• StrictlyVC: September 25, 2013

    110611_2084620_176987_imageGood morning! Big day today here in SF, with the America Cup’s race scheduled to start at 1:15 pm PST. We’re hoping for a big win by Oracle Team USA. (We suggest steering clear of Larry Ellison until the race ends to be on the safe side.)

    ————-

    Top News in the A.M. 

    Amazon has introduced three new Kindle Fire models. CEO Jeff Bezos explains the company’s thinking behind them.

    Chinese Internet company Alibaba is reportedly moving its IPO to the U.S.; the listing could be valued at up to $15 billion.

    ————–

    Don Dodge on Indoor Marketing: VCs Missing a “Huge” Opportunity

    Don Dodge — a Google Ventures advisor who helps developers build new applications on Google platforms and technologies – says VCs are still outsiders when it comes to indoor mobile location services. He compares the moment to the earliest days of maps and GPS, which are now integrated into just about every application on the Web, but that few investors knew what to do with initially.

    We talked about what’s happening last week.

    You’re very focused on indoor marketing. Why?

    At a very high level, we spend 90 percent of our time indoors, and indoors is where commerce happens.

    What’s among the most interesting things you’re seeing?

    There are a bunch of companies that can create [digital] floor plans of stores like Toys”R”Us, Office Depot and Walgreens. Stores then give them SKU [stock keeping unit] maps that tell them where products are located on the shelves for inventory purposes, then [the apps] use indoor location technology to recognize where a customer is standing. It isn’t too far of a leap to imagine that as you’re looking at the Gucci bags at a department store, you receive a coupon from Coach.

    What strikes you as promising beyond retail applications?

    Think about mobile games that could take of advantage of location, like Risk or Monopoly or Capture the Flag, and how they might incorporate the store or the university dorm room that you’re standing in.

    There are social aspects, too. Say you’re at a concert and know that five friends are there amid 50,000 other people. Indoor location technologies can tell you exactly where those five friends are. And there are probably 400 more examples of market applications that no one has thought about yet.

    There are numerous technical approaches to all of these things, right?

    One is Wi-Fi, where you phone accepts signals and triangulates where you are. WifiSLAM, an indoor GPS company that Apple recently acquired, was one example, but there are about 15 other companies that are doing things with Wi-Fi triangulation.

    Another area is Bluetooth beacons. Every smartphone has Bluetooth to connect to other devices. Well, the same Bluetooth channel can be used to bounce off known locations to determine where you are.

    Other companies are using sound waves, while others still, like Bytelight, are using LED lights in the ceiling. They pulse at a rate of a hundred times a second, which is faster than the human eye can see, but the front-facing camera of a phone can pick up the pulse and know by which light you’re standing.

    Apple reportedly paid $20 million for WiFiSLAM. A number of other companies, including Cisco, Ruckus Wireless, and Aruba Networks, have acquired indoor technologies for undisclosed amounts. Is there going to be a big breakout story here?

    It won’t be like social, where there are one or two leaders and everyone else is an also-ran. Instead, there will be hundreds of winners because there are so many different market applications and vertical applications.

    And you think VCs are missing all the action. Why?

    There have been at least three major acquisitions over the past four months, so now they’re saying, “Hey, there’s something going here.” But by and large, it’s a new, emerging area, with probably 50 small, unknown startups with angel investment or a little VC money that [other] VCs aren’t paying attention to.

    When you see more stories about companies being acquired by big companies, then there will be a land grab.

    (Readers, for more on indoor marketing, you might want to check out this October 8 summit in San Francisco.)

    money-ears

    New Fundings

    BioDigital, a year-old, New York-based imaging startup focused on 3D visualization of the human body, has raised $4 million led by FirstMark Capital. Much more on the funding can be found here.

    BlueData Software, a Mountain View, Calif.-based startup founded last year by two VMWare executives, has raised $15 million in Series B financing led by Ignition Partners. Previous investors Atlantic Bridge Ventures, Intel Capital, Amplify Partners and Data Collective also participated in the round, which brings the company’s total funding to $19 million. The company’s first product is being privately tested, and no details have been released yet.

    Moxtra, a Cupertino, Calif.-based company that launched earlier this year, has closed on $10 million in Series A funding from investors that include Cisco, KDDI of Japan, China’s Innovation Works, and Starwood Capital‘s Barry Sternlicht. Moxtra. Founded by numerous former WebEx employees, Moxtra’s cloud-based collaboration app allows users to interact across multiple devices.

    NGDATA, a Gent, Belgium-based company that sells its customer intelligence management software to enterprises to better drive sales, has raised $3.3 million in funding led by Capricorn Venture Partners. Sniper Investments and several unnamed angel investors also participated in the round, which brings the company’s total funding to date to $5.8 million.

    PatientSafe Solutions, a San Diego-based company focused on patient-safety-related clinical workflow applications, has raised $27 million in Series C funding led by Merck Global Health Innovation Fund. Previous investors Camden Partners, TPG Biotech, Psilos Group and EDBI, the investment unit of theSingapore Economic Development Board, also participated.

    Prosper, the San Francisco-based people-to-people lending marketplace, has raised $25 million, according to a new SEC filing. The Form D list several directors, including Rajeev Date, who once served as Deputy Director of the United States Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Stephan Vermut, a former Wells Fargo executive who became president of Prosper in July of this year, and Chris Bishko, an investment partner at Omidyar Network, are also included in the filing.

    Simplee, a Palo Alto, Calif.-based company that is developing a platform for patient payments, has raised $10 million in Series B funding led by Heritage Group, which was joined by previous investors Greylock Partners Israel and The Social+Capital Partnership. The three-year-old company has raised roughly $18 million to date.

    Socure, a year-old, New York-based startup that verifies online identities through “social biometrics,” has raised $600,000 in seed funding via debt and convertible notes, according to an SEC filing.

    VIPorbit Software, a Dallas-based contact manager for the Apple desktop and device market, has raised $1 million, led by cofounder Max Pucher and Harry Jacobson, a managing partner at TriStar Technology Partners and included nine of the company’s angel investors. The funding brings total financing to date for the three-year-old company to $3.5 million.

    ————-

    People

    Michael Moritz, the billionaire chairman of Sequoia Capital, has told Forbes that he and his wife, Harriet Heyman, plan to give away their entire fortune during their lifetimes. “We don’t intend to expire with any money in our pocket,” he said. Moritz was speaking to Forbes about $30 million that the couple has just donated to the University of California, San Francisco, to fund an endowment for basic science PhD students. According to Forbes, it’s the largest endowed program for PhD students in the history of the University of California.

    Adrian Fenty, who rose to national prominence as the mayor Washington D.C. between 2007 and 2011, has joined the Palo Alto, Calif., office of law firm Perkins Coie, where he’ll focus on expanding the firm’s emerging company and venture capital practice. Fenty also continues to serve on the boards of two nonprofits and as a special advisor with Andreessen Horowitz, which brought Fenty into the fold one year ago.

    —————-

    Exits

    5by, a year-old Montreal-based video startup, has been acquired by StumbleUpon of San Francisco. Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but the acquisition is the first for StumbleUpon, a popular discovery service for online content.

    ——————-

    IPOs

    Thirteen tech companies are planning to go public this week. Among them:

    Applied Optoelectronics, a Houston-area fiber-optic networking products company, is expected to begin trading publicly tomorrow, with its shares being offered at between $13 and $15. Among those investors planning to sell some of their holdings in the offering — expected to raise $50 million for the company — are Grand River Capital Investment Company, Sycamore Management, and Harbinger III Venture Capital Corp.Corporation. More here.

    Covisint, a Detroit-based cloud engagement platform that is being spun out of Compuware is also expected to begun trading publicly tomorrow. Its shares are being offered at between $9 and $11, with the company planning to raise $64 million from the offering.

    —————

    Job Listings

    Merger Partners, a Dallas-based firm that scouts for possible acquisitions for private equity groups and operating companies, is looking for an associate in San Francisco. The role entails everything from cold-calling management teams and business owners to helping deals move toward successful closings. To land it, you’ll need at least three years of experience in either business development and/or sales, PE, corporate finance, commercial lending, investment banking, or venture capital.

    —————

    Essential Reads

    If your kids live in California and are under 18, Governor Jerry Brown has given them one last shot at permanently deleting any Facebook, Twitter or Tumblr posts that could otherwise haunt them as college students and beyond.

    Could shared “micro apartments” represent the next wave of the sharing economy?

    Nest Labs, the well-funded, three-year-old maker of a smart thermostat, is working on another way into users’ homes: it’s making smoke detectors.

    Drama in Helsinki, as Nokia begs its former CEO to accept less than the $25 million bonus promised to him (and he says fat chance).

    ————–

    Detour

    A therapist shines a light on a little-known problem: brainy, mentally gifted, single-minded boys who are being falsely diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder.

    —————-

    Retail Therapy

    This deep-pocketed Jaktogo jacket enables you to wear all your possessions, including electronic devices. The good news: the jacket could mean fewer baggage fees at the airport. The bad news: the jacket could land you in small, windowless room with TSA officials all day.

    GQ says that “animal prints” are legitimately “in” right now. GQ is often a reliable source for information regarding men’s fashion. This time, do not listen to GQ.

    ———–

    Please feel free to send us any and all story suggestions (anonymous or otherwise) by clicking here. If you’re interested in advertising in our email newsletter, please click here. To sign up for the newsletter, visit strictlyvc.com.

     

     

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    Connie

  • Don Dodge on Indoor Marketing: VCs Missing a “Huge” Opportunity

    DodgeDon Dodge – a Google Ventures advisor who helps developers build new applications on Google platforms and technologies – says VCs are still outsiders when it comes to indoor mobile location services. He likens the moment to the earliest days of maps and GPS, which are now integrated into just about every application on the Web, but that few investors knew what to do with initially.

    Here’s an excerpt from a conversation we had last week:

    You’re very focused on indoor marketing. Why?

    At a very high level, we spend 90 percent of our time indoors, and indoors is where commerce happens.

    What’s one of the most interesting things you’re seeing?

    There are a bunch of companies that can create [digital] floor plans of stores like Toys”R”Us, Office Depot and Walgreens. Stores then give them SKU [stock keeping unit] maps that tell them where products are located on the shelves for inventory purposes and so forth, then [the apps] use indoor location technology to recognize in what aisle a consumer is standing, and by what products. It isn’t too far of a leap to imagine that as you’re looking at the Gucci bags at a department store, you receive a coupon from Coach.

    What strikes you promising beyond retail applications?

    Think about mobile games that could take of advantage of location, like Risk or Monopoly or Capture the Flag, and how they might incorporate the store that you’re in or the university dorm that you’re in.

    There are social aspects, too. Say you’re at a concert and know that five friends are there amid 50,000 other people. Indoor location technologies can tell you exactly where those five friends are. And there are probably 400 more examples of market applications that no one has thought about yet.

    There are numerous technical approaches to all of these things. How different are they?

    One is Wi-Fi, where you phone accepts signals and triangulates where you are. WifiSLAM, an indoor GPS company that Apple recently acquired, was one example, but there are about 15 other companies that are doing things with Wi-Fi triangulation.

    Another area is Bluetooth beacons. Every smartphone has Bluetooth to connect to other devices. Well, the same Bluetooth channel can be used to bounce off known locations to determine where you are.

    Other companies are using sound waves, while others still, like Bytelight, are using LED lights in the ceiling. They pulse at a rate of a hundred times a second, which is faster than the human eye can see, but the front-facing camera of a phone can pick up the pulse and know by which light you’re standing.

    Apple reportedly paid $20 million for WiFiSLAM. A number of other companies, including Cisco, Ruckus Wireless, and Aruba Networks, have recently acquired indoor technologies for undisclosed amounts. Is there going to be a big breakout story here?

    It won’t be like social, where there are one or two leaders and everyone else is an also-ran. Instead, there will be hundreds of winners because there are so many different market applications and vertical applications.

    And you think VCs are missing all the action. Why?

    There have been at least three major acquisitions over the past four months, so now they’re saying, “Hey, there’s something going here.” But by and large, it’s a new, emerging area, with probably 50 small, unknown startups with angel investment or a little VC money that [other] VCs aren’t paying attention to.

    When you see more stories about companies being acquired by big companies, then there will be a land grab.

    Photo courtesy of Google Ventures.

    Sign up for our morning missive, StrictlyVC, featuring all the venture-related news you need to start you day.

    Connie

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    , , , ,

  • The Case for Embracing General Solicitation: VC Edition

    Young man laughing

    Ask VCs whether top venture firms are liable to take advantage of the new general solicitation rules, and the answer is often a barely suppressed laugh.

    It’s easy to understand why some might look down their noses at the changes. VCs have been operating like a private club for a long time, and they tend to see their publicity-seeking brethren as trendy and desperate.

    But all it takes is a quick skip down memory lane to see how fast some of the most mocked innovations to the VC game have become standard operating procedure for today’s Midas List.

    Take secondary investments. As recently as 2004, selling a stake to a secondary buyer was an admission of defeat. But along came SecondMarket followed by a long string of savvy secondary transactions — like those Groupon shares that NEA offloaded to later investors, or Accel’s partial sale of its Facebook stake to Technology Crossover Ventures and Andreessen Horowitz — and suddenly, you were a dummy if you didn’t take some money off the table.

    And what about marketing? If you’ve been in the industry for more than a decade, you know that many of the most august firms used to avoid reporters like the plague. Then some prescient venture capitalists like Fred Wilson began to build huge followings, and before you knew it, blogs became de rigueur. Andreessen Horowitz took things to another level when it began aggressively courting press attention in 2009. A lot of the firm’s peers privately complained that the firm was sucking all the air out of Silicon Valley, but today, every top firm has an executive or a team of people focused on communications and content strategy.

    The list goes on and on. Seed-stage investing used to be a niche strategy as recently as 2005. Today, there’s a glut of seed-stage investors and seed-funded companies.

    Investment documents used to 100 pages long and cost a fortune. Now, many startups use standardized Web templates that they can tweak to their heart’s content.

    Successful entrepreneurs were outsiders in VC circles; now many have an easier time raising new venture funds than traditional firms.

    Do you see where this is going? Yes, the prospect of advertising may seem outlandish right now, but so did a lot of these other trends.

    On the plus side, if advertising can speed up a team’s fundraising process, VCs should have more time to make more money for their partnerships.

    And themselves.

    Sign up for our morning missive, StrictlyVC, featuring all the venture-related news you need to start you day.

    Related articles

    Connie

    , ,

  • StrictlyVC: September 24, 2013

    Good morning, and thanks very much to the many of you who are now subscribed to StrictlyVC! If you like what we’re up to, please let your friends know that they, too, can sign up right here. (It’s just so easy!) In the meantime, if you want to talk, complain or drop me a hot tip, I’m always available at connie@strictlyvc.com and on Twitter.

    Top News in the A.M.

    Beijing is lifting a ban on Internet access within the Shanghai Free-trade Zone to foreign websites, including Twitter and Facebook.

    Twitter has reportedly chosen to list on the NYSE, in an offering that would value the company at roughly $16 billion.

    The Case for Embracing General Solicitation: VC Edition

    Ask a VC whether top venture firms are liable to take advantage of the new general solicitation rules, and the answer is often a barely suppressed laugh.

    It’s easy to understand why some might look down their noses at the changes. VCs have been operating like a private club for a long time, and they tend to see their publicity-seeking brethren as trendy and desperate.

    But all it takes is a quick skip down memory lane to see how fast some of the most mocked innovations to the VC game have become standard operating procedure for today’s Midas List.

    Take secondary investments. As recently as 2004, selling a stake to a secondary buyer was an admission of defeat. But along came SecondMarket followed by a long string of savvy secondary transactions — like those Groupon shares that NEA offloaded to later investors, or Accel’s partial sale of its Facebook stake to Technology Crossover Ventures and Andreessen Horowitz — and suddenly, you were a dummy if you didn’t take some money off the table.

    And what about marketing? If you’ve been in the industry for more than a decade, you know that many of the most august firms used to avoid reporters like the plague. Then some prescient venture capitalists like Fred Wilson began to build huge followings, and before you knew it, blogs became de rigueur. Andreessen Horowitz took things to another level when it began aggressively courting press attention in 2009. A lot of the firm’s peers privately complained that the firm was sucking all the air out of Silicon Valley, but today, every top firm has an executive or a team of people focused on communications and content strategy.

    The list goes on and on. Seed-stage investing used to be a niche strategy as recently as 2005. Today, there’s a glut of seed-stage investors and seed-funded companies.

    Investment documents used to 100 pages long and cost a fortune. Now, many startups use standardized Web templates that they can tweak to their heart’s content.

    Successful entrepreneurs were outsiders in VC circles; now many have an easier time raising new venture funds than traditional firms.

    Do you see where this is going? Yes, the prospect of advertising may seem outlandish right now, but so did a lot of these other trends.

    On the plus side, if advertising can speed up a team’s fundraising process, VCs should have more time to make more money for their partnerships.

    And themselves.

    money-ears

    New Fundings

    UniversityNow, a two-year-old, San Francisco-based company that is parent company to two online universities, has raised $19 million in Series C funding from lead investors Bertelsmann SE & Co. KGaA and First Analysis Corp were the lead investors. Existing investors University Ventures, Novak Biddle Venture Partners, Kapor Capital and Bronze Investments also participated in the round.

    SimilarGroup, a Tel Aviv-based company that produces an online Web measurement tool called SimilarWeb, has raised $3.5 million in funding, an extension of its Series B round, led by angel investor Lord David Alliance, who is chairman of the clothing catalog retailer N Brown Group. The company has raised $7 million to date. More here.

    SafeShot Technologies, a two-year-old, Menlo Park, Calif.-based company that develops safety syringes, has raised $6 million in funding. The financing is part of a $3 million round that SafeShot raised a year ago. The company hasn’t publicly disclosed who its backers are.

    AIQ, a Clifton, N.J.-based publisher of financial advisor directories, has received an undisclosed amount of funding from Stonehenge Growth Equity. Earlier this year, the company raised $5 million Series A round from Penton Media.

    Mobincube, a five-year-old, Valencia, Spain-based startup whose software allows users to create apps, has raised 700,000 euros (approximately $946,000) in seed funding led by Inveready. The round also included The Crowd Angel and Bankinter.

    RainDance Technologies, a nine-year-old company based in Lexington, Mass., has secured up to $35 million in a structure debt agreement with Capital Royalty Partners. The funding comes on the heels of two sizable equity rounds: a $37 million round in 2011 and a $20 million round that was announced in April of this year. RainDance has created a system a system for performing lab experiments using minuscule amounts of material and has raised more th$100 million in venture capital to date.

    MediSafe, a medication-compliance company that participated in Microsoft’s accelerator program last year, has raised $1 million in funding, led by Israeli venture firms TriVentures and Lool Ventures. The company is based in Haifa, Israel and has an office in San Francisco.

    PreCision Dermatology, a Cumberland, RI.-based company whose therapies are designed to improve skin care, has raised $67 million in debt from Golub Capital to fuel its acquisition plans. The company has already made one major acquisition, last year buying up the assets of Triax Pharmaceuticals of Cranford, N.J., maker of a popular topic steroid and several acne treatments. The terms of that deal were not disclosed, but investors led by Essex Woodlands, MidCap Financial, and NovaQuest Capital Management had help support the acquisition.

    IPOs

    Foundation Medicine, a Cambridge, Mass.-based company whose molecular information platform generates genomic information about a person’s individual cancer, is expected to begin trading publicly tomorrow at a range of between $14 and $16 per share. Three-year-old Foundation has raised roughly $100 million, including from Third Rock Ventures, Google Ventures, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Bill Gates, Digital Sky Technology founder Yuri Milner, and others. The company is looking to raise around $75 million.

    Evoke Pharma, a six-year-old, San Diego-based biotech company that develops drugs to treat gastrointestinal disorders and diseases, is also expected to begin trading publicly tomorrow. The company, which is majority owned by Domain Partners and LVP Life Science Ventures, plans to raise $27 million by offering 2.1 million shares at a price range of $12 to $14.

    Motley Fool asks: Could Comixology, the comic book company, be the next “IPO multibagger?” If so, its founders could see a windfall. According to Crunchbase, the six-year-old company has raised just $150,000 in debt.

    Fund News

    Now that Dell is going private, its corporate venture arm is “revving up,” reports Deborah Gage of the WSJ.

    People

    Zal Bilimoria has joined Andreessen Horowitz as a new partner focused on identifying, evaluating, and recommending deals to the firm’s GPs, reports PandoDaily. Bilimoria joins Andreessen Horowitz from LinkedIn, where he was a senior product manager. Before joining LinkedIn last summer, he worked as a product manager at Netflix, Google, and Microsoft.

    SynapDx, a venture-backed startup in Lexington, Mass., has a new VP of informatics in Mark DePristo, who joins from the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT. Three-year-old SynapDx develops laboratory diagnostic services for autism and neurodevelopmental disorders and is backed by North Bridge Venture Partners, General Catalyst Partners, Google Ventures, Foundation Medical Partners, LabCorp, The Kraft Group, Casdin Capital and Windham Venture Partners.

    Tenex Health, a Lake Forest, Calif.-based startup that’s trying to pioneer minimally invasive therapies for the removal of diseased soft tissue, has a new CEO: Jay Hallinan, who takes the reins on October 21. Hallinan was most recently a senior sales executive at Stryker Neurovascular; he has also held sales roles at 3M, Medtronic, and Boston Scientific. To date, Tenex has raised roughly $17 million from investors.

    Exits

    Blackberry is selling itself to a consortium led by its biggest shareholder, Fairfax Financial, which already owns 10 percent of the troubled smartphone maker. The deal is valued at roughly $4.7 billion, or $9 per share, a slight premium to where Blackberry’s stock was trading before it was halted, pending the news. You can learn more about questions raised by the deal here.

    Job Listings

    Silicon Valley Bank is hiring a valuation associate in San Francisco. The role entails what you’d guess it would: conducting research on companies, investment trends, and tech trends. You also need basic finance skills, basic accounting knowledge, and working knowledge of biology, chemistry and the regulatory environment.

    Essential Reads

    This self-taught programmer’s software is now being used by every single coach in pro basketball.

    In a poll taken over the weekend about the looming debt-ceiling crisis and government shutdown, most Americans said that they were “totally excited about the new iPhone 5s.”

    Whether you think it’s great or creepy, a memory-erasing technology might not be all that far off, observes Vanity Fair.

    Detour

    Doug Band was once President Clinton’s “body man.” But as he builds out his own business, he’s becoming a serious thorn in the Clintons’ side, reports the New Republic in a long but fascinating profile.

    Retail Therapy

    Neat. Create an old-school desk set-up for your iPhone with this cool handset stand.

    Everything you’ll be needing for Armageddon, including thermal vision cameras, a rifle scope, a knife and a giant poster of a zombie — so you’ll recognize what’s trying to eat you at the end of days.

    ——-

    Please feel free to send us any and all story suggestions (anonymous or otherwise) by clicking here. If you’re interested in advertising in our email newsletter, please click here. To sign up for the newsletter, visit strictlyvc.com.

     

     

    Related articles

    Connie

  • Can Jack Hidary Hack New York’s Mayoral Race?

    Jack HidaryJack Hidary is a wealthy tech entrepreneur who wants to be mayor of New York City and is running as an independent. At first blush, he seems to have much in common with New York’s billionaire mayor Mike Bloomberg, a Democrat turned Republican turned independent.

    But Bloomberg spent $73 million of his own money to get himself elected the first time around. Hidary has so far raised $450,000. Bloomberg began campaigning early. Hidary, 45, announcing he was running just two months ago. Bloomberg courted nearly everyone; Hidary has been doing more “targeted” campaigning. As told me in a phone call last week, “I have increased name recognition in the core communities that we need.”

    In Hidary’s view, there’s an opportunity to hack the election by leveraging both his tech base and his background. Born in Brooklyn to a Spanish-speaking Columbian mother, Hidary went on to cofound two companies. The first, EarthWeb, an IT information and jobs site, went public in 1998, four years after opening for business. (It was taken private in 2000 and sold again in 2005 as Dice.com to private equity investors.) Hidary also cofounded the financial information company Vista Research, which sold to Standard & Poor in 2005.

    Since entering the race in mid-July, Hidary has attracted support from many who like his biggest promise: to champion entrepreneurship and create jobs across all five of New York’s boroughs. Among those who’ve lent their support, says Hidary, are Albert Wenger of Union Square Ventures; investors Joanne and Fred Wilson (also of USV); Jim Robinson of RRE Ventures; and Charlie Kim, the founder and CEO Next Jump, a New York-based tech company that powers reward programs.

    Still, it’s far from clear that Hidary’s concentrated tactics are working. His team is using CampaignGrid, a venture-backed, data-driven ad platform to deliver pre-roll online video to “specific target markets.” Hidary has also begun running Spanish-language TV ads on various cable channels, including Telemundo. Says Hidary, “We’re using a combination of channels in a more efficient way” than Republican nominee Joseph Lhota and Democratic front-runner Bill de Blasio.

    But being efficient has its costs. Hidary is still being called “the New York mayoral candidate you probably haven’t heard of.” Even sources in New York’s tech community tell me they’re waiting for him to gather more traction outside of his insular tech circle before more publicly getting behind him.

    Long shot as Hidary may seem, stranger things have happened, particularly in a race where the current leading candidate, de Blasio, is widely seen as part-time populist — and not a terribly tech friendly one at that.

    As Charlie O’Donnell of Brooklyn Bridge Ventures puts it: “How friendly will Bill de Blasio be to companies like Uber and Halio when he’s taking money from the taxi lobby?  Will he support consumers who rent their rooms on Airbnb or side with the hotels?”

    Connie

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    ,

  • StrictlyVC: September 23, 2013

    110611_2084620_176987_imageGood morning, and happy Monday! If you haven’t signed up yet for StrictlyVC, you can do that here. If you want to chat about anything, email me at connie@strictlyvc.com or find me on Twitter.

    Top News in the A.M.

    General solicitation rules are different as of today. Here’s why startups need to pay attention to what, specifically, has changed.

    Can Jack Hidary Hack New York’s Mayoral Race?

    Jack Hidary is a wealthy tech entrepreneur who wants to be mayor of New York City and is running as an independent. At first blush, he seems to have much in common with New York’s billionaire mayor Mike Bloomberg, a Democrat turned Republican turned independent.

    But Bloomberg spent $73 million of his own money to get himself elected the first time around. Hidary has so far raised $450,000. Bloomberg began campaigning early. Hidary, 45, announcing he was running just two months ago. Bloomberg courted nearly everyone; Hidary has been doing more “targeted” campaigning. As told me in a phone call last week, “I have increased name recognition in the core communities that we need.”

    In Hidary’s view, there’s an opportunity to hack the election by leveraging both his tech base and his background. Born in Brooklyn to a Spanish-speaking Columbian mother, Hidary went on to cofound two companies. The first, EarthWeb, an IT information and jobs site, went public in 1998, four years after opening for business. (It was taken private in 2000 and sold again in 2005 as Dice.com to private equity investors.) Hidary also cofounded the financial information company Vista Research, which sold to Standard & Poor in 2005.

    Since entering the race in mid-July, Hidary has attracted support from many who like his biggest promise: to champion entrepreneurship and create jobs across all five of New York’s boroughs. Among those who’ve lent their support, says Hidary, are Albert Wenger of Union Square Ventures; investors Joanne and Wilson (also of USV); Jim Robinson of RRE Ventures; and Charlie Kim, the founder and CEO Next Jump, a New York-based tech company that powers reward programs.

    Still, it’s far from clear that Hidary’s concentrated tactics are working. His team is using CampaignGrid, a venture-backed, data-driven ad platform to deliver pre-roll online video to “specific target markets.” Hidary has also begun running Spanish-language TV ads on various cable channels, including Telemundo. Says Hidary, “We’re using a combination of channels in a more efficient way” than Republican nominee Joseph Lhota and Democratic front-runner Bill de Blasio.

    But being efficient has its own costs. Hidary is still being called “the New York mayoral candidate you probably haven’t heard of.” Even sources in New York’s tech community tell me they’re waiting for him to gather more traction outside of his insular tech circle before more publicly getting behind him.

    Long shot as Hidary may seem, stranger things have happened, particularly in a race where the current leading candidate, de Blasio, is widely seen as part-time populist, and not a terribly tech friendly one at that.

    As Charlie O’Donnell of Brooklyn Bridge Ventures puts it: “How friendly will Bill de Blasio be to companies like Uber and Halio when he’s taking money from the taxi lobby?  Will he support consumers who rent their rooms on Airbnb or side with the hotels?”

    money-ears

    New Fundings

    Flipboard, the popular app for browsing news and social media on phones and tablet, has raised $50 million in new funding, in a round led by Rizvi Traverse Management and Goldman Sachs, reports AllThingsD. The new funding puts the valuation of the Palo Alto, Calif., company at $800 million, says the report.

    AngelList, the San Francisco-based online network for investors and entrepreneurs, has raised $24 million at a valuation “in the $150 million range,” reports Dan Primack of Fortune. Among the many investors in the deal is Atlas Venture, Google Ventures, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, and dozens of individual investors, including venture capitalist Marc Andreessen and Twitter cofounder Ev Williams.

    Darktrace, a U.K.-based cyber defense platform that tricks hackers to expose them, has raised $20 million from Invoke Capital, the new, $1 billion venture capital firm spearheaded by former Autonomy CEO Mike Lynch. Lynch has been accused of misrepresenting financial results to Hewlett-Packard, which acquired Autonomy in 2011; he says the claims have no merit. Darktrace is the first investment of Invoke, which includes many of Lynch’s former staff at Autonomy.

    Apmetrix, a San Diego-based company focused on cross-platform high-end video game and mobile app analytics, has raised an undisclosed seed amount from Analytics Ventures, La Costa Investment Group, and KI Investment Holdings.

    Bugsnag, a San Francisco-based company that has built a crash monitoring platform for apps, has raised $1.4 million in seed funding led by Matrix Partners, with individuals investors including Andy McLoughlin and Jason Seats participating.

    Visualead, a mobile page design platform startup based in Tel Aviv, has raised $1.6 million in Series A funding. Kaedan Capital and Entrée Capital led the round.

    IPOs

    It’s a good time to be a newly public company. According to research firm IPO Scoop, 139 companies have gone out (as of this past Friday). Of that lot, 101 companies are trading at above their share price, and the total return from the issue price averages 34.27 percent.

    FireEye, the cybersecurity software maker that went public on Friday, priced its shares at $20; they opened at $40.30 and closed at $36, raising around $300 million. Early backers of the company include Sequoia Capital and Norwest Venture Partners.

    Shares of Rocket Fuel, a San Francisco-based ad tech company, opened at $59.95 on Friday, more than double their IPO offering price. They shot as high as $62.50 before closing the day at $56.10, raising around $116 million. The company’s venture investors include Mohr Davidow Venures, Labrador Ventures, and Northgate Capital.

    Veracyte, a seven-year-old, South San Francisco-based company that develops diagnostics for thyroid and non-small cell lung cancer, has filed an S-1 with the SEC. The company has raised about $56 million to date, including from Domain Partners, which owns 19.3 percent of the company; Versant Ventures, which owns 22.6 percent of the company; TPG, which owns 22.2 percent, and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, which also owns 22.2 percent of the company.

    People

    On Friday, Kieran Taylor, a former Akamai senior director of marketing, was fined and banned by the SEC from serving as a public company officer or director, to settle charges that he helped funnel illegal tips to Raj Rajaratnam, the hedge fund manager imprisoned for insider trading.

    Ayla Networks, a Sunnyvale, Calif.-based company cloud platform company, has hired Michael Maeso as VP of worldwide sales. Maeso has has been a sales exec at numerous startups in the past, including July Systems, Cotendo (acquired by Akamai), and VitalStream (acquired by Internap). Ayla is backed by Voyager Capital and Crosslink Capital.

    New Fund News

    Iconiq Capital, a months-old San Francisco-based investment firm that invests on behalf of wealthy families, has raised a new, $10 million fund called Iconiq Strategic Partners Co-Invest, L.P., BL, according to a new SEC filing. Presumably, the funds have gone or will go to the firm’s new investment in BlackLine Systems, an L.A.-based company that produces accounting software and which raised an undisclosed amount of funding last month from Iconiq and Silver Lake Sumeru, Silver Lake’s middle market group.

    Iconiq was formed earlier this year by Will Griffith, who spent a dozen years at Technology Crossover Ventures and left in January. Iconiq first surfaced in an SEC filing back in May. Griffith has since hired his old TCV colleague, Matthew Jacobson, who left TCV in 2008 to join Groupon. Jacobson had left Groupon in June of last year and was an working as an investor at Battery Ventures before joining Griffith.

    Job Listings

    Baxter Ventures, the corporate venture arm of Baxter International, is looking for a managing director. The job is in Deerfield, Ill., about 25 miles north of Chicago, and to apply, you need previous experience in a VC role, established relationships with medical device VCs, and some board experience.

    Essential Reads

    Margit Wennmachers, Andreessen Horowitz‘s famously no-nonsense marketing partner, is profiled in the San Francisco Chronicle, which calls her one of the most powerful people in Silicon Valley. Wennmachers tells the paper of her firm: “We’re so connected, it’s the equivalent of the White House.”

    If Twitter is the last splashy IPO for a while, that’s perfectly okay with Silicon Valley investors, they insist. “We might not get the mega-IPOs after Twitter, but lots of start-ups are solving real problems now,” one tells the Sunday Telegraph.

    Want to give yourself five stars online? It might cost you, notes the New York Times. Today, New York regulators are announcing the most comprehensive crackdown to date on deceptive reviews on the Internet.

    Detour

    Maria Konnikova of the New Yorker presents a compelling case against redshirting your kid, writing: “While earlier studies have argued that redshirted children do better both socially and academically — citing data on school evaluations, leadership positions, and test scores — more recent analyses suggest that the opposite may well be the case.”

    Billionaire George Soros gets hitched again. (Yes, there’s a prenup in place. William Zabel, Soros’s attorney, told the New York Post last year that he will “leave the bulk of his estate to charity but he intends to provide generously for his wife.”)

    Extreme bravery in action by a husband-and-wife pair of photojournalists. (Warning: this link contains some graphic images of that massacre at an upscale mall in Nairobi on Saturday.)

    Retail Therapy

    Check out this elegant, ridiculous breathalyzer. There’s no better way to convey to your passengers that you tend to drink a lot.

    Bonobos makes these pants out of beer bottles (and water and juice and soda bottles and old TV trays). You’ll probably sweat a ton, but you’ll look great and you’ll be helping to save the environment. Sort of.

    Please feel free to send us any and all story suggestions (anonymous or otherwise) by clicking here. If you’re interested in advertising in our email newsletter, please click here. To sign up for the newsletter, visit strictlyvc.com.

     

    Connie

  • StrictlyVC: September 20, 2013

    110611_2084620_176987_imageTop News in the A.M.

    Yesterday the California Public Utilities Commission approved the first statewide guidelines in the U.S. for ride-sharing services. The guidelines address things like driver background checks that car companies like Lyft and Sidecar have been implementing from the get-go. But by agreeing to allow the services’ drivers to operate freely as long as they agree to the guidelines, the agency is signaling to the startups that it’s full steam ahead.
    Dow Jones and its influential AllThingsD unit are officially parting ways, with Dow Jones keeping the AllThingsD brand and AllThingsD co-executive editors Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher keeping the AllThingsD readers (presumably). The question is where we can find them, after Dec. 31, when their contract ends. Reportedly, they’re right now in talks with potential backers about an investment that would value their new venture between $30 million and $40 million.
    Kleiner, Ellen Pao, and the Reddit Factor

    It’s looking like Kleiner Perkins will have to hash it out in court with former partner Ellen Pao, who filed an explosive gender-discrimination lawsuit against the venture firm in May of last year.

    This Wednesday, Kleiner was denied its request to move the case to arbitration.

    In response, Kleiner told the Mercury News yesterday that it will “vigorously defend the matter” and is “confident we will prevail.”

    But Pao’s current job of building strategic partnerships at the social news site Reddit may throw an unexpected wrench into Kleiner’s defense.

    As industry watchers may recall, in October of last year, roughly five months after Pao filed her suit — in which she clams she was repeatedly denied opportunities to advance or pay raises — Pao was abruptly terminated by Kleiner, she said. Kleiner has always disputed the characterization, saying it asked Pao to leave “because of long-standing issues having no relationship or bearing on the litigation.”

    But now that the case is no longer under appeal, her attorney told the Mercury News yesterday that he’s planning to add a wrongful termination claim to the lawsuit.

    Legal experts have told me that Pao’s Reddit gig could work to her advantage in her case against her former employer. For one thing, anyone who claims retaliation in a discrimination case has a duty to look for a job. Joining Reddit could show that Pao tried limiting the financial damage to herself and secured a job under difficult circumstances (i.e., in the middle of a media circus).

    Landing the role could also boost Pao’s credibility and make her more believable to a jury, according to employment attorneys; they say that juries want to know, “Can this person work for someone else?”

    In cases like these, employment attorneys argue that the burden of proof is always on the employer, and retaliation claims are often more powerful and easier to prove than actual discrimination claims.

    And to make matters even worse, Kleiner could be on the hook for more damages than when Pao originally filed her lawsuit as an employee.

    For Kleiner, it seems, the Pao case is a nightmare that just will not end.

    New Fundings

    NewVoiceMedia, a 13-year-old, cloud-based contact and call center company in the U.K., has raised a $35 million Series C round, led Bessemer Venture Partners. Existing investors Highland Capital Partners Europe, Eden Ventures and Notion Capital also participated in the financing, which was company’s second this year. In January, NewVoiceMedia announced that it had raised $20 million in Series B funding from investors. Altogether, it has raised $61.3 million.

    Branding Brand, a Pittsburgh-based mobile commerce platform that powers the mobile sites and apps for retail customers, has raised $9.5 million in Series B funding. Existing investor Insight Venture Partners led the round with participation from CrunchFund, Lead Edge Capital and eBay Enterprise. The company had raised a $7.5 million Series A round in October of last year.

    Unmetric, whose software enables its customers to analyze their customers’ social media efforts, has raised a $5.5 million Series B round led by Jafco Asia. Earlier investor Nexus Venture Partners also participated in the financing.

    Plaid has raised $2.8 million to grow its API for banks. (It makes banks’ data more accessible to developers so that they can ultimately create new applications around that information.) Spark Capital led the round, which also included Homebrew Capital, Google Ventures, Felicis Ventures, and NEA.

     

    Gigya — a Mountain View, Calif.-based firm that specializes in social data management, has raised $35 million in new funding led by Greenspring Associates. Previous investors Benchmark Capital, DAG Ventures, Advance Publications, and Mayfield Fund also participated in the round. The company has now raised roughly $70 million from investors over the last six years.

    Exits

    Mindshare Technologies, a Salt Lake City-based company that tracks customers with online and phone surveys, has acquired Empathica, a competitor based in Ontario, Canada. Both companies have attracted venture funding. Empathica had raised $7 million in Series A funding from JMI Equity back in 2006. Mindshare raised a $20 million round from the private equity firm Sorenson Capital in 2011. Financial terms of the deal weren’t disclosed.

    Google has acquired most of the team and assets of San Francisco-based Hattery, reports Dan Primack of Fortune. The joint digital innovation lab/venture capital firm founded was founded by former Google employees Josh Mendelsohn, Joshua To, and Luis Arbulu. Google is not acquiring any equity in the six projects Hattery has been helping to create and shape.

    IPOs

    Billionaire Hong Kong investor Li Ka-shing is apparently poised to shake up Asian markets with a planned $700 million IPO for Westports Holdings Bhd., a Malaysian port operator of which he owns roughly 30 percent, according to the Wall Street Journal. The planned October offering of the port operator, which oversees one of Asia’s busiest shipping terminals, is expected to reignite Malaysia’s deal market, which was home to some of the world’s largest IPOs last year.

    Shares of Acceleron Pharma, a 10-year-old, Cambridge, Mass.-based company that’s developing therapies for cancer and rare diseases, soared by one-third in their first day of trading yesterday. The shares, which closed up 33 percent, at $19.99, are owned predominately by venture capitalists, who had poured $105.1 million into the company over the years. According to an SEC filing, the company’s largest shareholder after the offering is Polaris Venture Partners, which owns a 12.1 percent stake. Venrock Partners, Advanced Technology Ventures, and Flagship Ventures are among the company’s other major shareholders.

    People

    Intel Capital has promoted three investment managers to managing director to oversee four new areas for the venture arm. Rob Rueckert, Ken Elefant, and Ramamurthy Sivakumar will now be scouting for deals in the areas of data center software; new devices and wearables; security; and ultrabooks and perceptual computing.

    Bitcasa, a two-year-old, cloud storage startup that’s based in Mountain View, Calif., has a new CEO: Brian Taptich, who was most recently the VP of international development at Zynga. Taptich replaces Bitcasa co-founder Tony Gauda. Bitcasa has raised $8.5 million over two rounds, from investors that include Samsung Ventures, First Round Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, Crunchfund, and Pelion Venture Partners.

    Job Listings

    PriceWaterhouseCoopers is hiring a senior associate in L.A.

    Essential Reads

    Reporter Brad Stone writes about Joy Covey, Amazon’s first CFO and someone who plainly lived life to its fullest until her death on Wednesday, when she was struck by a car during a bicycle ride in Silicon Valley.

    Detour

    A father tries doing his 13-year-old daughter’s seemingly insurmountable mountain of homework for a week. It’s not a pretty exercise.

    Retail Therapy

    AllSaints T-shirts, for those autumn days you want to feel like you’re 12 years old again.

    Bourbon marshmallows. We wouldn’t suggesting actually eating one of these, but you’ll get points for being creative if you take them to a party!

    ——-

    Please feel free to send us any and all story suggestions (anonymous or otherwise) by clicking here. If you’re interested in advertising in our email newsletter, please click here. To sign up for the newsletter, visit strictlyvc.com.

    Connie

  • Kleiner, Ellen Pao and the Reddit Factor

    ellen paoIt’s looking like Kleiner Perkins will have to hash it out in court with former partner Ellen Pao, who filed an explosive gender-discrimination lawsuit against the venture firm in May of last year. 

    This Wednesday, Kleiner was denied its request to move the case to arbitration.

    In response, Kleiner told the Mercury News yesterday that it will “vigorously defend the matter” and is “confident we will prevail.”

    But Pao’s current job of building strategic partnerships at the social news site Reddit may throw an unexpected wrench into Kleiner’s defense.

    As industry watchers may recall, in October of last year, roughly five months after Pao filed her suit — in which she clams she was repeatedly denied opportunities to advance or pay raises — Pao was abruptly terminated by Kleiner, she said. Kleiner has always disputed the characterization, saying it asked Pao to leave “because of long-standing issues having no relationship or bearing on the litigation.”

    But now that the case is no longer under appeal, her attorney told the Mercury News yesterday that he’s planning to add a wrongful termination claim to the lawsuit.

    Legal experts have told me that Pao’s Reddit gig could work to her advantage in her case against her former employer. For one thing, anyone who claims retaliation in a discrimination case has a duty to look for a job. Joining Reddit could show that Pao tried limiting the financial damage to herself and secured a job under difficult circumstances (i.e., in the middle of a media circus).

    Landing the role could also boost Pao’s credibility and make her more believable to a jury, according to employment attorneys; they say that juries want to know, “Can this person work for someone else?”

    In cases like these, employment attorneys argue that the burden of proof is always on the employer, and retaliation claims are often more powerful and easier to prove than actual discrimination claims.

    And to make matters even worse, Kleiner could be on the hook for more damages than when Pao originally filed her lawsuit as an employee.

    Sign up for our morning missive, StrictlyVC, featuring all the venture-related news you need to start you day.

    Connie

    , ,

  • StrictlyVC: September 19, 2013

     rainbowTop News in the A.M.

    Apple CEO Tim Cook: Sorry for any confusion, people, but “we never had an objective to sell a low-cost phone.”

    Dropcam, the $50M Startup That Should Keep ADT Awake at Night 

    Dropcam is watching you.

    To date, the four-year-old startup has raised $47.8 million for its HD wireless home-monitoring cameras that allow consumers to watch the kids from the office, glimpse which neighbor isn’t picking up after his dog, or catch break-ins.

    Greg Duffy, Dropcam’s 26-year-old cofounder and CEO, won’t disclose how many of the company’s $150 cameras the company has sold, but he will say that the company is enjoying “5x” year-over-year revenue growth from a “significant sample of users” that “cut across nearly every demographic.”

    That’s a lot of video. The company claims that it uploads more video each day than YouTube.

    What Dropcam plans to do with all that video is where things get interesting. At Dropcam’s San Francisco offices, where 45 people are now employed, Duffy hints that Dropcam will soon dip its toe into the lucrative realm of home security.

    It makes perfect sense. It also puts the company’s funding into perspective.

    Right now, 40 percent of Dropcam’s customers pay $9.99 or $99 per year to save up to seven days of footage costs, partly for home security purposes.

    Duffy believes Dropcam can capture a much larger piece of the home security pie because, in his view, it’s a market that’s just waiting to be disrupted  Not only are the “ADTs of the world” “generally stuck in past eras of technology,” but “they charge you insanely high prices for a very simple service,” he notes.

    ADT’s most basic plan — which includes a motion detector, two wireless door or window sensors, and a wireless key fob that enables users to control the system – costs $42.99 per month, a $300 installation fee and requires a three-year commitment. More “advanced” services — including stored video footage and email alerts — cost $57.99 a month, with a $500 installation fee and a three-year contract.

    That’s big business: ADT has a market cap of $8.7 billion dollars.

    Companies like ADT “make you think that to keep your family safe, you need to pay for something that’s essentially as expensive as a cell phone and requires [an even longer] contract,” Duffy says. “But it costs them nothing to deliver the service, and using today’s technology, you could deliver [the same service] for a fraction of the price.”

    Dropcam’s investors — Institutional Venture Partners, Accel Partners, and Kleiner Perkins, among others — evidently think so, too.

    SigmaWest Has Moved to SF!

    New Fundings

    Illumio, a Santa Clara, Calif.-based cloud security startup that remains largely in stealth mode, has closed a $34 million Series B round led by General Catalyst Partners, which was joined by Formation 8. Andreessen Horowitz, which led the companies $8 million Series A funding earlier this year, also participated, as did individual investors Marc Benioff, the founder of Salesforce.com, and Box CEO Aaron Levie.

    StrongLoop, a San Mateo, Calif.-base company, has raised $8 million in Series A funding led by Shasa Ventures and Ignition Partners, a round that brings its total funding to $9 million SrongLoop develops a backend-as-a-service (MBaaS) that uses Node.js as a platform for developing mobile apps in the cloud or in the data center. The company has named Issac Roth as CEO. Meanwhile, Jason Pressman of Shasta and Nick Sturiale of Ignition have joined the company’s board.

    Stackdriver, a Boston-based company, has raised $10 million in Series B funding led by Flybridge Capital Partners. Bain Capital Ventures, which provided the company with $5 million in Series A funding last year, also participated. Stackdriver enables its customers to better manage their cloud-powered applications, including by mapping relationships between the customers’ system, application, and infrastructure resources.

    Remind101, a San Francisco-based startup that aims to provide teachers with a safe way to text message students and stay in touch with their parents has raised $3.5 million. The Series A round was led by the Social + Capital Partnership, with famed Internet investor Yuri Milner participating. The money follows a $1 million seed round that came from First Round Capital and numerous individual investors last year.

    Syntertainment, a Berkeley, Calif.-based new gaming startup that reportedly focuses on “individual lives,” has raised a $5 million Series A round from investors that include Andreessen Horowitz and former Electronic Arts CEO John Riccitiello.

    Cargomatic, an L.A-based startup that appears to be the Uber of the trucking business — it promises to “provide on-demand, pre-screened trucks where and when” shippers need them — has raised $900,000 as part of an expected $1.75 million financing. Investors include the company’s founder and CEO, Jonathan Kessler, and Brett Parker, the chief operating officer of the transportation company Savon Freight.

    Crave, a San Francisco-based company that produces “discreet and elegant” sex toys, has raised $2.4 million in Series A funding, including the venture firm Chaotic Ventures and individual investors.

    Deliv, a Palo Alto, Calif.-based company focused on providing same-day delivery services, has raised $6.85 million in Series A funding from new investors Upfront Ventures and RPM Ventures. Previous investors in the company’s $1 million seed round, including Redpoint Ventures, Trinity Ventures, PivotNorth Capital, General Catalyst Partners and the Operator’s Fund, also participated.

    Exits

    At least some limited partners are making big bucks on Groupon. According to AllthingsD, NEA, Groupon’s first institutional investor (it backed Groupon with $4.8 million in 2008) distributed 20 million shares of the company to investors on Friday. The shares are worth roughly $225 at their current trading price of $11.35.

    New Fund News

    Benu BioVentures, based in Natick, Mass., launched this week, after being spun out of Benu BioPharma, a management and consulting company that focuses on biotechs and medical device startups. The outfit’s cofounders, Dennis Goldberg and Fred Meyer, tell the Boston Business Journal that they intend to invest in human biopharmaceuticals, and their initial investments will be in the “mid-single-digit million” range.

    Job Listings

    Silicon Valley Bank is on the search for an associate to add to its corporate venture group to source and qualify potential new opportunities for the firm. Among the job’s requirements: knowledge of the VC ecosystem and at last one or two years of experience in finance or banking.

    Essential Reads

    Kleiner Perkins gets some bad news, as California’s highest court rejects its efforts to take former partner Ellen Pao’s case against it to arbitration.

    Time asks whether it’s time for Arthur Levinson to step down as the chairman of Apple’s board, given that Levinson — the chairman and former CEO of Genentech — is becoming CEO of a new, Google-backed health-focused venture called Calico. “There is something about this that feels uncomfortable,” says board expert Lucy Marcus of Levinson’s continuing ties to both companies.

    The Economist takes a quick look at why the ambitions of Western firms in emerging markets far exceed their efforts.

    New research suggests that established — versus temporary — teams can become too comfortable.

    Detour

    The snark monsters of Silicon Valley.

    Retail Therapy

    Witness the world’s first, truly elegant water filter, when you’ve already spent a fortune on your home/office anyway.

    And hey, a sensor that attaches to your golf club and breaks down your speed, angle and acceleration. Maybe now, you can Nate Silver your way to a better back nine!

    ——-

    Please feel free to send us any and all story suggestions (anonymous or otherwise) by clicking here. If you’re interested in advertising in our email newsletter, please click here. To sign up for the newsletter, visit strictlyvc.com.

     

    Connie

    , ,

  • Dropcam, the $50M Startup That Should Keep ADT Awake at Night

    dropcam

    Dropcam is watching you.

    To date, the four-year-old startup has raised $47.8 million for its HD wireless home-monitoring cameras that allow consumers to watch the kids from the office, glimpse which neighbor isn’t picking up after his dog, or catch break-ins.

    Greg Duffy, Dropcam’s 26-year-old cofounder and CEO, won’t disclose how many of the company’s $150 cameras the company has sold, but he will say that the company is enjoying “5x” year-over-year revenue growth from a “significant sample of users” that “cut across nearly every demographic.”

    That’s a lot of video. The company claims that it uploads more video each day than YouTube.

    What Dropcam plans to do with all that video is where things get interesting. At Dropcam’s San Francisco offices, where 45 people are now employed, Duffy hints that Dropcam will soon dip its toe into the lucrative realm of home security.

    It makes perfect sense. It also puts the company’s funding into perspective.

    Right now, 40 percent of Dropcam’s customers pay $9.99 or $99 per year to save up to seven days of video footage, partly for home security purposes.

    Duffy believes Dropcam can capture a much larger piece of the home security pie because, in his view, it’s a market that’s just waiting to be disrupted  Not only are the “ADTs of the world” “generally stuck in past eras of technology,” but “they charge you insanely high prices for a very simple service,” he notes.

    ADT’s most basic plan — which includes a motion detector, two wireless door or window sensors, and a wireless key fob that enables users to control the system – costs $42.99 per month, a $300 installation fee and requires a three-year commitment. More “advanced” services — including stored video footage and email alerts — cost $57.99 a month, with a $500 installation fee and a three-year contract.

    That’s big business: ADT has a market cap of $8.7 billion dollars.

    Companies like ADT “make you think that to keep your family safe, you need to pay for something that’s essentially as expensive as a cell phone and requires [an even longer] contract,” Duffy says. “But it costs them nothing to deliver the service, and using today’s technology, you could deliver [the same service] for a fraction of the price.”

    Dropcam’s investors — Institutional Venture Partners, Accel Partners, and Kleiner Perkins, among others — evidently think so, too.

    Sign up for our morning missive, StrictlyVC, featuring all the venture-related news you need to start you day.

    Connie

    , , , ,

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