind Google’s Nexus phone program, has left to become the director of hardware at Hello, maker of a spherical sleep sensor called Sensor that we wrote about last month. TechCrunch has much more here.

Emergence Capital Partners has promoted Santi Subotovsky to partner and Joe Floyd to principal. Prior to joining Emergence in 2010, Subotovsky was an advisor at Aqua Capital Partners. Before joining Aqua Capital Partners, he was a summer associate at Storm Ventures. Before joining Emergence in 2012, Floyd was an associate at both American Capital and McKinsey & Co. He was also a Kauffman Fellow.

Marty Hanaka has joined Highland Capital Partners as an operating partner. He most recently was interim chief executive of Guitar Center, a Highland portfolio company. Previously, he was chairman and CEO of Golfsmith International Holdings, chairman and CEO of Sports Authority, and president and chief operating officer of Staples.

Peter Thiel, Reid Hoffman, Paul Graham, and Marc Andreessen are among other prominent investors and founders who’ve signed on to teach a 20-session Y Combinator course at Stanford called “How to Start a Startup.” In nice news for founders everywhere: all materials from the class, including videos, will be posted to the site of Y Combinator president Sam Altman.

VCs weigh in on Bill Gurley‘s public warning that companies are taking on too much risk. Says Jeff Clavier of SoftTechVC: “The thing I am missing with Gurley’s piece is, so what? There wasn’t a clear call to action. If you believe everything is in overdrive and you have shares of Uber at [an $18 billion valuation] and shares of Snapchat at [a $10 billion valuation], you wonder if he should sell some of them.”

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Job Listings

McKinsey & Co. is looking for an M&A analyst. The job is in New York.

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Essential Reads

Worth noting: Most of technology’s most notable names aren’t soaring along with today’s Internet darlings, as happened in the late ’90s.

Facebook has built an app for super private sharing.

The seven new startups capturing San Francisco’s attention right now.

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Detours

A wife’s happiness is more crucial than her husband’s in keeping marriage on track, a Rutgers study finds. (What? We’re just reporting the news here!)

Aerial views of a colorful Italian beach town.

Postcards for ants.

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Retail Therapy

Looks like we’re all getting new iPhones.

Hi, everyone, good morning! (Pst, web visitors, here’s an easier-to-read version of this morning’s email, below, right here.)

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Top News in the A.M.

PayPal just attacked Apple Pay in a full-page New York Times ad that reads: “We the people want our money safer than our selfies. PayPal, protecting the people economy.” Well. This should be interesting!

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DataFox Aims to Disrupt Company Intelligence, Upset Michael Bloomberg

Bloomberg and Thomson Reuters had better watch their backs – or else get out their checkbooks. The financial information giants suddenly face a spate of startups ready to take a big bite of their businesses, with DataFox, a year-old, nine-person team in Palo Alto, Ca., among the newest.

So far the company, run by Stanford alums, has raised $1.78 million in seed funding from Google Ventures Ventures, Sherpalo Ventures, and Green Visor Capital, among others, for its subscription-based deal intelligence platform. The idea: replace expensive and sometimes far-flung analysts with algorithms that can turn structured and unstructured data into real-time, competitive insights about companies.

DataFox, which has three subscription tiers — $49 per month, $399 per month, and “call us,” essentially — says it isn’t ready for another round of funding just yet. At the moment, at least, it’s more focused on launching its beta product, after testing out its service for the past year with more than 2,000 trial users. Still, cofounder and CEO Bastiaan Janmaat says paying customers, including Box, Twitter and Bloomberg Beta, think the company is on the right path. In fact, he says of his company (only half-kiddingly): “This probably isn’t what ex-Mayor Bloomberg is looking for upon his return as CEO.” He shared more with us yesterday.

DataFox mines all kinds of public information to do its job. Does it create new data, too, or might it?

We do create new data, but we do it automatically. One example is competitors lists. Other databases suck at this. Human analysts at [the business data and analytics company] Dun & Bradstreet update their list just once a year. Our algorithms look at things such as co-mentions in news articles and similar press releases to automatically generate a list of similar companies, updated in real-time. The same is true of sector classifications. We invented our own sector taxonomy of more than 70,000 keywords . . . so now a company like Box is classified as “file sharing, web hosting, cloud computing, ftp replacement” plus 20 other terms, instead of just “file storage.”

You “push” out information that you deem relevant to your customers, like a headcount mention deep in a news article. How is that information delivered?

People get one weekly email. We’ll soon allow for opt-in daily alerts. Meanwhile, people login to DataFox for the real-time feed.

A lot of your customers are interested primarily in private company information, but you also track public companies, correct?

Yes, which is why our business is such a radical departure from the status quo, meaning CapIQ, Thomson Reuters, Bloomberg, and so forth. We’re building entity-agnostic algorithms that, over time, we can apply to any company, person or theme. We have around 7,000 public companies in our database currently. Whenever a customer requests that a company to be added, all we need is the URL, and we’ll auto-generate a one-pager in a matter of hours.

What’s on your roadmap? What else will DataFox offer customers next year?

Collaborative and team features. Expanded company coverage. We’re currently at 450,000, but I expect to cover more sectors within a year and more international companies. We’ll also be tracking more types of events. We have the pipes and parsers built, so we’ll continue to write more rules to identify more structured data points beyond the headcount, revenue, and valuation data we currently collect — like new major customers and new offices.

You say you aren’t raising money again until some time next year. What milestones do you plan to reach before talking again with investors?

We’re a subscription business, so we’re looking to continue growing revenues, but the one metric we care about most is engagement, meaning the frequency of logins and alert email opens, as well as the number of companies that [customers currently] follow, which is 35 per user. If we can continue to get daily engagement from analysts at Intuit, Bloomberg Beta, Google, Goldman Sachs, and the like, we’ll bolster our prognosis that we’re disrupting the large incumbents, and that data can’t be “pull” anymore. It needs to be predictive.

Why are you so convinced that “push” is the way to go?

The volume of communication and data is exploding, there are too many streams to pull from, so mathematically it’s necessarily becoming less likely that you are able to pull the right data point at the right time. Specifically for our customers, companies’ online footprints are expanding, so there’s more information out there, but they don’t have time to monitor a company’s employees on LinkedIn, their Twitter account, their Delaware filings, and the regional papers that cover them. Hence the need for push. I train my delivery pipe to understand my interests, schedule, and priorities. The pipe decides what’s important and surfaces that for me.

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New Fundings

Carta Worldwide, a seven-year-old, Ontario-based company behind a digital transaction processing platform, has raised $7 million in Series D funding led by Toronto-based merchant bank Difference Capital and DC Thomson in the U.K. The round represents the first tranche of what is expected to be a $12 million round. To date, the company has raised roughly $50 million altogether, reports the outlet Cantech.

DHgate, a 10-year-old, Beijing-based business-to-business e-commerce platform that connects small and medium-size businesses with buyers overseas, has raised $16.3 million in Series D funding from China Growth Capital and TDF Capital, according to China Money Network. According to the report, the company had raised previously north of $30 million from investors, including Jafco, Warburg Pincus, and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers.

DipJar, a six-year-old, New York-based company that makes a jar containing a standard credit card reader (so people can tip their barista, even when cashless), has raised $420,000 in seed funding to fuel further software development of its product, reports TechCrunch. The round was led by Project 11, a new fund created by Brightcove founder Bob Mason, and numerous other angel investors.

Docker, a four-year-old, San Francisco-based open platform for distributed applications for developers, has raised $40 million in Series C funding led by Sequoia Capital, with participation from earlier investors Benchmark Capital, Greylock Partners, Insight Ventures, Trinity Ventures and Jerry Yang. The company had previously raised $25.8 million. Venture Capital Dispatch has more here.

Kateeva, a six-year-old, Menlo Park, Ca.-based maker of flat panel OLED displays, has raised $38 million in Series D funding from Samsung Ventures, Sigma Partners, Spark Capital, Madrone Capital Partners, DBL Investors, New Science Ventures and VEECO Instruments. The company has now raised more than $110 million altogether.

Molecular Templates, a five-year-old, Georgetown, Tx.-based company that develops antibody-drug conjugates, has added $3.5 million to its $8.5 million C round, with the new funding coming from AJU IB Investment, a new investor. The company has now raised about $33.5 million to date, shows Crunchbase. Its previous backers include Excel Venture Management and Santé Ventures.

NeoSystems, a 14-year-old, Tysons Corner, Va.-based company that that performs strategic back office services for government contractors, nonprofit organizations, and commercial entities, has raised $15 million in funding led by OFS Capital. The company has raised at least $20 million to date, including from Salem Halifax Capital Partners, shows Crunchbase.

Palantir Technologies, the 10-year-old, Palo Alto, Ca.-based data analysis company, has raised a round of equity, options, warrants and rights amounting to $444.2 million, according to an amended SEC filing flagged by VentureWire. The company has now raised at least $950 million from investors, shows Crunchbase.

Power2SME, a 2.5-year-old, Gurgaon, India-based online buying hub for small and medium enterprises, has raised roughly $6.9 million in Series C funding from earlier investors Accel Partners, Kalaari Capital and Inventus Capital. VCCircle has more here.

QuanTemplate, a three-year-old, London-based company behind what it promises is a secure, web-based platform for finance and insurance business transactions, has raised an undisclosed amount of seed funding from Anthemis Group and existing investors. The company had previously raised a little more than $2 million from investors, including Techstars and Burlington Capital.

RJMetrics, a six-year-old, Philadelphia, Pa.-based analytics platform for online businesses, has raised $16.5 million in Series B funding from August Capital and earlier investors Trinity Ventures and SoftTech VC. RJMetrics has now raised a total of $22 Million.

Sidecar, the four-year-old, San Francisco-based ridesharing startup, has raised $15 million in fresh funding from earlier investors Avalon Ventures and Union Square Ventures, which were joined in the round by Virgin founder Sir Richard Branson. Sidecar has now raised $35 million altogether. GeekWire has more here. Fred Wilson of Union Square explains why his firm “doubled down” on the company despite stiff competition from Uber and Lyft here.

WebTeb, a three-year-old, Ramallah, Palestine-based health and lifestyle portal aimed at Arabic-speaking users, has raised $3.2 million in Series C funding led by Sadara Ventures. Earlier investors, including Siraj Palestine Fund, also participated in the round.

WorkPop, a seven-month-old, L.A.-based online job board, has raised $7 million in Series A funding led by Trinity Ventures. The company had previously raised $900,000 in seed funding, including from SV Angel, Box Group, Obvious Ventures, Cornerstone OnDemand, Slow Ventures, Ironfire Capital, Plus Capital and individuals investors. Venture Capital Dispatch has much more here.

Yongche, a four-year-old, Beijing-based car rental service company, has raised as much as $100 million in Series D funding led by the Singaporean sovereign wealth fund GIC Private Limited, says China Money Network, which adds that several unnamed investors also participated in the round. Yongche had previously raised at least $80 million from investors, according to the report. Its earlier investors include Ctrip, DCM, Morningside Ventures, Qualcomm Ventures, CBC Capital, and Zhen Fund. The company also runs a taxi calling mobile app Dache Xiaomi.

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New Funds

A group of Dartmouth alums is forming a small, early-stage venture fund to help startups with ties to the school, reports Venture Capital Dispatch. Green D Founders Fund, which Boston-based Launch Angels will advise, is targeting $1 million to $2 million; Dartmouth has no direct involvement in the the fund.

The University of California is planning a $250 million venture fund to finance startups formed around research conducted by its faculty and students, it announced yesterday. Assuming it’s approved by the UC Regents, who will vote on it this Thursday, the fund will be one of the largest of its kind. The University of California has 10 campuses, 233,000 students, 190,000 faculty and staff, five medical centers and three affiliated national laboratories — in addition to more than 20 incubators and accelerators, notes the San Francisco Business Times.

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Exits

Euvision Technologies, a four-year-old, Amsterdam-based specialist in image recognition applications powered by artificial intelligence, has been acquired by Qualcomm for undisclosed terms, reports TechCrunch.

FolioDynamix, a seven-year-old, New York-based cloud-based investment and wealth management technology platform, is being acquired by Actua Corp., a Radnor, Pa.-based cloud computing business that specializes in the public sector, chemical compliance and insurance markets. Actua is paying $199 million in cash.

GrabCAD, a five-year-old, Cambridge, Ma.-based online community that has been described as the “Github for mechanical engineers,” is being acquired by 3D printing giant Stratasys for around $100 million in all cash,reports TechCrunch. GrabCad has raised at least $13.6 million from investors, shows Crunchbase. Its backers include David Sacks, CRV, NextView Ventures, Atlas Venture, and Matrix Partners.

Make Believe Labs, a year-old, Santa Monica, Ca.-based company, has been acquired by JibJab Bros. Studios in the latter’s first major purchase in its 15-year history, reports TechCrunch. Make Believe Labs hadn’t raised outside funding before its acquisition, says the the report. Terms of the all-cash deal were not disclosed.

TriZetto, an Englewood, Co.-based company that serves about 350 health-care plans and supplies software to almost 245,000 doctors and other care providers, is being acquired by publicly traded Cognizant, an IT, consulting, and business process outsourcing company, for $2.7 billion in cash and stock. TriZetto, once a publicly traded company, was acquired by Apax, the London-based private-equity firm, for $1.19 billion in 2008. BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee and Cambia Health Solutions are minority shareholders.

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People

Adams Street Partners, the Chicago-based private equity firm, announced a raft or organizational changes yesterday, including the promotion of Jeff Diehl, a partner on its venture capital and growth equity team, to the Head of Investments. Much more here.

After only two years, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff has decided to leave Cisco’s board of directors, according to documents filed with the SEC. Business Insider has the story here.

“Real estate is one of the few industries in the world that’s bigger than transportation,” writes former Facebook exec Sam Lessin in The Information. “But in the coming decades, companies like Uber and Lyft—eventually super-charged by self-driving cars—are likely to change living patterns and upend property markets in ways that we’ve only begun to understand.”

Sean Parker of Napster and Facebook fame, is expecting a son with his wife Alexandra, the couple tell People magazine. The baby will be the couple’s second child. The pair, who famously married last year in an expensive and controversial ceremony in Big Sur, are also parents to 20-month-old Winter Victoria, who reportedly “can’t wait to be a big sister.”

Michael Tseytlin, an executive who’d been working on Google’s efforts to deliver Internet service via satellite, has taken a similar role at Facebook, reports the WSJ. An expert in satellite design, Tseytlin had been working on Google’s satellite efforts with satellite entrepreneur Greg Wyler, who also recently left Google.

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Job Listings

LinkedIn is looking for candidates for its two-year business leadership program, comprised of four six-month rotations across the company’s finance, strategy, corporate development and sales operations groups. The program is in Mountain View, Ca.

—–

Happenings

Applications for Y Combinator‘s winter batch are due in roughly one month, and it sounds like the incubator is still looking for teams to apply.

—–

Data

With companies taking ever longer to exit, the number of still-private companies to raise more than $100 million from investors has ballooned.Mattermark looks at which VCs have funded the most of these “potential unicorns, or heavily funded duds.“

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Essential Reads

Tony Fadell hatches a connected home. In Fast Company.

Despite raising $49 million from top investors, online recruiting company BranchOut — which once flourished on Facebook’s platform — is now in discussions with several acquirers about selling itself off. TechCrunch hasmore here. (We wish we’d been wrong, but we sort of called this one in 2011.)

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Detours

Facing customers who weren’t thrilled to discover U2’s newest album on their phones as a gift from Apple, the company has posted instructions on how to wrest “Songs of Innocence” out of one’s iTunes library.

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Retail Therapy

The Unpocket. It lets you block all cell, WiFi, GPS and RFID signals. Perfect for drug dealers, contract killers and anyone else concerned about privacy. (Europeans, we’re talking to you.)

Good morning, everyone!  (Web visitors, for an easier-to-read version of today’s issue, click here.)

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Top News in the A.M.

It’s official: Microsoft has acquired “Minecraft” maker Mojang for $2.5 billion. Most employees will stay on for now; Mojang’s founders will not. The company has published a blog about the sale, explaining that Markus Persson (“Notch”), the 35-year-old creator of Minecraft and the majority shareholder of Mojang, “decided that he doesn’t want the responsibility of owning a company of such global significance. Over the past few years he’s made attempts to work on smaller projects, but the pressure of owning Minecraft became too much for him to handle. The only option was to sell Mojang. He’ll continue to do cool stuff though. Don’t worry about that.”

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Steve Blank: Washington Really Is Starting to Get It

Steve Blank, a renowned serial entrepreneur who teaches at Stanford, U.C. Berkeley, and Columbia, used to groan that the government just didn’t understand entrepreneurship, particularly as it pertains to tech and life sciences startups.

That’s quietly beginning to change, says Blank, who traces part of the shift to a surprise call in 2011 from the National Science Foundation, the second-largest research organization in the U.S., with a budget of $7 billion.

Early that same year, Blank — incorporating some ideas of startup advisors Alexander Osterwalder and Eric Ries – had devised a course called the Lean Launchpad that dispenses with traditional business school coursework and pushes students out of the building instead. The idea is to get each student or team of students to write a business hypothesis; test that hypothesis in the real world by asking dozens of potential users, purchasers and partners for feedback; then iterate on their business idea based on that input.

Initially, Blank wasn’t sure how the experiment would turn out. He blogged about the process each week, though, and while he was winning converts at Stanford where it was first introduced, the NSF was also quietly following along from Washington. Indeed, recalls Blank, seemingly out of the blue, “[Errol Arkilic, head of the NSF’s SBIR program] called me and said, ‘You’ve invented the scientific method for entrepreneurship. This is now understandable. You’ve cracked the code,’ Then he said, ‘How quickly can you prototype a class?’”

With the the help of numerous VCs and dozens of scientists, it took a year, Blank says. Since then, 400 teams of NSF-funded researchers have received nine weeks of training to help them evaluate their scientific discoveries for commercial potential. (Here’s one powerful testimonial by the chief of general surgery at UCSF, who says the course saved him from chasing down the wrong path.)

More, beginning next month, the National Institutes of Health — the country’s primary federal medical research agency, with an annual budget of $31 billion that it spreads across the country – will begin teaching eligible NIH grantees the exact same curriculum. And the Department of Energy is next in line, adds Blank.

I ask Blank how he feels about his class beginning to figure into how tens of billions of dollars in research grants (potentially) become allocated. Blank, who is the son of immigrants and takes a teaching salary of $1 dollar a year (“I made a lot of money and teaching is how I give back to the country,” he says), sounds optimistic.

“Instead of VCs having to guess about markets and channels and product market fit, and scientists who don’t know what the hell a customer is, these scientists can now articulate arguments based on layers of evidence. It’s much different than, ‘Let me tell you about my lab creation.’”

Adds Blank, “It’s an enrichment program to get public investment matched with private capital more efficiently. How can you argue with that?”

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New Fundings

AcuFocus, a 13-year-old, Irvine, Ca.-based medical device company whose corneal lenses allows patients to see near and intermediate objects more clearly, has raised $21 million in new funding from a group of undisclosed investors. The funding brings AcuFocus’s total funding to at least $86 million, shows Crunchbase.

Celoxica, an 18-year-old, London-based company that sells its low-latency trading platforms to trading firms, banks, and brokers, has raised £1.5 million ($2.4 million) from Beringea Growth Finance. Celoxica was established as a spinout of Oxford University; it has raised $34.4 million from investors over the years, shows Crunchbase.

Cloudyn, a three-year-old, Tel Aviv-based cloud monitoring company that helps its customers optimize their cloud use across different infrastructure providers, has raised $4 million in Series A funding led by Titanium Investments, with earlier investor RDSeed participating. To date, the company has raised $5.5 million, it says

Formation Data Systems, a two-year-old, Fremont, Ca.-based company whose site says simply that’s building a “converged data platform for web-scale computing,” has raised $15 million in funding, shows an SEC filing that lists CEO Mark Lewis, COO Andy Jenks, Imperva CEO Anthony Bettencourt, Carl Ledbetter of Pelion Venture Partners and Robert Schwartz of Third Point Ventures.

HouseLens, a 7.5-year-old, Nashville, Tn.-based company that produces full-motion walk-through video tours of real estate, has raised $1.5 million from investors, according to an SEC filing that shows a $2 million target. The company had previously raised $500,000 from investors, shows an earlier SEC filing.

Inrix, a 10-year-old, Kirkland, Wa.-based a provider of real-time traffic data (it takes into account accidents, construction and events, among other inputs), has nabbed $55 million in funding from Porsche Automobil Holding, which is taking a stake of roughly 10 percent in exchange for its capital. The company, whose earlier investors include Venrock, Bain Capital Ventures, August Capital, and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, has now raised $133 million altogether.

Kinnek, an 18-month-old, New York-based online marketplace that invites small businesses to list goods they need and for suppliers to provide competitive prices for them, has raised $10 million in Series A funding led by Matrix Partners. Earlier investors also participated in the round, including Sierra Ventures, Version One Ventures, TriplePoint Ventures, CrunchFund, and individual investors Richard Chen, Naval Ravikant, and Benjamin Ling. The company has raised $11.5 million altogether.

Milyoni, a five-year-old, Pleasanton, Ca.-based company that specializes in social video marketing for entertainment companies, brands, and artists, has raised $16.1 million in new funding, shows an SEC filing. The company, whose backers include Oak Investment Partners, ATA Ventures, and Thomvest Ventures, had previously raised $14 million over two rounds of funding.

Moment, a nine-year-old, Seattle-based company that makes portable lenses that work to enhance mobile phone pictures, has raised $1.5 million in debt, shows an SEC filing. Earlier this year, the company ran a successful Kickstarter campaign through which it raised roughly $450,000. Venture capitalist Hunter Walk interviewed Moment founder Marc Barros this past summer.

Needly, a four-year-old, Santa Monica, Ca.-based company whose RSS reader makes it easy to follow feeds, collaborate in small groups, and build drag-and-drop web sites, is looking to raise $1 million, shows an SEC filing. The company had raised $987,000 in seed funding last year, including from Upfront Ventures.

Omakase, a months-old, New York-based company that’s operating in stealth mode, has raised $2.4 million in a mix of debt and other securities, shows an SEC filing that lists a $4 million target. Will Gaybrick, a general partner at Thrive Capital, and Akshay Navle, a venture parter with High Peaks Venture Partners, are listed on the filing (both as “executive officers,” interestingly). Caleb Merkl, a longtime VP at The New Traditionalists, a New York-based company that makes handmade furniture, is also named in the filing. Omakase means “I’ll leave it to you” in Japanese.

Peaberry Software, a two-year-old, New York-based company whose product, Customer.io, allows users to send newsletters to segments of customers using data from their site, has raised roughly $775,000 in seed funding from 23 investors, shows an SEC filing.

Product Hunt, a 10-month-old, San Francisco-based aggregation site and email service that surfaces new tech products and startups, has raised $6 million in Series A funding led by Andreessen Horowitz, reports TechCrunch. The company had previously raised $1 million in seed funding from Y Combinator (Product Hunt was part of its summer batch), betaworks, Cowboy Ventures, CrunchFund, Google Ventures, Greylock Partners, Ludlow Ventures, Slow Ventures, SV Angel, Tradecraft and Vayner/RSE, among a long list of individual investors. Apparently, the funding is small change compared with what at least one other recent Y Combinator alum is or has recently raised. See here.

Scholar Rock, a 1.5-year-old, Cambridge, Ma-based biotechnology company working a new type of biologic drug it calls niche activators, which affect disease-causing proteins in the body, has raised $20 million in Series A funding led by ARCH Venture Partners. Founding investorsPolaris Partners and Professor Timothy Springer of Boston Children’s Hospital also participated in the round, along with new investors EcoR1 Capital and The Kraft Group.

Snowball Finance (Xueqiu in Chinese), a four-year-old, Beijing, China-based financial media platform, has raised $40 million in Series C funding led by Renren, with participation from earlier investor Morningside Ventures, reports TechNode. The company had previously raised $13.2 million across two fundings, says the report.

TrustedCompany, a year-old, Kuala Lumpur-based open review community that helps consumers identify trustworthy e-commerce businesses in emerging markets, has raised $1 million in Series A funding led by Tengelmann Ventures, with participation from 500 Startups and returning investor Asia Venture Group. TechCrunch has the story here.

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New Funds

Govtech Fund, a new, San Francisco-based seed-stage fund focused on startups that sell into the government, has raised $23 million in funding, it’s announcing today. The firm is headed up by Ron Bouganim, a Code for America mentor and operator who has worked for numerous startups over the years. Talking with the outlet Government Technology, Bouganim says that he anticipates backing 15 to 20 startups with an average check size of $500,000 and that Govtech Fund has already made investments in four startups, including MindMixer, a company that makes it easy for local officials to poll residents about proposed actions.

MissionOG, an 18-month-old, Philadelphia-based venture firm, has raised $9 million as part of a fund that’s targeting up to $49 million, according to SEC filings that were turned up by Technically Media and confirmed by founding partner George Krautzel. To date, MissionOG has made five investments; its checks range in size from $250,000 to $2 million, according to Krautzel.

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IPOs

It looks like Alibaba‘s opening-day IPO shares will see a bump in price from $66 to just below $70, owing to intense demand for the e-commerce giant. Bloomberg has more here.

—–

People

Apple CEO Tim Cook speaks with Charlie Rose for the first time, telling him he sees Google, not Samsung, as Apple’s biggest competitor, and describing the Apple Watch as the “most personal device we’ve ever created.” Asked by Rose whether the iPhone 6 isn’t a “continuation of the iPhone,” Cook corrects him, calling it instead “a leapfrog.”

Venture capitalist Tim Draper‘s ballot initiative that would have asked voters to split California into six separate states failed to qualify for the ballot in 2016, the secretary of state’s office reported Friday. Draper had submitted 1.37 million signatures this summer in support of the measure. The AP has the story here.

The world of startup investing is headed for trouble, says venture capitalist Bill Gurley of Benchmark in a new Q&A with the WSJ. Among other things, Gurley tells the outlet: “I guarantee you two things: One, the average burn rate at the average venture-backed company in Silicon Valley is at an all-time high since ’99 and maybe in many industries higher than in ’99. And two, more humans in Silicon Valley are working for money-losing companies than have been in 15 years . . . In ’01 or ’09, you just wouldn’t go take a job at a company that’s burning $4 million a month. Today everyone does it without thinking.”

Mahboob Hossain has joined the California Public Employees’ Retirement System as a senior portfolio manager to oversee co-investments made alongside private equity fund managers, reports peHUB. Hossain previously spent more than seven years as a private equity portfolio manager at the California State Teachers’ Retirement System.

Investor Peter Thiel argues that you really do have to reinvent the wheel to win.

A new reality show will follow six entrepreneurs while they try to raise the capital they need to build a legal marijuana business in Denver. Really.

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Job Listings

Learn Capital, a San Mateo, Ca.-based venture firm focused on the global education sector, is looking for “venture fellows” for part-time and full time internships that begin on a rolling basis throughout the year and have varied durations.

Robert Bosch is looking for a senior associate of corporate development who can build relationships with Silicon Valley companies to support its next generation “connected car” and “connected mobility” experiences for its customers. The job is in Palo Alto, Ca.

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Data

The WSJ looks at which parts of the human body are garnering most capital from healthcare-focused VCs.

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Essential Reads

A tale of two very similar apps, one created by serial entrepreneur Kevin Rose, the other created by a former employee of Rose.

Wired’s Mat Honan pens a surprisingly touching requiem for the fast-disappearing iPod.

Did Apple just become a big bank?

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Detours

A boy lobbying to include his cat in his senior portrait. NBD.

Wonder Woman’s secret past.

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Retail Therapy

You know, it is possible to be too unself-conscious.

It is Friday! Huzzah! Hope you a terrific weekend, everyone. (Web visitors, you can find an easier-to-read version of today’s morning email here.)

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Top News in the A.M.

A group of New York-based Uber drivers, who say they number about 1,000, are attempting to organize a strike against the company on Monday morning over complaints of falling fares and unfair working conditions. BuzzFeed has the story here.

In separate, also bad, news for Uber, the California Public Utilities Commission sent a letter to the company yesterday saying that commercial carpooling — which both Uber and rival Lyft are now orchestrating — is illegal.

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In Palo Alto, a Micro Community in the Making

In Tuesday, in leafy Palo Alto, Ca., tucked away in a nondescript office enlivened by bright, computer-themed art, the 1.5-year-old early-stage firm Pejman Mar Ventures welcomed journalists and investors to watch half a dozen startups explain what it is that they’re doing. Four of the teams were comprised of Stanford students who had tinkered on their nascent ideas at Pejman Mar’s offices this past summer. The other two startups that presented are fully up and running and about to hit the fundraising trail.

In terms of quantity, it wasn’t much of a showcase. Two of the four Stanford-led teams are returning to school, its founders determined to finish their computer science PhDs. Pejman Mar’s timing could have been better, too, given everything else that was going on in the Bay Area on Tuesday, including Apple’s highly anticipated launch event and TechCrunch’s signature fall conference in San Francisco.

Still, plenty of VCs and reporters showed up — including from SoftTech VC, Sequoia, Floodgate, CRV, and Forbes — and for two reasons, seemingly.

First, Pejman Nozad and Mar Hershenson, the firm’s likable cofounders, are highly focused on creating a community around their young firm. Making room for ambitious Stanford students to hole up during the summer months is one way of going about it. The pair also hold weekly events at their space that feature VCs and renowned founders.

Past guests include John Doerr of Kleiner Perkins, Yahoo cofounder Jerry Yang, and Zynga founder Mark Pincus — though an even more popular attraction, says Nozad, is a life coach who comes twice a month to help founders with their personal problems. (“When you say you’re going to have a VC here, maybe 10 or 20 people come,” he says. “As soon as we announced the life coach, we had a wait list.”)

Of course, squishier stuff aside, investors are paying close attention to Pejman Mar because of its track record to date.

On his own, Nozad, who famously sold rugs to tech millionaires before becoming a full-time investor, has backed more than 100 companies over the last 14 years, many of which have gone on to big exits, including the early smartphone company Danger, which sold to Microsoft in 2008 for $500 million. (It’s also through Danger that Nozad met Hershenson, athree-time entrepreneur whose husband cofounded Danger.)

Since launching their fund a year and a half ago, the pair have backed another 21 companies, half of which have raised follow-on rounds – including some doozies. DoorDash, for example, a 1.5-year-old, Palo Alto-based restaurant food delivery startup, closed on a $17.3 million Series A round in May led by Sequoia. The company has raised $19.7 million altogether. Guardant Health, a Redwood City, Ca.-based startup that has developed a blood test for cancer, has also gone on to raise significant funding, most recently raising a $30 million Series B round in April led by Khosla Ventures. Guardant has raised at least $40 million altogether.

Little wonder that on Tuesday, VCs were paying close attention to the two startups that will soon be seeking funding: Solvvy, which is trying to reinvent mobile search and has so far raised $500,000 from Pejman Mar (it’s seeking out more seed funding this fall), and Fieldbook, whose software lets users track and organize their information in simple data tables. Fieldbook has also raised $500,000, including from Pejman Mar; AngelList cofounder Naval Ravikant; former Microsoft executive Steven Sinofsky; and Lotus founder Mitch Kapor. The company says it will seek out more funding in the middle of next year.

It’s a little early to know whether the assembled investors connected with the startups this past week. With Pejman Mar’s growing reputation for spotting promising teams, though, it’s easy to imagine they’ll find interest somewhere along the line. “These companies are for real,” Nozad told me on Tuesday, looking like a proud parent as the crowd chatted with the presenting companies. “They’re great people.”

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New Fundings

6SensorLabs, a 1.5-year-old, San Francisco-based startup whose consumer products will eventually help users determine what’s in their food, has raised $4 million in seed financing led by Upfront Ventures. Other participants in the round included Lemnos Labs, SK Ventures, SoftTech VC, Xandex Investments and Mitch Kapor.

AltspaceVR, a 1.5-year-old, Redwood City, Ca.-based virtual reality software company, has raised $5.2 million from investors, including Dolby Family Ventures, Formation 8, Google Ventures, Lux Capital, Foundation Capital, Rothenberg Ventures, SV Angel, Haystack Fund, Tencent, Raine Ventures, Promus Ventures, Western Technology Investment, and others.

Asset Avenue, a 1.5-year-old, L.A.-based online peer-to-peer lending platform that provides its customers with fixed income investments in loans secured by commercial real estate, has raised $3 million in funding from Matrix Partners and NetEase Capital, the venture arm of the Chinese technology company NetEase Inc., reports VentureWire.

Bluestone, a three-year-old, Mumbai, India-based online jewelry company, has raised an undisclosed amount of funding from Ratan Tata, the former chairman of the Tata Group. Bluestone had previously raised at least $15 million, including from Accel Partners, Kalaari Capital, and Saama Capital. LiveMint has the story here.

The Dodo, a nine-month-old, New York-based online media company that focuses on animal stories, has raised $4.68 million in Series A funding led by Discovery, with participation from earlier investors SoftBank Capital, Greycroft Partners, RRE Ventures, Sterling Equities and Bruce Wilpon. The company, founded by Izzie Lerer, daughter of investor Ken Lerer, has raised $5.68 million to date.

Ifbyphone, a nine-year-old, Chicago-based maker of voice marketing software, has raised $30 million in Series E funding from new investor NewSpring Capital, along with earlier backers Apex Venture Partners, SSM Partners, Origin Ventures, River Cities Capital Funds, i2A Illinois Accelerator Fund, and Spring Mill Venture Partners. The company has now raised $60 million altogether.

Liquid Light, a five-year-old, Monmouth Junction, N.J.-based company that develops and licenses process technology to make major chemicals from carbon dioxide, has raised $15 million in Series B financing from new investor Sustainable Conversion Ventures. Earlier investors VantagePoint Capital Partners, BP Ventures, Chrysalix Energy Venture Capital, and Osage University Partners, also participated in the round.

Mediamorph, a seven-year-old, New York-based company whose entertainment analytics software helps film studios, TV networks, and large video service providers measure, manage and optimize their digital distribution, has raised $10 million in Series B funding led by Liberty Global Ventures, with participation from earlier investor Smedvig Capital. The company has raised $23 million thus far, shows Crunchbase.

SmartStudy, a year-old, Beijing-based online education platform, has raised $10.6 million in Serie A funding from Internet giant Baidu, reports China Money Network. Baidu has backed numerous online education firms, says the report, noting that in August, Baidu acquired online education platform Chuanke.

Tink, a 1.5-year-old, Stockholm, Sweden-based personal finance mobile app, has raised $4 million in Series A funding led by Sunstone Capital, with participation from financial entrepreneur Sven Hagströmer and existing investors. TechCrunch has more here.

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New Funds

Blue Cloud Ventures, a two-year-old, New York-based firm that specializes in late-stage cloud software investments, is looking to raise a second fund of $50 million to $100 million, “about four to eight times the size of its first fund,” reports VentureWire. The firm seeks out companies with $50 million to $60 million in revenue, that are two to three years away from an exit, and which may need an additional $10 million to $15 million, it tells VentureWire. Among its investments is AFS Technologies, a 29-year-old, Phoenix, Az.-based company that makes business intelligence software for food and beverage companies.

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IPOs

Underwriters for Alibaba told their sales staffs in a memo this morning that they’ll close all orders for the company’s IPO by Wednesday because demand has been so strong, reports Dealbook. The underwriters added that they’ve received orders with “no sensitivity” to the current price range of $60 to $66 per share, suggesting that range may rise.

Mevion Medical Systems, a 10-year-old, Littleton, Ma.-based company that makes proton therapy systems for use in cancer patients’ radiation treatments, has filed to go public. The company has raised at least $125 million from investors, shows Crunchbase. Its S-1 shows that its biggest shareholders include Still River, which owns 35.3 percent of the company; ProQuest Investments, which owns 14.1 percent; Venrock, which owns 8.4 percent; and CHL Medical Partners, which owns 6.4 percent.

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Exits

Byliner, a three-year-old, San Francisco-based longform journalism startup that very publicly ran into trouble this past summer, has been acquired for undisclosed terms by Vook, a New York-based company that offers digital publishing services to authors and organizations. Byliner had raised $1 million in seed funding, and an undisclosed amount of Series A funding, from investors Bullpen Capital, SoftTech VC, Freestyle Capital, Avalon Ventures, CrunchFund, and ICG Ventures. GigaOm has more here.

Conversant, a 16-year-old, Westlake Village, Ca.-based digital marketing company that was known until earlier this year as ValueClick, has been acquired by Texas-based Alliance Data Systems for $2.3 billion in cash and stock. The deal creates one of the world’s biggest online marketing and data-driven companies, notes the L.A. Times. ValueClick had gone public in 2000.

Eventjoy, a nine-month-old, Menlo Park, Ca.-based startup behind a free digital ticketing platform for event organizers, has been acquired by TicketMaster for undisclosed terms. The startup, part of the Y Combinator Winter 2014 batch, will be incorporated into TicketMaster’s Live Nation Entertainment unit.

Eucalyptus Systems, a five-year-old, Goleta, Ca.-based cloud software startup, is being acquired by Hewlett-Packard for “less than $100 million,” reports Recode. The company had raised $55.5 million across three rounds of funding. Its investors include New Enterprise Associates, Institutional Venture Partners, Benchmark and e.ventures.

Mongoose Metrics, a seven-year-old, Independence, Oh.-based voice marketing software company that appears to have been bootstrapped, has been acquired by Ifbyphone, a competing company that just raised $30 million from investors. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. TechCrunch has more here.

Polar, a two-year-old, Lucerne Valley, Ca.-based startup whose technology is used to poll mobile-device users for their opinions, has been acquired for undisclosed terms by Google. The company’s founder and handful of employees will join the company’s Google+ division, says the WSJ.

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People

Entrepreneurs, just how bad do you want funding from Shasta Ventures‘s Rob Coneybeer?

Brad Garlinghouse, the former Yahoo executive brought in to transform the company formerly known as YouSendit into the file-sharing company Hightail, has been replaced as CEO by the company’s cofounder and original CEO, Ranjith Kumaran. (We reported yesterday that Kumaran, who was spent the last four years as CEO of his newest company, PunchTab, had stepped down from that role, replaced by a longtime Citrix executive. Now we know why!) Recode broke the news yesterday, suggesting Garlinghouse’s departure may owe to Hightail’s struggles to differentiate itself in the crowded cloud storage market.

Oculus CEO Brendan Iribe is donating $31 million to the University of Maryland, the largest donation in the school’s history. “The public school system is really important to me,” Iribe told Business Insider. “I grew up locally in Maryland, born and raised, and grew up in public schools. This is part of Oculus’ commitment, and my commitment as CEO, to supporting education.” Iribe, who attended the school from 1996 to 1997, says the money will be used to construct a new computer science building with a dedicated virtual reality lab.

Serial entrepreneur Kevin Rose, who recently left Google Ventures to start a new mobile development company called North, is developing a new app and according to TechCrunch, it lets users share thumbnail-sized photos and animated GIFs that disappear 24 hours later.

Investor Peter Thiel answered questions on Reddit yesterday for an “Ask Me Anything” session and seemed to have fun with it. Asked about his favorite rap artist, he immediately served up fellow VC Ben Horowitz.

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Job Listings

CalPERS is hiring an investment officer. The deadline to apply is September 25th.

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Essential Reads

Google just launched a cloud platform for startups.

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Detours

Twenty-five absurd photos of billionaire Richard Branson.

Things you will find at Google’s online store.

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Retail Therapy

We said we’d never ever never want a van. Then we spied this.

Good morning, dear readers! (Web visitors, you can find an easier-to-read version of today’s email here.)

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Top News in the A.M.

Apple is facing a potential setback in China after much-anticipated introductions of its new iPhone models were delayed, reports the New York Times.

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Hired CEO: “We’re on a Clear Path to $1 Billion Plus in Revenue”

Some people think great hires come through networking. Hired, a two-year-old, San Francisco-based company focused primarily on technical talent, thinks much more of the process can and should be automated, and it’s seemingly on to something. More than 1,100 employers – from American Express to Secret — are now using its platform and it has facilitated more than $3.3 billion in job offers, it says. As tellingly, most of a $15 million round that Hired raised earlier this year remains untouched in the bank, according to the company.

Should boutique agency recruiters be nervous? Maybe. Many still use tech minimally, throwing people on phones and email, while Hired tries wringing every inefficiency out of the process through data analysis, providing high-touch experiences on top.

Certainly, it’s a big market to disrupt. U.S. companies alone pay out $124 billion each year to recruiting services. We talked yesterday with Hired’s CEO, serial entrepreneur Matt Mickiewicz, to learn how he’s trying to nab a piece of that pie.

There are lots of recruiting startups. What are some big differentiators that companies and prospects should know about Hired?

We’re basically flipping the funnel. Traditional recruiters sell into companies and get client contracts. We’re focused on candidates and building a consumer brand, so when you’re ready for a new challenge, you come to us because you know you’ll get offers from a spectrum of companies with minimum fuss.

How are you reaching these elusive engineering job candidates?

Thirty percent is through paid advertising – like sponsoring online developer communities and hackathons and meetups. Thirty percent is through organic sources and 30 percent comes through direct referrals.

How many candidates have you placed?

We don’t disclose that number but it’s multiple people per day.

How are companies paying you to find them?

There’s no initial cost for employers. It’s a pay-for-success model and employers can either pay 15 percent of [a new employee’s] base salary, which is typically around $20,000, or they can pay 1 percent per month [of that person’s salary] for up to 24 months, amortizing the cost across the life span of the employee.

That’s [roughly a third] more money for you.

In recruiting, traditionally, all the cost is front loaded, but the value is delivered over time. So if you’re growing fast and hiring 10 people a quarter, that’s a lot of money in up-front expense. With the 1 percent plan, companies can better manage their cash flows. It also aligns our interests. In the traditional model, if a person leaves after eight months, the company is still on the hook [for the recruiting fee]. If that happens with our model, the company [stops paying us].

What makes you so sure you’re finding the right matches?

We filter for quality – whether [candidates have] attended top schools, worked for top venture-backed startups, contributed to hackathons – and typically accept just 5 percent of applicants. We also screen for intent, meaning how likely it is that this person will go on interviews with companies based on how long they’ve been with their current employer, how realistic the candidate is . . .

Where is Hired today? Give us some metrics.

Six months after raising our Series A, we’re on an eight-figure annual run rate, which is crazy. Our employee count is 57 [up from 25 a year ago], and we’re now opening a new office every six weeks and becoming profitable [at that office] within 30 to 60 days. It’s a great product-market fit.

You have offices in in San Francisco, Seattle, L.A., and New York. Where do you go next?

We’re scaling out in the U.S. and internationally, so Boston is opening this month and we’ll be in London by the end of this year.

You talk a big game about customer service. What’s an example of going above and beyond for a job candidate?

If someone flies an engineer to New york but doesn’t reimburse that person right away, we’ll pay that bill ourselves.

You previously cofounded the fast-growing freelance marketplace 99Designs, among other companies. Think Hired will be the biggest company for you?

Yes. We’re solving a problem at scale and it works. We’re on a clear path to a billion dollars plus in revenue.

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New Fundings

365 Data Centers, a two-year-old, Emeryville, Ca.-based provider of data center services, has raised $16 million in Series B funding from earlier investors Crosslink Capital and Housatonic Partners. The company has also secured a $55 million credit facility from Fortress Credit Corp. GigaOm has more here.

Airway Therapeutics, a three-year-old, Cincinnati, Oh.-based biotechnology company working to prevent a debilitating lung condition in premature infants, has raised $4.6 million in Series A funding led by CincyTech, with participation from Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, Queen City Angels and private investors.

Apropose, a year-old, Mountain View, Ca.-based software startup developing a web design analytics platform, has raised $1.875 million in seed funding led by New Enterprise Associates and Andreessen Horowitz, with additional support from Tableau founder Pat Hanrahan and Nicira founder Nick McKeown.

Elastic Path Software, a 14-year-old, Vancouver-based company that builds commerce software, has raised 5.35 million in Canadian dollars ($4.9 million) led by BDC Venture Capital IT Fund. Yaletown Venture Partners and unnamed individual investors also participated.

EShakti, 15-year-old, Chennai, India-based online women’s apparel retailer, has raised an undisclosed amount of Series B funding, reports VCCircle. Investors in the round included IvyCap Ventures and IDG Ventures India, which invested in the company’s Series A round.

Festicket, a two-year-old, London-based startup whose site provides users with packages including festival tickets with accommodations, has raised $2.7 million in Series A funding led by Wellington Partners and PROfounders Capital, with participation from previous investors Windcrest Partners, Playfair Capital, and Jacques-Antoine Granjon. The company had raised $680,000 in seed funding last year. TechCrunch has more here.

Harpoon Medical, a year-old, Stevenson, Md.-based company that’s developing a guided surgical tool for beating heart mitral valve repair, has raised $3.2 million in Series A funding led by Epidarex Capital. Other participants in the round include Maryland Venture Fund and the Abell Foundation.

JimuBox, a year-old, Beijing-based peer-to-peer lending platform, has raised $37.19 million in Series B funding led by Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi and Shunwei Capital Partners, reports China Money Network. Matrix Partners China, Vertex Venture Holdings (a wholly-owned subsidiary of Singapore’s Temasek Holdings), Magic Stone Alternative and earlier investor Ventech China all participated in the round. The company has raised at least $47.2 million to date, shows Crunchbase.

Livongo Health, a new, Palo Alto, Ca.-based consumer digital health company that has developed an (FDA-cleared) interactive blood glucose meter, has raised $10 million in Series A funding from General Catalyst Partners. The company had previously raised seed funding from 7wire Ventures, which is run by Livongo’s CEO Glen Tullman and his longtime partner Lee Shapiro. The Chicago Tribune has more here.

Looop, a year-old, Melbourne, Australia-based mobile-friendly platform to enable small- to medium-size business to deliver training online, has raised $2 million seed funding from undisclosed education investor. TechCrunch has more here.

Poxel, a five-year-old, Lyon, France-based biopharmaceutical company that’s developing drugs to treat type-2 diabetes, has raised $12.9 million in funding from the venture division of BPI France.The company, whose previous investors include Edmond de Rothschild Investment Partners, has now raised roughly $50 million altogether.

Soneter, a four-year-old, Atlanta, Ga.-based company whose sensor technology detects water leaks in the home, has raised $6 million led by the GRA Venture Fund, with strategic investor Flextronics International participating.

Telogis, a 14-year-old, Aliso Viejo, Ca.-based company whose software tracks commercial vehicles, has raised an undisclosed amount of funding from Fontinalis Partners, the Detroit-based venture firm. Last October, the company raised $93 million Series A round from investors led by Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers.

Tinder, the two-year-old, New York-based mobile dating app, is in talks to raise a big round of funding from Benchmark in a deal that would value the company at between $750 million and $1 billion, according to TechCrunch’s sources. A big gating factor: Tinder’s relationship with IAC, which owns a majority stake in the company.

Twitter, the eight-year-old, San Francisco-based microblogging platform, is tapping debt markets with plans to raise as much as $1.5 billion to invest in acquisitions and expansion, reports Bloomberg. Much more here.

Veracode, an eight-year-old, Burlington, Ma.-based company that makes cybersecurity software for large companies, has raised $40 million in new funding led by Wellington Management, with earlier investors including .406 Ventures and Atlas Venture participating. Veracode has now raised $112 million altogether. BetaBoston has more here.

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New Funds

Advent Venture Partners, the 33-year-old, London-based venture capital and private equity firm that focuses on both life sciences and tech sector investments, has raised $146.3 million for its newest life sciences fund, according to an SEC filing that shows a $194 million target.

AngelList is expanding globally and launching new vehicles for accredited investors to back what amount to indexed AngelList syndicate funds for the top deals on the platform, reports TechCrunch.

Darwin Ventures, a 10-year-old, fund-of-funds focused on early-stage venture capital, is aiming to raise up to $100 million for a third fund-of-funds according to an SEC filing flagged yesterday by peHUB. So far, shows the filing, the firm has raised $21.4 million for the effort. Darwin raised its last fund, a $94 million vehicle, in 2008. It closed its debut fund with $40 million in 2004.

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IPOs

Virobay, an eight-year-old, Menlo Park, Ca.-based clinical-stage pharmaceutical company developing treatments for neuropathic pain, autoimmune disease and fibrosis, has filed to go public. StrictlyVC is running a little behind this morning, but you can see its S-1 here.

Xenon Pharmaceuticals, an 18-year-old, British Columbia-based drug maker focused on rare diseases, has also registered to go public. You can see the filing here if you’d like to know who owns what.

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Exits

Lift Labs, a 5.5-year-old, Bay Area company that that created tremor-canceling technology for patients with Parkinson’s disease, including a spoon that makes eating easier, has been acquired by Google for undisclosed terms. The firm’s employees will join Google X lab.

Movirtu, a six-year-old, London-based startup whose software enables companies to avoid paying costs incurred by employees using their devices for personal use, has been acquired by Blackberry. Terms of the deal weren’t disclosed. According to Crunchbase, Movirtu had raised at least $5.5 million, including from TLCom Capital Partners. Business Insider has more here.

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People

Kurt DelBene, a former Microsoft executive who spent six months this year helping to fix some of the glitches associated with the Healthcare.gov site, has joined Seattle-based Madrona Venture Group as a venture partner, the firm said yesterday. The Seattle Times has more here.

PunchTab, a nearly four-year-old, Palo Alto, Ca.-based loyalty and engagement program, has appointed Mike Mansbach as CEO. He replaces founding CEO Ranjith Kumaran, who will “take an active role on the PunchTab board,” says a release. Mansbach previously spent roughly a decade at Citrix as a VP of enterprise marketing, global sales, and, most recently, customer care. Before founding PunchTab, Kumaran cofounded the file sharing and online data storage company YouSendit (later renamed Hightail). StrictlyVC talked with Kumaran last winter about how much tougher it has grown for startups to draw Series B funding.

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Job Listings

The Kaiser Foundation is looking for a pre-MBA investment associate to help out with its $600 million endowment. The job is on Sand Hill Road, in Menlo Park, Ca.

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Essential Reads

Facebook is testing a feature that lets you schedule the deletion of your posts in advance.

Marissa Mayer’s day of reckoning at Yahoo is fast approaching.

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Detours

More than half the U.S. population is now single, up from 37 percent in 1976, when the government began tracking such things.

How crossword puzzles are made.

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Retail Therapy

The 2016 AMG GT S, with actual “race” mode. Coming next spring.