Hi, everyone! How about that dazzling NCAA tournament ending last night!?

Looking forward to seeing some of you later at this hardware-focused seed and investing panel in SF.:)

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Top News in the A.M.

Twitter says it has won a deal to show Thursday night NFL games online, giving it a key piece of content to attract mainstream users and make its service a go-to place to react to and discuss live events. Bloomberg has more here. Meanwhile Recode has some of the numbers behind the deal. (They’re surprising.)

Three months after predicting Goldman Sachs would put the tumultuous end of 2015 behind it and stabilize profits, analysts are reversing course and cutting projections. Again. More here.

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Longtime Tesla Motors CIO jay Vijayan Has Formed a Stealth Startup

Jay Vijayan, who spent four years as the Chief Information Officer of Tesla Motors, and who served as its VP of IT and business applications for a year before that, left the company in January to form his own Bay Area startup.

Vijayan isn’t talking yet about that company. (StrictlyVC reached out to him last Monday and he hasn’t responded.)

But his departure comes at an interesting time, given the almost unprecedented excitement surrounding the Model 3 car that Tesla unveiled to the public last Thursday night.

As you may have already read, the company had booked more than 253,000 orders in the first 36 hours after CEO Elon Musk revealed several prototypes in a showy display reminiscent of Apple product releases.

That kind of demand is surely putting to the test a proprietary software system called Warp that Vijayan and his team of engineers at Tesla designed to support the company’s direct sales efforts in the U.S. (In 2014, the WSJ had taken a long look at the platform here.)

Vijayan also appears to be doing some angel investing, which may or may not be related to his new startup. Last Monday, numerous India-based outlets reported that FixNix, a Bangalore-based governance, risk management, and compliance platform, had raised $500,000 in seed funding led by Vijayan, along with other, unnamed, Silicon Valley-based angel investors.

More here.

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New Fundings

Africa Internet Group, a three-year-old, Lagos, Nigeria-based outfit that owns online retailer Jumia and earlier this month disclosed that it had raised $326 at a valuation of more than $1 billion, has raised yet more capital. Specifically, the mobile giant Orange has plugged around $85 million into the company. TechCrunch has more here.

Flywheel, a 3.5-year-old, Omaha, Ne.-based WordPress hosting and management service, has raised $4 million in Series A funding led by Kansas City’s Five Elms Capital. TechCrunch has more here.

Human Longevity, a  three-year-old, San Diego, Ca.-based genome outfit led by famed serial entrepreneur J. Craig Venter, has raised $220 million in Series B funding co-led by the cancer drug specialist Celgene and fellow California-based genome sequencing company Illumina. FierceBiotech has more here.

Jinn, a three-year-old, London-based logistics and delivery platform that promises same-hour deliveries, has raised $7.5 million in Series A funding led by Samaipata Ventures (a new firm started by the founders of La Nevera Roja, a take-out ordering service sold to Rocket Internet last year for $100 million). Other participants include Elderstreet, Bull Partners, and earlier angel investors. TechCrunch has more here.

Mintigo, a seven-year-old, San Mateo, Ca.-based predictive marketing analytics company, has raised $15 million in Series D funding led by earlier investor Sequoia Capital. More here.

Origami Energy, a three-year-old, Cambridge, England-based tech platform for the smart management of distributed energy assets, has raised £13.7 million ($19.4 million) in Series A funding from earlier investors Cambridge Innovation Capital and Octopus Ventures, along with two (unnamed) individuals and Fred.Olsen companies. Tech.eu has more here.

Persado, a three-year-old, New York-based company whose software can write what the company calls “cognitive content,” meaning it primes readers to engage, has raised $30 million in new funding led by Goldman Sachs. TechCrunch has more here.

Sawyer, a seven-month-old, Brooklyn, N.Y.-based class-pass platform for kids’ activities, has raised $1.5 million in seed funding from Notation Capital, Collaborative Fund, VC1, and other strategic angel investors. More here.

ShooWin, a five-month-old, New York-based platform that partners with leagues and sports teams to obtain tickets that can be reserved at low prices, has raised $1.25 million in seed funding led by BBG Ventures. TechCrunch has more here.

Virool, a four-year-old, San Francisco-based video ad startup, has raised $12 million in Series A funding from Menlo Ventures, Yahoo Japan, Flint Capital and 500 Startups. TechCrunch has more here.

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New Funds

New York-based Collaborative Fund has launched Collab+Consumer, a new venture fund focused on consumer products, in cooperation with the Collaborative-backed crowdfunding marketplace CircleUp Network. The firm isn’t disclosing the size of the fund. More here.

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Exits

AccorHotels, one of Europe’s largest hotel groups, has acquired Onefinestay, a seven-year-old London-based short-term vacation rental company, for 148 million euros, or $169 million. According to CrunchBase, Onefinestay had raised roughly $80 million from investors, including Index Ventures and Canaan Partners. The New York Times has more here.

Brocade Communications, a maker of networking gear, is buying Ruckus Wireless, a company with a fast-growing Wi-Fi product roster, for roughly $1.5 billion in cash and stock. Ruckus had gone public in 2012. Fortune has more here.

MetaMind, a 1.5-year-old, Palo Alto Ca.-based AI startup, has been acquired by Salesforce for undisclosed terms. More here.

Red Swan Ventures, a seed-stage venture firm born out of Bonobos founder Andy Dunn’s angel investing, has put new deal-making on hold. “Right now, we are kind of on pause,” Dunn tells Venture Capital Dispatch.

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People

Larry Begley, a founder of .406 Ventures, is leaving the firm to become the first CFO of its portfolio company CloudHealth Technologies.

Martina Lauchengco joined the Palo Alto, Ca.-based firm Costanoa Venture Capital last week as operating partner. Lauchengco has spent the last nine years working in management consulting with the outfit Silicon Valley Product Group.

Vanity Fair takes a look at what sunk Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer‘s media ambitions.

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Jobs

In case you missed this last week: longtime VC recruiter Jon Holman is doing a general partner/managing director search for a long-time player in the venture business who has raised a new fund. To apply, you have to be in the Bay Area already or have focused on Bay Area deals. Contact Holman here.

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Data

China’s economic slowdown hasn’t dulled investor enthusiasm for the country’s tech companies, shows some surprising new data. According to the Tech in Asia database, investors ploughed $14.5 billion into Chinese tech startups and firms of all sizes in the first three months of the year — more than double what they invested during the same period last year.

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Essential Reads

Rethinking ownership in an age of IoT devices.

Medium is becoming the publishing platform for the The Awl and a dozen other sites.

WeWork, the co-working real estate startup valued, controversially, at north of $5 billion, is launching WeLive, a residential rental building that offers flexible renting. The program will be tried first in New York and Arlington, Va. TechCrunch has more here.

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Detours

An incredible, fast-paced journey through Japan.

Slacklining.

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Retail Therapy

Sailing, 007 style.

Hi, everyone, hope you had a fun weekend.

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Top News in the A.M.

Holy data dump. The hidden wealth of some of the world’s most prominent leaders, politicians and celebrities was revealed yesterday by an unprecedented leak of millions of documents that highlight how some of them exploit secretive offshore tax regimes. The BBC has much more here.

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Peter Thiel’s Other Fund, Mithril Capital Management, Raises $600 Million

Peter Thiel is having a good month.

According to a new SEC filing, low-flying Mithril Capital Management, which Thiel co-founded with longtime colleague Ajay Royan in 2012, is out raising its second fund with a $600 million target. Sources say the fund is already oversubscribed, however, and that it may hit $1 billion before it holds a final close.

Emails and a call to the firm were not returned Friday afternoon.

The vehicle marks the second giant fund that involves Thiel in one week’s time. The Friday before last, Founders Fund, the early-stage venture firm he co-founded in 2005, closed its sixth fund with $1.3 billion.

There’s seemingly no end to LPs’ appetite for anything involving Thiel, though it’s also worth noting that aside from his involvement, the firms don’t feature much overlap.

StrictlyVC sat down with Royan in 2014 to discuss Mithril, which is named after a fictional metal from J. R. R. Tolkien’s fantasy writings. The way he explained its focus then was as a growth-stage fund, one focuses on established companies that are leveraging tech in some way but are not necessarily tech companies. (He compared it, in fact, to a young General Atlantic.)

Though Mithril has backed some tech companies, including the cloud service marketplace AppDirect; Classy, which provides online fund-raising services for nonprofits; and the data analysis giant Palantir (which is one of Founders Funds’ biggest bets to date), it has numerous bets that better underscore its mandate, including to fund companies too mature for many VCs yet that don’t fit the mold of a private equity investment, either.

More here.

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New Fundings

Comma.ai, a seven-month-old, San Francisco-based autonomous car kit startup, has raised $3.1 million led by Andreessen Horowitz. Recode has more here.

Entasis Therapeutics, a nearly year-old, Waltham, Ma.-based company focused on the discovery and development of anti-infective products, has raised $50 million in Series B funding led by Clarus, with participation from Frazier Healthcare Partners, Novo A/S, Eventide Funds, and founding investor AstraZeneca. (The company has spun out of AstraZeneca last summer.) More here.

Garena Interactive Holding, a seven-year-old, Singapore-based online and mobile entertainment and e-commerce company, has raised $170 million in fresh capital led by Malaysia’s state investment arm, Khazanah Nasional Bhd. The deal values the company at $3.75 billion, according to a WSJ source.

Hungama, a 16-year-old, Mumbai, India-based video and music streaming service, has raised $25 million in new funding led by the Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi, with participation from earlier investors Intel Capital, Bessemer Venture Partners and billionaire investor and trader Rakesh Jhunjhunwala. TechCrunch has more here.

Influenster, a six-year-old, New York-based product discovery and reviews platform, has raised $8 million in funding from Ebates, an online cashback shopping service that’s owned by Japan’s Rakuten. TechCrunch has more here.

Reserve, a nearly two-year-old, New York-based restaurant reservation booking and payment app, has raised an undisclosed amount of  funding from Diageo Technology Ventures, the venture arm of the consumer goods giant Diageo. More here.

Schoold, a year-old, San Francisco-based college planning startup whose app helps students with the college admissions process, including through side-by-side college comparisons and an admissions predictor, has raised $4.5 million in funding from FastForward; entrepreneur and investor Lorne Abony; and several other unnamed individual investors. More here.

Slack, the three-year-old, San Francisco-based cloud-based workplace collaboration software outfit, has raised $200 million in new funding at a $3.8 billion post-money valuation led by Thrive Capital, with participation from GGV Capital, Comcast Ventures, Sherpa Everest and return backers Accel Partners, Index Ventures, Spark Capital, and Social Capital. Business Insider has more here.

Strainz, a three-year-old, Las Vegas-based cannabis brand management company, has raised $8 million, including $6 million in Series A funding, from undisclosed investors. More here.

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New Funds

Entrepreneurship and Venture Capital (or EVC), a small, Cleveland, Oh.-based investment outfit, is launching an India-focused $50 million early-stage investment fund to fund enterprise software, internet and mobile-focused startups. The firm, led by serial entrepreneur and investor Anjli Jain, will primarily focus on startups operating in the education sector. The Economic Times has more here.

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IPOs

ATS Global Markets, a nearly 11-year-old, Lenexa, Ks.-based securities exchange operator, has set its IPO terms to 11.2 million shares being offered at between $17 and $19 per share. Mid-range, the company would be valued at $1.72 billion. Among its biggest shareholders is TA Associates, which owns a 17.1 percent stake. For what it’s worth, this is the company that IPO experts think could crack open the IPO market — assuming the offering is a success. Dealbook has more here.

SecureWorks, a 17-year-old, Atlanta, Ga.-based company that offers security as a service, could become the first tech IPO of 2016, reports the WSJ.

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Exits

After raising two funds, the team of medical investor Thomas McNerney & Partners has decided to wind down the firm, reports VentureWire.

Reserve, the nearly two-year-old, New York-based reservation startup, has acquired Dash, a payment technology company that had raised $7 million in funding from investors, including Caerus Ventures, Great Oaks Venture Capital and New York Angels. Terms of the deal weren’t disclosed, but Reserve used some new funds (see above, in New Fundings) to get the deal done. TechCrunch has more here.

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People

Priscilla Chan, pediatrician, educator, philanthropist, CEO, and wife of Facebook cofounder Mark Zuckerberg, talks with the Mercury News about why she and Zuckerberg recently launched the nonprofit institution The Primary School. It’s worth reading.

Sam Kass, President Obama’s former senior advisor for nutrition policy and former executive director of Michelle Obama’s Let’s Move campaign, has joined the Campbell Soup-backed venture capital fund Acre Venture Partners as a partner. Fortune has the story here.

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Jobs

Wedbush Securities is looking to hire an investment banking associate into its healthcare group. The job is in San Francisco.

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Essential Reads

DJI and Yuneec, the Apple and Samsung of drone world, are now entangled in a patent lawsuit. More here.

The FBI’s method for breaking into a locked iPhone 5c is unlikely to stay secret for long, say senior Apple engineers, adding that once exposed, Apple should be able to plug the encryption hole.

Tesla has an quality problem: sales of its new Model 3 electric sedan — which will average $42,000, says Tesla CEO Elon Musk — topped 253,000 in the first 36 hours after its unveiling. (Now to keep up with demand for the car, which is slated to enter production in late 2017.)

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Detours

MW M4 takes its promo spot to extremes.

Study says those who call out grammatical errors are, in fact, scientifically “jerks.”

This just makes us happy.

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Retail Therapy

A champagne gun (dreamed up, we’d guess, by someone who has spent too much time in St. Tropez).

Woot! It’s Friday and it’s April Fool’s Day. We are in luck, friends. Well, we’re in luck except for those of you who inadvertently used Google’s Mic drop button to send off important correspondence and have since been fired.

No column today. (No joke.)

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Top News in the A.M.

Fourteen pictures of Tesla’s Model 3, which is as sweet as you knew it would be. Pre-orders alone surged past the 150,000 mark, the company said last night at the car’s unveiling.

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New Fundings

1776, a three-year-old, Washington, D.C.-based accelerator program, has raised $7.2 million in fresh funding led by the financial services company Pepper Group. Other participants in the round include Revolution founder Steve Case, the private equity firm Kiddar Capital, and the angel network K Street Capital. More here.

Abl Schools, an eight-month-old, San Francisco-based startup that’s developing cloud-based scheduling and resource allocation software for schools, has raised $4.5 million in funding led by the education-focused fund Owl Ventures, with participation from First Round Capital and another education-focused investment firm, Reach Capital. Yammer cofounder and former CTO Adam Pisoni is the company’s founder. TechCrunch has more here.

Thursday!

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Top News in the A.M.

The FBI, newly expert at unlocking iPhones, has offered its assistance in unlocking an iPhone and iPod for a prosecutor in Arkansas, the Associated Press reports. More here.

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Is Tony Fadell in Nest’s Way?

Last week, we witnessed something fairly remarkable. A major Alphabet executive — Nest Labs CEO Tony Fadell — publicly shamed the cofounder and employees of Dropcam, the connected camera company that Nest had acquired in 2014 for $555 million.

In an article in The Information, Fadell said that he didn’t think Dropcam cofounder and CEO Greg Duffy had “earned” the right to report to him directly. Fadell also explained away an exodus of Dropcam staffers by suggesting they were subpar. “A lot of the employees were not as good as we hoped,” he told The Information. It was “a very small team and unfortunately it wasn’t a very experienced team.”

Fadell may have been reacting to comments by Duffy, who painted a highly unflattering portrait of Fadell in the same article. However, Fadell’s comments and his poor performance underscore what an ill fit Fadell is for Alphabet and why Alphabet needs new leadership at Nest.

It wasn’t supposed to be like this, of course. Nest was acquired by Google for $3.2 billion in January 2014, a feat that earned Fadell plenty of accolades. Worried about competition and in awe of Fadell, who’d created the iPod as an Apple SVP, Duffy concluded that selling was his smartest play when Nest came knocking that spring.

Despite what seemed like a handsome payday for everyone involved with Dropcam, the bet soon looked like a poor one.

As we’d reported here in November 2014, not only did Duffy’s beloved VP of marketing almost immediately leave Nest over an apparent culture clash, but numerous employees we interviewed, along with scathing write-ups by former employees on Glassdoor, pointed surprisingly to trouble.

“Everything revolves around the CEO,” wrote one Glassdoor reviewer at the time. “It’s a dangerous mix of cult of personality and Stockholm syndrome. Comments like ‘[Fadell is] the next Steve Jobs are not uncommon, while people proudly say things like ‘I’m used to Tony screaming at me.’”

It wasn’t just the different management styles of Fadell and Duffy, whose organization was one-eighth the size of Nest and who was well-liked by his employees. There was suddenly an inability to get anything meaningful done. One Nest employee described to me a “huge meeting culture, to the point where anyone at the director level or up spends their entire day in meetings, many of them duplicative meetings about the same subject, over and over to the point where a lot of people have complained.”

Things remain much the same 16 months later, suggests The Information, whose report says Nest’s culture of micromanagement has more recently led the firm to plaster its offices with the phrase “Step Up” to ostensibly encourage lower-level employees to take more initiative.

More here.

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New Fundings

Airware, a five-year-old, San Francisco-based company that used to sell drone operating systems but is now selling drone hardware, the software to control them, and cloud services for related data, has raised $30 million in Series C funding led by Next World Capital. Other participants include Andreessen Horowitz, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, and former CIsco CEO John Chambers, who’s joining the company’s board. TechCrunch has more here.

Garena, a seven-year-old, Singapore-based company that makes mobile gaming, e-commerce, and payment apps, has raised $170 million in Series D funding, at a reported $3.75 billion valuation. The funding was led by Khazanah Nasional Berhad, the Malaysian government’s strategic investment fund. Earlier investors in the company include General Atlantic, the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan, and Keytone Ventures. The company has now raised $500 million altogether. The WSJ has more here.

ICEBRG, a 1.5-year-old, Seattle-based stealth-mode enterprise network security startup, has raised $10 million in Series A funding led by Pelion Venture Partners, with participation from earlier backer Madrona Venture Group and other unnamed institutional and individual investors. More here(though not much more).

Juicero.com, a three-year-old, Bay Area-based food tech startup whose countertop device cold presses juice out of “packs” of already prepped fruit and veggies, has raised $70 million in Series B funding led by Artis Ventures. The company’s other Series A and B investors include Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, GV, Thrive Capital, Campbell Soup Company, Two Sigma Ventures, DBL Partners, First Beverage Group, Acre Venture Partners, and others. TechCrunch has the story here.

Mashable, an 11-year-old, New York-based digital media publisher, has raised $15 million in new funding led by Turner, with participation from Time Warner Investments, Updata Partners and several other, unnamed investors. Mashable’s valuation wasn’t disclosed. The WSJ has more here.

Scentbird, a two-year-old, New York-based startup that lets users try luxury perfumes for a month before they buy them, has raised $2.8 million in funding from Eclipse Ventures, Vaizra Investments, Ludlow Ventures, and SGH Capital. The company has now raised $3.8 million altogether. VentureBeat hasmore here.

Zavante Therapeutics,  a year-old, San Diego, Ca.-based biopharmaceutical company at work on an antibiotic to treat multidrug-resistant pathogens, has raised $45 million in Series A funding, consisting of $35 million from new investors and $10 million from the conversion of outstanding convertible notes. Frazier Healthcare Partners and Longitude Capital were co-leads on the deal; Aisling Capital participated. More here.

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Exits

IBM has acquired Bluewolf Group, a 16-year-old, San Francisco-based consulting company that focuses on helping businesses use Salesforce and other cloud software applications. Terms of the deal are disclosed, but Recode sources peg the purchase price at slightly more than $200 million. More here.

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People

Hi, everyone!

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Top News in the A.M.

Expa, a three-year-old, New York- and San Francisco-based startup studio, is taking the wraps off a new, six-month program for startups that provides them $500,000 in backing, office space, and mentoring. The outfit also just revealed to the New York Times that it has itself raised $100 million from investors. More here.

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IPO Pros Expect Window to Open in Q2

Earlier today, Renaissance Capital, the IPO research firm, published a new report about the first quarter of this year, and it didn’t paint a pretty picture.

For starters, it noted the U.S. IPO market hit the lowest levels in the first quarter since the financial crisis of late 2008. It noted that not a single deal priced outside of the health care sector (which we’d flagged in this recent story). It also noted that of the eight deals that managed to price and collectively raise $700,000 million, the companies’ performance was largely propped up by their venture backers, who bought shares during and after the IPO.

There is, however, a silver lining. Echoing a conversation we’d had last week with another IPO expert — IPOScoop founder John Fitzgibbon — Renaissance Capital Principal Kathleen Smith tells us that a handful of pre-IPO companies could soon inject new life into the torpid IPO market. We talked this morning; our chat has been edited for length.

Renaissance’s new report notes that healthcare IPOs have averaged a return of 20 percent so far in 2016, but it adds that that’s thanks to “substantial buying by their existing shareholders.” Is that a bad thing?

It doesn’t mean they aren’t doing well, but it means there’s concern about their liquidity. Their tradable float is small — even smaller than their deal size would suggest.

That’s not a brand new trend, though. Haven’t health care investors long bought up shares to keep the price of their portfolio companies from dropping until the stock becomes more liquid? 

It has long helped to get the deals done. But we’ve seen the percentages increase quite a bit. It used to be that [VCs] would [buy up] 15 percent of the [IPO and post-IPO] shares; now it’s more like 40 percent, and I’d say it began ticking up over the last 24 months. In one recent deal, [for the gene editing company] Editas, insiders bought 67 percent of the float.

The goal in going public is to establish a valuation publicly that either helps other companies to understand them and perhaps buy them at that accepted valuation, or to raise more money down the road, which most [biotech companies] need to do, even though most [generate] capital from the IPO.

In the meantime, there were no tech IPOs in the first quarter. How worried should private tech investors be?

More here.

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New Fundings

Asana, an eight-year-old, New York-based collaboration software startup cofounded by Facebook cofounder Dustin Moskovitz, has raised $50 million in Series C funding led by Y Combinator President Sam Altman. Other backers include Moskovitz, Asana cofounder Justin Rosenstein, 8VC, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan, Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh (via VTF Capital), Groupon co-founder Andrew Mason, Elevation Partners founder Roger McNamee, and Quora CEO Adam D’Angelo. Fortune has more here.

Branch, a year-old, San Francisco, and Nairobi, Kenya-based mobile-first digital bank for developing markets, has raised $9.2 million in Series A funding from Andreessen Horowitz, as well as seed investors Khosla Impact and 8VC. Forbes has more here.

CockroachDB, a 1.5-year-old, New York-based open-database company that aims to keep the applications of its enterprise customers up and running, even when their data centers and cloud infrastructure suddenly go offline, has raised $20 million in Series A1 funding. The capital comes from Index Ventures and earlier investors Benchmark and GV (formerly Google Ventures). More here.

Frichti, a nearly year-old, Paris, France-based food production and delivery company, has raised $13.4 million from Idinvest, earlier investor Alven Capital, and numerous angel investors. TechCrunch has more here.

Invoca, a nearly eight-year-old, Santa Barbara, Ca.-based call intelligence platform, has raised $30 million in Series D funding led by Morgan Stanley Alternative Investment Partners, with participation from earlier backers Accel Partners, Upfront Ventures, Rincon Venture Partners, Salesforce Ventures and Stepstone. The company has now raised just north of $60 million altogether. TechCrunch has more here.

MapD, a 2.5-year-old, San Francisco-based big data analytics platform, has raised $10 million in Series A funding led by Vanedge Capital, with participation from Verizon Ventures, Nvidia Corporation and GV. Venture Capital Dispatch has more here.

Planday, a 2.5-year-old, Copenhagen-based workforce management software company, has raised $14 million in Series B funding led by Idinvest, with participation from SEB Private Equity, existing backer Creandum, and Booking.com co-founder Arthur Kosten. TechCrunch has more here.

Spotify, the nine-year-old, Stockholm, Sweden-based streaming music service, has raised $1 billion in convertible debt from TPG, Dragoneer, and clients of Goldman Sachs. The WSJ has the story here.

Wanliyun Medical Information Technology, a seven-year-old, Beijing, China-based medical imaging company, has raised roughly $35 million in funding from the business juggernaut Alibaba. TechCrunch has more here.

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New Funds

MIT has announced the creation of a Bitcoin Development Fund to cover the salaries, travel and work costs of three leading developers of the Bitcoin Core project. Silicon Angle has much more here.

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Exits

Ebay is acquiring Cargigi, a six-year-old, Irvine, Ca.-based company that provides advertising and marketing services on a number of popular free classified websites like Craigslist. Deal terms weren’t disclosed, though eBay described the acquisition as small. TechCrunch has more here.

Foxconn said earlier today that it’s paying close to 389 billion yen (around $3.5 billion) for a 66 percent stake in Sharp, which is a lot less than the $6.2 billion fee that Sharp announced one month ago. TechCrunch has the story here.

—-

People

Cyan Banister, a renowned angel investor and startup founder, has joined 11-year-old Founders Fund. She’s the firm’s first female investing partner. More here.

How much Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer may make if she gets fired.

Meanwhile, Google CEO Sundar Pichai was paid $100.5 million for his first year at the helm. More here.

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Jobs

First Round Capital is looking for a special projects lead to help design and execute initiatives intended to help its entrepreneurs (and other people it would like to pull into its orbit). The job is in San Francisco.

XL Catlin, a global insurance company, is looking for a venture analyst to join its venture arm. The job is in Menlo Park, Ca.

—–

Data

Venture-capital firms are raising money at the highest rate in more than 15 years, according to Dow Jones VentureSource. More here.

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Essential Reads

Nearly a week after being silenced because the internet taught her to be racist, Microsoft’s artificial intelligence bot “Tay” briefly returned to Twitter early today, whereon she went on a spam tirade and then quickly fell silent again. More here.

Eight things Chinese money is buying in America right now.

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Detours

Unlocked iPhone worthless after FBI spills glass of water on it.

—–

Retail Therapy

Girl with Balloon.

Hi, everyone! We realize we’re a bit late in sending out SVC today; we had some technical issues this a.m.

Hope you’re having a terrific Tuesday.:)

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Top News in the A.M.

Dropcam cofounder Greg Duffy isn’t done putting Nest‘s Tony Fadell in his place. (We asked Nest if it wants to comment on Duffy’s specific challenge to the company. A spokeswoman said Nest will “decline commenting at this time.”)

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AND CO Raises Seed Round to Tackle Freelancers’ Tedious Tasks

If you’ve ever  worked as a freelancer, you know the last thing you want to do — after lining up gigs, submitting your work, and reworking your project (when that last person on the client side decides he or she wants something entirely different) —  is to handle all the administrative stuff. Think invoicing. Expenses. Other paperwork.

That’s why a year-old, New York-startup called AND CO is creating a system that does it for you, using both software and live chat support. (Every freelancer gets a personal “chief operator” during working hours.)

AND CO was born at Prehype, a four-year-old design and incubation boutique that produces new ideas for corporate customers. Among other companies to come from its team are the subscription business BarkBox and the office cleaning and management startup Managed by Q.

Prehype founder Henrik Werdelin is a BarkBox founder. Managed by Q cofounder Saman Rahmanian is also a partner at PreHype. Meanwhile, Leif Abraham, a former creative director who joined Prehype in 2014 and was an early employee at BarkBox, is the cofounder and CEO of AND CO. (Abraham says his cofounder, Martin Strutz, also a longtime digital creative, was “like an entrepreneur-in-residence” at Prehype.)

AND CO, which charges a flat $60 a month, focuses largely on freelancers with project workflow, like designers, writers, and developers.

It’s also fairly limited in what it can do — for now.

More here.

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New Funding

Betterment, a 7.5-year-old, New York-based startup that automates financial planning, has raised $100 million in Series E funding led by Sweden’s Kinnevik. Previous investors including Bessemer Venture Partners, Menlo Ventures, Anthemis Group, and Francisco Partners participated. The round reportedly values the company at $700 million. TechCrunch has more here.

Figtree Financing, a five-old, San Diego-based residential financing program for cleantech products, has raised $30 million in Series A funding led by the private equity firm LL Funds. More here.

Havenly, a two-year-old, Denver-based online interior design platform, has raised $5.8 million in additional Series A funding, bring the total round to $13.3 million. The round was led by Binary Capital with participation from Foundry Group and Chicago Ventures. TechCrunch has more here.

Homie, a two-year-old, Salt Lake City, Ut.-based online platform that helps users buy and sell their homes, has raised $3.76 million, shows a new SEC filing. Peak Ventures announced in November that it had provided an undisclosed amount of funding to the company. More here.

Hopper, a nine-year-old, Cambridge, Ma.-based company whose app tells travelers the best time to fly in order to find the best deals, has raised $16 million in growth funding led by BDC Capital IT Venture Fund, with participation from earlier backers OMERS Ventures, Accomplice (formerly Atlas Venture) and Brightspark Ventures. The company has now raised $38 million altogether. More here.

Rythm, a two-year-old, Paris and San Francisco-based company that claims its still-in-prototype headset will improve sleep quality, has raised more than $11 million from private (unnamed) investors and public grants, including France’s Concours Mondial d’Innovation. TechCrunch has more here.

Slice Labs, a six-month-old, New York-based startup that will offer insurance to on-demand workers and providers, has raised $3.9 million in seed funding from Horizon Ventures and XL Innovate. TechCrunch has more here.

Umbo CV, a two-year-old, San Francisco-based company whose security cameras use artificial intelligence to identify suspicious activity, has raised a $2.8 million in seed funding. The round was led by AppWorks Ventures, with participation from Mesh Ventures, Wistron Corporation, and Phison Electronics. TechCrunch has more here.

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Exits

Dating app Tinder is acquiring Humin, a  San Francisco contact management startup. Terms were undisclosed, but sources tell TechCrunch the deal was an acqui-hire. Humin had raised an undisclosed amount of Series A funding led by Sherpa Capital, shows CrunchBase. More here.

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People

Investor Chamath Palihapitiya chats with Vanity Fair, telling the outlet, “Most of the things [VCs have] funded are mostly crap and largely worthless.”

Man moves to San Francisco, pays $400 a month to sleep in wooden box inside friends’ living room.

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Jobs

Longtime VC recruiter Jon Holman is doing a general partner/managing director search for a long-time player in the venture business who has raised a new fund. To apply, you have to be in the Bay Area already or have focused on Bay Area deals. Contact Holman here.

Venture-backed Managed By Q is looking to hire a business analyst. The job is in New York.

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Data

Renaissance Capital has just published a first-quarter IPO report and it’s not pretty. Says its research team, the U.S. IPO market “hit its lowest levels since the depths of the financial crisis in 2008/2009. Not a single deal priced outside of the health care sector, where eight deals managed to raise $0.7 billion thanks to substantial buying by their existing shareholders. The resulting low tradable float also helped to prop up performance, and IPOs averaged a return of 20 percent, even as the broader health care sector vastly underperformed major indices.” You can find the entire write-up here.

And from Pitchbook: A look at some of the largest U.S. pension fund commitments to private equity and venture funds since 2013.

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Essential Reads

Coming soon: 60-second videos in Instagram.

SoundCloud just took the wraps off a new subscription audio service that puts it in head-to-head in competition with the likes of  streaming services Spotify, Apple Music and Deezer.

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Detours

The fall of China’s hedge fund king.

Unicorns were real, and they were real ugly, too.

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Retail Therapy

20,000 bottles of wine,  from William Koch’s cellar.