Happy Tuesday, everyone! Busy morning; please forgive whatever we might have overlooked!

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Top News in the A.M.

Whoa. Fidelity, the only fund manager to have a Snapchat investment, wrote down value of its stake by 25 percent in the third quarter, according to Morningstar. TechCrunch has just followed up with a story here.

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Rich Miner on the Alphabet Factor and More

Yesterday, at a conference in San Francisco, we sat down with Rich Miner, a serial entrepreneur who may be best-known for cofounding a company called Android, which was acquired by Google a decade ago and then relegated to the dustbin of history. (Kidding!)

Four-and-a half years later, Miner joined Google Ventures and he continues to work from Cambridge, Ma., making investments on behalf of his new parent company, Alphabet.

We talked with Miner about how that reorganization is impacting Google Ventures, the team’s lack of gender diversity, and why Miner is expecting the stylus to become a bigger part of our lives. More from our chat, edited for length, follows.

To some Google Ventures, remains a bit of an enigma. For example, with offices in Cambridge, the Bay Area and London, do partners invest pretty exclusively in their own backyards?

I live in Boston, so I like to see all the Boston deal flow. But I also sit on the board of several companies in the Bay Area and if it’s something domain specific to mobile and doesn’t happen to be in Boston, I’m certainly going to look at that deal.

What’s happening with the London team? There was a lot of press about it being slow to make investments at first.

Google Ventures is very much not a strategic venture fund. We’re focused on returns. To that point, there was a time where there were investment dollars in Europe but [European startups] trailed behind the U.S. in terms of returns, and we’ve clearly started to see a shift. You now have enough of a history of successful startups, enough capital, and great hotbeds of innovation, including around Berlin, and London and Stockholm, that we think all the right components are in place.

They have separate capital, too, right? The U.S.-based team has $300 million to invest annually and Europe gets its own $125 million annually?

Correct, the European team has the same sort of structure with annual funds and right now, the European fund is a separate fund.
With Alphabet becoming a giant parent above Google, do those budgets change?

More here.

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New Fundings

Versa Networks, a three-year-old, Santa Clara, Ca.-based company that makes networking software, has raised $43 million from investors, including Sequoia Capital, Verizon Ventures and Mayfield. More here.

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New Funds

Cleveland, Ohio is getting a new venture capital fund: a new, $20 million for-profit pool called the JumpStart NEXT fund. LPs include the Greater Cleveland Partnership. More here.

IGNIA, a Mexico City, Mexico-based venture capital group, has raised $90 million for its second fund, a vehicle that was raised through Mexican publicly traded certificates known as CKDs and that includes Mexican pension funds as limited partners. More here.

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IPOs

Another software company has filed to go public: Atlassian, which initially filed its IPO paperwork confidentially back in August, has revealed plans to raise around $250 million. TechCrunch has more here.

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Exits

Deliv is acquiring another same-day delivery service, Zipments. TechCrunch has more here.

Elastica has been acquired by Blue Coat Systems. VentureBeat has more here.

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Jobs

Nokia is looking to hire a venture fund operating partner. The job is in Mountain View, Ca.

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Essential Reads

Apple’s biggest tablet yet is coming tomorrow.

Some leading on-demand start-ups, including Lyft and Instacart, have formed an alliance with labor groups to explore ways to better support contract workers without necessarily creating new laws.

The “Steve Jobs” movie is getting dumped from theaters owing to poor sales.

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Detours

Cruz’s Crew: You play the game, but it’s the Cruz campaign that scores.

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Retail Therapy

Under-The-Jack-Pack.

Hi, hope you had a terrific weekend, everyone!

We have to send out a streamlined version of StrictlyVC as we’re interviewing Rich Miner of Google Ventures on stage at the Open Mobile Summit this morning and racing to get there. (Hope to see some of you at the conference.)

Before we go, a favor: We’re trying to learn more about Faraday Future. If you can shoot us a related email or DM us or send up a flare, we’d be very appreciative.:)

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Top News in the A.M.

The world’s economy is growing at a slower pace than the International Monetary Fund and other large forecasters are predicting, says the owner of the world’s biggest shipping line. Bloomberg has more here.

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This Twenty-Year-Old Has More Connections Than You Do

Shahed Khan is a kind of VC wunderkind at the moment. At age 20, while many of his peers are either attending college or living with their parents, he’s working as an entrepreneur-in-residence with a noted team of investors at NFX Guild, a new accelerator program in San Francisco. (We’d written about it here.)

Now the spotlight is on Khan to see if he can produce.

Khan and three cofounders – all of whom are currently working at other startups — are building an enterprise software tool that allows companies to receive feedback on their product and its usability from product experts. For example, a company might be trying to understand why users are dropping off during its onboarding flow and can benefit from the knowledge of a UX designer who has designed similar flows at a company like Slack.

The company is currently in an alpha stage, with Khan and the others bringing on new clients each day to test the product. The question is whether Khan can stand out for his achievements and not just for his youth alone.

More here.

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New Fundings

CB Insights, a nearly six-year-old, New York-based outfit focused on private company research and analysis, has raised $10 million in Series A funding from the growth stage investment firm RSTP. CEO and cofounder Anand Sanwal tells us the money represents CB Insights’s first equity round. The company had previously raised $1.15 million in grants from the National Science Foundation. More here.

Edyn, a two-year-old, Oakland, Ca.-based smart gardening system that monitors and tracks environmental conditions, has raised an undisclosed amount of funding from investors, including Fenox Venture Capital, QueensBridge Venture Partners, and Indicator Ventures.

H2O.ai, a four-year-old, Mountain View, Ca.-based company behind an open source machine learning platform designed to build smarter applications, has raised $20 million in Series B funding led by Paxion Capital Partners, with participation from Capital One Growth Ventures and earlier backers Nexus Venture Partners and Transamerica Corporation.

InnoUp Farma, a two-year-old, Noain, Spain-based nanomedicine company focused on developing and licensing therapies for major diseases with unmet medical needs, has raised €2 million ($2.14 million) in public-private funding from the local government business unit Sodena,  Inveready and the Spain Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness.

Iron Horse Therapeutics, a new, San Diego-based company that will develop treatments for ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis), has launched with $10 million in Series A funding. The money comes from Avalon Ventures andGlaxoSmithKline, which began collaborating on new companies two years ago. Xconomy has more on the deal, and that collaboration, here.

POPxo, a New Delhi, India-based digital media company, has raised $2 million in Series A funding led by IDG Ventures and Kalaari Capital, with participation from 500 Startups. LiveMint has more here.

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New Funds

Indonesia state-owned bank PT Bank Mandiri Tbk has established a venture capital arm called Mandiri Capital with an initial commitment of Rp 500 billion ($36.90 million). Now it’s looking for candidates to head the effort. DealStreetAsia has more here.

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IPOs

Match Group, the online dating business whose properties include Match.com and Tinder, said today that it plans to raise upwards of $467 million in an IPO that it expects to happen before Thanksgiving. Fortune has more here.

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Exits

Microsoft has acquired Secure Islands Technologies, a nine-year-old, Bet Dagan, Israel-based company that develops advanced policy-based data classification software. The price isn’t being formally disclosed, but according to ZDNet, it went for around $77.5 million. It had raised $11 million from investors, shows CrunchBase.

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People

The richest awards in science were handed out last night when the Breakthrough Prize organization presented a total of $21.9 million to physicists, mathematicians, life scientists and one high school student. The New York Times has a list of the winners here.

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Jobs

BioMed Ventures is looking to hire a venture capital analyst. The job is in San Diego.

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Essential Reads

Much-hyped uBeam says wireless power is possible, and it has declassified some of its secrets to prove it.

According to Recode, Yahoo has hired McKinsey & Co. to help the company decide which units to shutter and which to sell. CEO Marissa Mayer has also reportedly asked her top execs to make three- to five-year commitments to Yahoo either verbally or in writing.

Living and dying on Airbnb.

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Detours

The disturbing truth about how airplanes are maintained.

Bad girls.

But does this have enough pages?

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Retail Therapy

The holidays are approaching fast. Time to prepare for all that networking.

Happy Friday song!

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Top News in the A.M.

China’s securities regulator plans to lift its moratorium on new stock market listings before the end of the year, the official news agency Xinhua said today. More here.

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In India, a Founder Detained for Days By Axed Employees, and Police

Well that was . . . different.

Last night, one of six cofounders of TinyOwl, a two-year-old, Mumbai, India-based food ordering software startup, was released after reportedly being held captive for two days by disgruntled former employees at the company’s office in Pune.

TinyOwl had earlier this week announced $7.67 million in fresh funding from earlier backers Matrix Partners and Sequoia Capital. But the funding came with the understanding that TinyOwl would follow through on a major restructuring to control its burn rate.

Part of those changes, reported the Economic Times, involved moving TinyOwl’s order processing to a third party app. According to Media Nama, they also included plans to lay off 112 sales employees across India in a second massive round of layoffs. (In September, reportedly, the company had separately laid off 100 employees.)

As part of that restructuring plan, the company is shutting down its operations in four cities, including Pune. Which leads us to what happened to company cofounder Gaurav Choudhary.

Choudhary had traveled to Pune earlier this week to oversee the office’s closure, while his fellow cofounders – all of whom are graduates of IIT Bombay — traveled to sites in Gurgaon, Chennai and Hyderabad to do the same.

More here.

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New Fundings

Biological Dynamics, seven-year-old, San Diego, Ca.-based company whose technology is used to monitor patients treated for cancer, has raised $26.8 million in Series C funding led by an unnamed investor associated with a university. Other participants included Alexandria Venture Investments, Heritage Group and Qualcomm co-founder Irwin Jacobs. More here.

BrightFarms, a four-year-old, New York-based locally grown produce purveyor, has raised $13.65 million in Series B-1 financing from WP Global Partners, NGEN Partners, Emil Capital Partners and other investors. More here.

BuildingConnected, a three-year-old, San Francisco-based maker of bid management software, has raised $8.5 million in Series A funding led by CrossLink Capital, with participation from Homebrew, Freestyle Capital, Bee Partners and Brick & Mortar Ventures. More here.

Hasselblad, the 174-year-old, Gothenburg, Sweden-based high-end camera maker, has accepted an undisclosed amount of money from the China-based, venture-backed drone maker DJI in exchange for a minority stake in its business. The deal is significant enough that DJI gets a board seat in the transaction. TechCrunch has more here.

HotChalk, an 11-year-old, Campbell, Ca.-based platform that helps non-profit universities and colleges create online graduate degrees and currently supports 33 online degree programs, is raising $230 million from the European media group Bertelsmann, which will become the largest shareholder in the company. Reuters has more here.

Hyperloop, Elon Musk’s year-old, L.A.-based super high-speed transportation project, has raised $26 million in funding led by Khosla Ventures, with participation from Formation 8 and Sherpa Capital. The company has now raised roughly $37 million altogether. Fortune has more here.

Innit, a nearly two-year-old, Redwood City, Ca.-based startup behind a new, “connected” cooking system, has raised $25 million in funding from unidentified investors. Wired has much more here.

Relayr, a two-year-old, Berlin-based Internet-of-Things startup, has raised more than $11 million in Series A funding from Munich Venture Partners and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. Tech.eu has more here.

TicketManager, an eight-year-old, Calabasas, Ca.-based startup whose software and services help businesses measure and manage the cost, use and effect of client and employee rewards, has raised $20 million in Series B funding led by previous backer Point Judith Capital, with participation from Kayne Partners. More here.

Xometry, a two-year-old, Gaithersburg, Md.-based company advanced manufacturing company, has raised $8.8 million in funding led by Highland Capital Partners. More here.

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IPOs

Payments company Square, which filed to go public last month, has filed new paperwork suggesting it plans to sell 27 million shares at between $11 and $13 per share. As Fortune notes, at the high end of the range, Square would be valued at $4.19 billion. Meanwhile, its last private round of funding, in October 2014, pegged its valuation at $6 billion. More about the offering — which would represent roughly 8 percent of the company’s outstanding shares — here.

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Exits

Livescribe, an eight-year-old, Oakland, Ca.-based smart pen maker, has been acquired for $15 million by Anoto, a digital writing company in Sweden. The sale represents a sizable loss for investors, who’d plugged at least $68 million into the company. According to CrunchBase, its backers include VantagePoint Capital Partners, Crosslink Capital, Scale Venture Partners, andQualcomm Ventures.

Sosh, a five-year-old, San Francisco-based online marketplace that allowed users to find things to do in their city, is shutting down, with 18 of its 40 employees headed to Postmates as part of an acquihire. Sosh CEO Rishi Mandal is also joining the company. None of Sosh’s technology is part of the deal, reports TechCrunch. Sosh had raised a little more than $16 million from investors, shows CrunchBase. Backers include Redpoint Ventures, Khosla Ventures, General Catalyst Partners, Battery Ventures, and Polaris Partners.

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People

Robert De Niro is apparently out of patience when it comes to these tech moguls and their condescending attitudes.

Steve Newcomb’s newest company, Famo.us, is pivoting again and firing 20 people in the process.

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Jobs

Felix Capital, the year-old, venture firm founded by longtime investor Frederic Court, is looking to hire both a principal and an associate. The jobs are in London.

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Data

Agriculture startups raised $113.6 million in the third quarter, reports Venture Capital Dispatch. That’s the highest amount raised in a quarter since industry tracker Dow Jones VentureSource began collecting data in 1992. The amount raised in the agriculture and forestry sector has hit $161.1 million 2015 so far.

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Essential Reads

Goldman Sachs says it will start promoting junior bankers faster to prevent them from defecting — including to tech startups.

Faraday Future, an under-the-radar, 18-month-old, Gardena, Ca.-based company, already has 400 employees and big ambitions to take on Tesla.

Toyota is coming to Silicon Valley with plans to spend $1 billion on artificial intelligence R&D.

Behind rising inequality: more unequal companies.

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Detours

Two guys, wearing jetpacks, flying alongside an Airbus A380. NBD.

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Retail Therapy

When James Bond chases bad guys in the Alps, he wears Danner Boots to keep his feet dry and comfortable.

Aziz Ansari in “Master of None.” Available on Netflix today.

Wow, is it really Thursday already?! Hope you enjoy the day, everyone.

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Top News in the A.M.

JPMorgan, Wells Fargo and other big banks are reportedly “snarling the flow of data” to popular sites that help consumers manage their finances. The WSJ has the story here.

Unrelated (we think): JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon thinks the government willcrack down on bitcoin and other virtual currencies before they get too big.

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Trinity Ventures Raises $400 Million for 12th Fund

Trinity Ventures, a 29-year-old, Sand Hill Road Firm whose recent hits include the IPOs of Zulily, New Relic and TubeMogul — not to mention the still-private but highly valued startup Docker — has closed its 12th fund with $400 million in capital.

We were in touch yesterday with Ajay Chopra, a general partner at the firm for nearly the last decade, to ask what the fundraising process was like at a time when valuations are high — as are concerns about exits. Our exchange has been edited lightly for length.

You raised your last fund in 2012 with $325 million. This fund is considerably larger. 

We’re writing slightly larger checks for the same ownership. With valuations higher, it takes a larger check to get the same ownership in a similarly sized portfolio. But our mission and strategy for achieving it have stayed the same: invest early in world-class teams going after big ideas, support them through good times and bad, and build meaningful businesses together.

How has the firm’s team changed since that last fund was closed?

Since then, we’ve added six people to our staff. Four of the new additions are women, and two of those women are partners. We’re very glad that with these additions, we’re probably the most diverse firm of our size.

The [general partners are] the same except for Noel Fenton, who founded the firm almost 30 years ago and is taking a well-deserved step back.

What was fundraising like? What did your investors want most to see? Did you sense nervousness on their part over exits, or a general lack of them?

Besides good performance, they want to see funds where partners have worked well together over several investment cycles with consistent investment style over several funds. They’re definitely concerned about current startup valuations but also understand that from a return standpoint, it’s primarily an issue for late-stage investors.

How are you dealing with the slowdown in IPOs?

More here.

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New Fundings

Atreca, a five-year-old, San Carlos, Ca.-based company developing antibodies that could enable more patients to benefit from new, immunotherapies, has raised $56 million in Series A funding led by an undisclosed health care-focused fund, with participation from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, GlaxoSmithKline and Mission Bay Capital. More here.

Cask, a four-year-old, Palo Alto, Ca.-based open-source software company that makes it easier for developers to build applications that run on the big data software system Hadoop, has raised $20 million in Series B funding, reports VentureWire. The round was led by Safeguard Scientifics. The company has now raised $37 million altogether.

Coveo, a 10-year-old, Quebec-based enterprise search technology company, has raised $35 million in Series D financing led by IQ Venture Capital, with participation from earlier backers, including Tandem Expansion Fund, BDC Capital, Propulsion Ventures SEC, Fonds de solidarité FTQ, and Coveo CEO Louis Tetu. Altogether, the company has now raised $75 million. More here.

Hivemapper, an 11-year-old, Burlingame, Ca.-based startup that wants to help drone pilots avoid crashing into buildings and other structures, has raised $2.9 million in a new seed round led by Spark Capital, reports Venture Capital Dispatch.

M.Gemi, a 1.5-year-old Boston-based company that sells shoes made in Italy directly to consumers, has raised $18 million in Series B funding led by Accel Partners, with participation from earlier investors General Catalyst Partners, Forerunner Ventures and Breakaway Ventures. BetaBoston has more here.

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(Other) New Funds

In a surprising turn of events, the four-year-old venture firm Formation 8 has axed plans to raise a third fund, reports TechCrunch. Instead, cofounder and general partner Joe Lonsdale will be raising his own $400 million fund (with a lot of Formation 8 staffers joining him, we hear). Its brand: 8 Partners.

Greenspring Associates, the 15-year-old, Owing Mills, Md.-based venture capital fund-of-funds, has raised $430 million for Greenspring Global Partners VII. Like its previous six funds, the money will be earmarked for emerging venture capital managers, expansion-stage companies and secondary interests of funds and companies. Some of the firm’s investments include the venture firms 5AM Ventures, Balderton Capital, and Accel Partners. Its startup stakes include the web performance and security company CloudFlare and the marketing platform DemandBase. More here.

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Exits

Expedia announced yesterday that’s acquiring the publicly traded vacation rental service HomeAway and its brands — including VRBO.com —  for $3.9 billion in cash and Expedia common stock. The 10-year-old, Austin, Tex.-based compay had raised almost $505 million across five funding rounds before its 2011 IPO. TechCrunch has more here.

Johnson & Johnson is acquiring the six-year-old, Radnor, Pa.-based antiviral drug discovery company Novira Therapeutics for undisclosed terms. Novira had raised roughly $40 million in equity and debt funding, including from 5AM Ventures, Canaan Partners, Versant Ventures, shows CrunchBase.

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People

Facebook director Marc Andreessen has sold roughly 15 percent of his stake in the social network in recent days, netting nearly $31.9 million, according to an SEC filing. He sold the shares under a prearranged trading plan, reports the WSJ.

Madrona Venture Group has hired serial startup exec Mike Fridgen to lead its Madrona Venture Labs, an in-house startup studio that launched 18 months ago and has since spun out two companies: Spare5, an app that pays people to perform tasks on their smartphone in their spare time and is now funded by New Enterprise Associates, Foundry and Madrona, among others; and a second company that’s still operating in “stealth” mode. Among other things, Fridgen was previously president and CEO of the shopping service Decide. After it sold to eBay in 2013, he became general manager of eBay’s 400-person Seattle office.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk said earlier this week that Tesla may add constraints to its autodriving mode, mostly because people are idiots. (Gizmodo’s words, not his.)

Beleaguered ad tech company Rocket Fuel has announced a series of changes to its top management. Business Insider has more here.

A couple of Skype‘s cofounders —  Janus Friis and Ahti Heinla — are going against the grain with a drone that makes deliveries from the ground, not sky.

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Jobs

Venture Lab, an Accion-sponsored initiative to invest in and support seed-stage startups that are improving the way financial services are delivered to the poor, is looking for an investment associate. The job is in Washington, D.C. Past experience working in India is a plus.

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Data

Feel like corporate VCs are taking over? You aren’t far off. According to a new report from PricewaterhouseCoopers and the National Venture Capital Association, corporate groups invested $2.3 billion across 240 deals to the startup ecosystem during the third quarter of 2015, accounting for 14.1 percent of all venture capital dollars invested and 21.5 percent — or one fifth(!) — of all deals. Through the first three quarters, a combined 181 corporate venture groups participated in 20.5 percent of all deals and accounted for 13.6 percent of the capital invested in startups. More here.

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Essential Reads

Facebook video viewership is growing — fast. According to company, it now sees 8 billion average daily video views from 500 million users. That’s up from just 4 billion video views per day in April. Facebook also disclosed yesterday in an earnings call that more than 1.55 billion people now visit its platform each month.

The higher price of delivery app convenience: a breakdown.

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Detours

The best Bond cars.

Twenty-two fascinating facts about Warren Buffett’s success.

A Change.org petition is asking the United Nations to stop singer Phil Collins from coming out of retirement with a new album, citing “too much suffering in the world as it is.”

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Retail Therapy

A smoke-colored weekender bag by Malle. (We like this one.)

Hi, everyone!

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Top News in the A.M.

San Francisco voters have rejected a measure to curb Airbnb rentals in the city.

The price of Bitcoin is suddenly surging again.

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Marc Andreessen and Sheryl Sandberg Battle Notion that Tech is Driving Income Inequality

Yesterday morning at Fortune’s Global Forum conference in San Francisco, Fortune interviewer Alan Murray got quite an earful from the guests on his panel: Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, and venture capitalist and Facebook board member Marc Andreessen, who pushed back hard on the notion that technology is exacerbating income inequality.

It was a riveting chat that touched on what’s next in mobile, whether Facebook might restructure itself a la Alphabet, and why Andreessen has seemingly been promoting Facebook competitor Twitter by spending so much time publishing to the platform. Some highlights follow.

On the changes brought by mobile. . .

For his part, Andreessen talked at some length about the “smart phone wars,” and the fact that “gigantic manufacturing capacity is being built up worldwide” – from screens to chips to batteries – which has driven down the cost of making smart phones to $25.

That’s great for smartphone customers, of course, but it’s also great for investors, he suggested. The reason: The same components are now used to help produce electric cars, drones, virtual reality hardware and connected toys, among other things. There are “thousands of categories that weren’t possible before that will use smart phone components,” he said.

More here.

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New Fundings