Happy Wednesday!

Thank you very much to the many of you who wrote yesterday with help for our new TechCrunch “Founders’ Questions” column. You’re such a great crew.

Also, our next StrictlyVC Insider event is coming up in about two weeks. Woot! We released a handful of tickets to those of you on the waitlist last night. Hopefully, we can let a few more of you into the event, too, over the next week or so. We wish we could let in many more guests, but the Autodesk Gallery has attendee limits and for good reason, we’re guessing. Thanks again to our friends and sponsors at Bolt, Ludlow Ventures, and GLG for all of their help; we couldn’t do it without you.

(No column today, btw.)

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Top News in the A.M.

There’s a new, long-awaited feature coming to the new Apple TV: universal search. Buzzfeed has the story here.

Amazon is expanding its “Dash Buttons” program, it announced this morning. TechCrunch has more here.

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New Fundings

Aquicore, a three-year-old, Washington, D.C.-based company that makes analytics software for energy efficiency management, has raised $3.1 million in seed funding led by 1776, an incubator in Washington. (We mentioned its new fund to you yesterday.) TechCrunch has more on the deal here.

Area360, a three-year-old, Seattle, Wa.-based mobile location technology platform (it improves visitor experiences at museums, hospitals, airports and the like using location data), has raised $3.5 million in Series A funding led by Madrona Venture Group. GeekWire has more here.

Capillary Technologies, a seven-year-old Singapore-based social CRM company, has raised $45 million in Series C funding led by Warburg Pincus, with participation from returning investors Sequoia Capital and Norwest Venture Partners. The company has now raised $79.1 million altogether. TechCrunch has more here.

Crosswise, a two-year-old, Tel Aviv, Israel-based company that provides cross-device mapping data, has raised $3 million in Series A funding led by Pereq Ventures, with participation from ZhenFund, Emerge, and earlier backers Giza Venture Capital, OurCrowd and Horizons Ventures. MediaPost has more here.

DecisionSim, a 5.5-year-old, Chadds Ford, Pa.-based maker of health care simulation-based learnings tools, has raised $1.85 million in Series A funding led by Philadelphia-based Rittenhouse Ventures, with participation from Ben Franklin Technology Partners. Philadelpia Business Journal has more here.

Exosome Diagnostics, a seven-year-old, New York-based company that develops and commercializes blood-based cancer molecular diagnostics for disease monitoring, has raise $17.6 million in Series B-1 funding that brings the entire round to $44.7 million. Participants in this newest financing included Forbion Capital Partners, NGN Capital, Arcus Ventures, Tiger Global Management, and CD Ventures.

Instabridge, a three-year-old, Stockholm, Sweden-based startup whose app helps users find solid, free WiFi spots, has raised $3 million in Series A funding led by Stockholm-based Moor (the fund of Rovio co-founder Kaj Hed) and London-based Balderton Capital.  The round also included Creandum and Swisscom Ventures. More here.

InVenture Capital, a four-year-old, Santa Monica, Ca.-based provider of small loans by cellphones that’s targeting the developing world, has raised $10 million in Series A funding led by Data Collective, with participation from Collaborative Fund, Female Founders Fund and individual investors.

Lengow, a six-year-old, Nantes, France-based company whose software helps e-commerce sites centralize, optimize and track the distribution of their product catalogues, has raised €10 million ($11.2 million) in Series B funding from Serena Capital, BPI, and earlier backer Alven Capital. TechCrunch has more here.

NewsCred, a seven-year-old, New York-based content marketing platform, has raised $42 million led by FTV Capital, with participation from earlier backers FirstMark Capital, InterWest Partners, and Mayfield Fund. The company has now raised roughly $90 million altogether. Techcrunch has more here.

Qnovo, a five-year-old, Freemont, Ca.-based company that develops electronic management systems for lithium ion batteries, has raised $8.6 million in Series B funding from Intel Capital, RockPort Capital, US Venture Partners and Blue Run Ventures. More here.

Quovo, a six-year-old, New York-based data aggregation and analytics platform, has raised $4.75 million in funding led by Fintech Collective, with participation from numerous angel investors. The company had earlier raised $1.5 million in seed funding. WealthManagement has more here.

Saucey, a two-year-old, L.A.-based on-demand alcohol delivery startup, has raised $4.5 million in seed funding led by Blumberg Capital, with participation from Structure Capital, Altpoint Ventures, T5 Captial, HashTagOne and numerous celebrity investors, including Scooter Braun. TechCrunch has more here.

Tanium, the eight-year-old, Emeryville, Ca.-based security and systems management startup run by father and son David and Orion Hindawi, has raised $120 million in new funding led by TPG and Institutional Venture Partners. The round comes seven months after the company raised $52 million from Andreessen Horowitz (which had also made an even earlier bet on the company). More here.

Universal Avenue, a year-old,  Stockholm, Sweden -based startup that lets customers hire salespeople (or “brand ambassadors”) on demand, has raised $5 million in funding from Northzone and Salesforce Ventures, with participation from Moor (see earlier mention above). TechCrunch has more here.

Voalte, a seven-year-old, Sarasota, Fla.-based startup offering secure communications programs for doctors and nurses with smartphones, has raised $17 million in Series D funding led by Ascension Ventures and Cerner Capital, with participation from earlier backer Bedford Funding.

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New Funds

Billionaire Sajjan Jindal of JSW Steel, India’s largest private steel producer, has formed a venture capital fund called JSW Venture Fund. Gaurav Sachdeva, formerly the general manager of strategic investments at Brand Capital, has been hired to run it, alongside Jindal’s son, Parth, who is reportedly enrolled at Harvard Business School currently. The Economic Times has the story here. The fund, it says, will not be a strategic investor; rather, it will look to fund a broad array of startups and sectors.

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People

Michael Bell, an Intel VP who helped lead the company’s push into the Internet of Things and who’d previously spent many years as an executive at both Apple and Palm, has has left Intel join Silver Spring Networks as CEO. The WSJ has more here.

Contrary to reports, Forbes wants you to know that singer-investor Bono is not a billionaire.

Josh Miller, 24, who sold his company, Branch, to Facebook in January of last year for a reported $15 million, announced last week that he was leaving the social network for something new. That endeavor, he disclosed yesterday, is as the White House’s first Director of Product. TechCrunch has more here.

Former MoPub CEO Jim Payne has joined Accel Partners as an entrepreneur-in-residence. The idea: to start his next company there. Fortune has more here.

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Essential Reads

Google‘s driverless cars are getting involved in minor accidents because they observe traffic laws to the letter — and people don’t.

Hulu is starting a commercial-free version of its streaming service to rival Amazon and Netflix.

China‘s economic uncertainties. How bad is it?

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Detours

The 11 greatest moments Apple’s ever had on stage.

A behavioral scientist on how you see you versus how everyone else sees you.

Time travel to-do list.

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Retail Therapy

Gateway founder Ted Waitt just put his Hollywood Hills home on the market for $20 million. To us, it looks like a very nice prison from the outside. But the views? Spectacular.

Happy Tuesday, everyone!

Two quick things. First, happy birthday to one of our most beloved readers.:)

Second, on a programming note, we’re starting a Founders’ Questions column over at TechCrunch. The idea: to answer entrepeneurs’ burning questions or, more aptly, for you — sophisticated investors, entrepreneurs, attorneys (and more) — to offer your insights. This week’s question: “How do you establish a valuation for a nascent SaaS startup when there are no similar products?” Thank you in advance!

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Top News in the A.M.

U.S. and European markets are dropping again after a report from China showed activity in August slipped to a three-year low.

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IDG Ventures Closes Third Fund with $120 Million

IDG Ventures, an early-stage venture firm that was among the first VC outfits to plant its flag in San Francisco instead of Silicon Valley, has raised $120 million for its third and newest fund, according to cofounders Phil Sanderson and Alex Rosen.

The two longtime VCs came together with a third partner, Pat Kenealy, in 2008; their previous fund closed with $100 million.

IDG Ventures is an interesting outfit in a number of ways. It’s kind of a corporate fund, but not really.

More here.

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New Fundings

Apptus, a nine-year-old, San Mateo, Ca.-based SaaS company whose sales-management software is built on Salesforce’s platform, has raised $108 million in funding from Salesforce Ventures, Iconiq Capital, K1 Capital and KIA. The company has now raised $186 million altogether. TechCrunch has more here.

Ele.me, a six-year-old, Shanghai, China-based online food ordering platform, has raised $630 million from investors including CITIC Private Equity, department store chain Hualian Group, China Media Capital and the private equity firm Gopher Asset. (We told you last week that it had raised $90 million from Hualian Group; looks like that was just part of the story.) The company is now valued at more than $3 billion; Forbes has more here.

Guru, a nearly two-year-old, Philadelphia, Pa.-based Chrome web extension that aims to surface important information as users need it, has raised $2.7 million in seed funding led by FirstMark Capital, with participation from MSD Capital, Salesforce Ventures, and other angels. TechCrunch has more here.

Intellia Therapeutics, a 1.5-year-old, Cambridge, Ma.-based gene editing startup focused on treating cancer and other diseases, has raised $70 million in Series B funding led by OrbiMed HealthCare Fund Management, with participation from EcoR1 Capital, Fidelity Management, Foresite Capital,Janus Capital Management, Sectoral Asset Management and earlier backers Atlas Venture and Novartis AG. Intellia has now raised $85 million altogether. More here.

LotusFlare, a year-old, Palo Alto, Ca.-based mobile growth and engagement platform that was founded by three former Facebookers, has raised $6 million in Series A funding led by Social + Capital, with participation from Google Ventures and Metamorphic Ventures. The company has now raised $10 million altogether. TechCrunch has more here.

Shift, a 22-month-old, San Francisco-based online used car marketplace, has raised $50 million in new funding led by Goldman Sachs, with participation from Shift’s Series A investors DFJ and Highland Capital Partners. TechCrunch has more here.

Super League Gaming, a year-old, Santa Monica, Ca.-based startup that transforms movie theaters into interactive, multiplayer gaming arenas, has raised an undisclosed amount of Series B funding from the theater chain Cinemark Theatres, a SoftBank affiliated fund, and multiple (unnamed) institutions in Hong Kong and Singapore. More here.

Take Eat Easy, a two-year-old, Brussels-based food delivery startup backed by Rocket Internet, has raised €10 million ($11.2 million) in Series B funding led byEight Roads Ventures (previously Fidelity Growth Partners), and earlier backers Rocket Internet, DN Capital, and Piton Capital. TechCrunch has more here.

Water Planet, a four-year-old, L.A.-based company that makes water treatment membrane products, has raised an undisclosed amount of Series B funding from Air Liquide Venture Capital, Bluestem Capital, and UCLA Venture Fund. More here.

WellAware, a three-year-old, San Antonio, Tex.-based provider of monitoring and management services for oil wells, pipelines, and refining and chemical facilities, has raised $16 million in Series B-1 funding from strategic investors Mitsui Corp. and Genscape, a provider of information for the commodities and energy industries. TechCrunch has more here.

Yummly, a six-year-old, Redwood City, Ca.-based online recipe recommendation and food delivery service, has raised $15 million in new funding led by Bauer Venture Partners, with participation Physic Ventures,Unilever Ventures and earlier investors. The company is now reportedly valued at $100 million. TechCrunch has more here.

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New Funds

1776, a 2.5-year-old, Washington, D.C.-based incubator, has announced the final closing of a new, $12.5 million seed fund. The outfit will focus on investments in pre-Series A startups in highly regulated industries like health, education, energy, transportation, and smart cities. 1776 was founded byDonna Harris, a former managing director of the Startup America Partnership, and Evan Burfield, who founded netDecide, which makes enterprise wealth management software, and the consulting firm Synteractive.

Cloud Apps Capital Partners, a nearly two-year-old, San Francisco-based venture firm founded by longtime VC Matt Holleran, has raised $53.7 million for its debut fund, he tells us. The single GP firm makes classic Series A stage investments, meaning “leading financings of $3 millionish.” It also typically takes a board seat. Judy Loehr, a former senior director at Salesforce, has joined Holleran as a venture partner. Cloud Apps Capital Partners has so far made seven investments, including in Insightly, GoFormz, ServiceMax, and Hootsuite. More here.

Edison Nation, a seven-year-old, Charlotte, N.C.-based outfit that helps get a lot of those “As Seen on TV” type products made, then sold by big retailers, has raised $50 million from a group of undisclosed backers. TechCrunch has more here.

Sigma West, an independent venture firm that spun out of Sigma Partners four years ago, has rebranded itself as Jackson Square Ventures. (The San Francisco-based firm has an office in San Francisco’s Jackson Square.) “We probably should have done this before,” writes managing director Josh Breinlinger. “[I]t turns out that being tied to the legacy name created confusion.” But now the firm is “choosing a name that fits us.”

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People

Nice news: Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer is expecting twin girls in December, she announced late last night.

Investor Marc Andreessen talks with Bloomberg about Silicon Valley’s relationship with the Pentagon, market volatility in China, and Twitter’s ongoing CEO search.

VC Tim Draper, who appears on the ABC Family series “Startup U,” has offered to donate $1 million to charity if the show can attract 1 million viewers this week.

Silicon Valley loves this presidential candidate six times more than any other.

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Essential Reads

Apple is reportedly eyeing a move into original programming. Variety has more here.

Hotels long welcomed sites like Expedia and Priceline. Now, they’re (finally) fighting against them.

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Detours

The college fallacy.

Intriguingly mundane moments from Hillary Clinton’s email.

Seoul, day to night.

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Retail Therapy

The newest Nest thermostat. A lot like the old Nest thermostat — but a little bit better!

Hi, welcome back, everyone!

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Top News in the A.M.

Google is abusing its dominant position to cross-sell its own products, India-based companies have complained to an India-based antitrust regulatory body — which is now formally bringing charges against Google.

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An Insider on Switching Firms

Last week, we sat down with venture capitalist Brian O’Malley of Accel Partners to talk about where he’s shopping now.

We also asked O’Malley — who was recruited into Accel from Battery Partners in 2013 — what it was like to transition between the heavyweight firms, and what he views as the biggest differences between them.

More from that candid chat follows. Our conversation has been edited lightly for length.

Founders sometimes feel “orphaned” when a cherished VC board member leaves to start his or her own fund or, in rarer cases, is recruited into a new firm. What happened to your portfolio companies when you changed firms?<

The simplest way to look at [these transitions] is that with the money comes the board seat, and the money is from the firm, not from Brian. So at the end of the day, it’s the firm’s call about whether you stay or go.

Sameer [Gandhi], who recruited me in, had [been recruited into Accel from Sequoia Partners back in 2008] and gone through a similar process, so I think there was a general attitude of: “Look, your entrepreneur relationships are the one thing you take with you, and your reputation is all you have, so let’s err on the side of doing right by the teams you’ve backed.” The thinking was, “If it takes these startups a year to get things figured out, that’s okay. At the end of the day, they chose Battery to work with you, and it’s kind of not fair [to abruptly end those ties].”

What did Battery think?

More here.

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New Fundings

Instabase, a six-month-old, San Francisco-based platform in the cloud for data, applications, and interactive computing, has raised $3.75 million in seed funding from Greylock Partners and New Enterprise Associates.

Mobcrush, a year-old, L.A.-based live-streaming service centered around mobile games, has quietly raised at least $10 million in new financing led by Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, reports TechCrunch. More here.

Peleton Technology, a four-year-old, Menlo Park, Ca.-based developer of vehicle safety systems for trucking fleets, has raised $17 million in fresh funding co-led by DENSO International America and Intel Capital, with participation from Lockheed Martin. Just last month, the company raised an undisclosed amount of strategic funding from Nokia Growth Partners. That round had followed a $17 million Series A funding that included Magna International, Castrol innoVentures, Volvo Group Venture Capital, UPS Strategic Enterprise Fund, Birchmere Ventures, Sand Hill Angels, and Band of Angels.

Vivoom, a three-year-old, Cambridge, Ma.-based mobile marketing platform, has raised $4.65 million from investors, including CommonAngels Ventures, shows an SEC filing.

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New Funds

Xiaohong Chen, formerly a managing director in China for Tiger Global, looks to be raising her third venture capital fund under the brand H Capital. According to an SEC filing, she’s targeting $500 million this time, and the first sale has yet to occur. H Capital closed its second fund last year with $300 million, shows an earlier SEC filing.

Ryan Gembala — who spent more than a year in corporate development at Facebook and, before that, held numerous roles in business development, as well as with Azure Capital Partners, where he was an associate — is raising his own seed-stage fund. According to an SEC filing, it’s called Pathbreaker Ventures and it has already raised $3.4 million from 16 investors. The filing doesn’t list a target.

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IPOs

CytomX Theraputics, a seven-year-old, South San Francisco-based biotech company whose cancer immunotherapies aim to avoid healthy cells, plans to raise $100 million in an IPO, shows a new SEC filing. Its principal shareholders include Third Rock Ventures, which owns 30.8 percent of its shares; Canaan Partners, which owns 17.4 percent; Fidelity Management and Research Company, which owns 8.7 percent; and Roche Finance, which owns 6.8 percent. The San Francisco Business Times has more here.

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Exits

CytomX Theraputics, a seven-year-old, South San Francisco-based biotech company whose cancer immunotherapies aim to avoid healthy cells, plans to raise $100 million in an IPO, shows a new SEC filing. Its principal shareholders include Third Rock Ventures, which owns 30.8 percent of its shares; Canaan Partners, which owns 17.4 percent; Fidelity Management and Research Company, which owns 8.7 percent; and Roche Finance, which owns 6.8 percent. The San Francisco Business Times has more here.

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People

Two founders of startups acquired by Facebook are leaving the company, they announced separately last week. Josh Miller, CEO of Branch, is parting ways with the social network 20 months after his eight-person company was acquired. Ilya Sukhar, whose development platform, Parse, was acquired by Facebook in April 2013, is also moving on. Quartz has the story here.

Uber has hired two top vehicle security researchers: Charlie Miller, who had been working at Twitter and Chris Valasek, who worked at security firm IOActive. The pair attracted attention earlier this month after demonstrating they could hack into a moving Jeep. Reuters has the story here.

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Jobs

PayPal is looking to hire a corporate development associate. The job is in San Jose, Ca.

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Essential Reads

Netflix is losing more Hollywood movies. Recode has the story here.

If a growing number of state bills is any guide, the email addresses and search queries of U.S. schoolchildren are a hot commodity.

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Detours

Postcards from Silicon Valley, circa 1985-2000.

Spotify says age 42 is when many of its users rediscover current pop music.

What the most expensive house in America looks like.

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Retail Therapy

The beloved Jeep Grand Wagoneer is coming back. If you can’t wait, there’s always the vintage market (and it’s a good time to buy).

Winglights.

Turntable cassette player combo.

Hi, happy Friday, dear readers!

Two quick things: TechCrunch Disrupt is coming up September 21 through September 23 and we’re super excited to be a part of it. We’ll be interviewing the Conways, along with other top VCs Aileen Lee, Jeremy Liew, Dana Settle, and Todd Chaffee. The full agenda was published yesterday; you can check it out here.

Also, as longtime readers know, we don’t publish many guest submissions (for a variety of reasons that probably wouldn’t interest you). We’re making an exception today, though, for a solid piece by Craig Hanson, cofounder of Next World Capital in San Francisco. Enjoy, and have a terrific weekend!

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Top News in the A.M.

Ian Rogers, who mapped out Apple’s online radio strategy, has resigned, just two months after the launch of its Beats1 radio service. The Financial Times has the scoop here.

Avid Life Media CEO Noel Biderman is stepping down, the company announced this morning. Avid Life Media, operates Ashley Madison. More here.

Apple‘s next big iPhone event happens September 9th.

Facebook has announced that on Monday, for the first time ever, one billion people logged on to the site.

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Market Tumult and the Marginal Productivity Trap

By Craig Hanson

The most disruptive aspect of capital market shifts isn’t simply that financing your business becomes easier or harder. It’s that the underlying math the market uses to value your company fundamentally changes. Public markets, venture capitalists and even employees evaluate you through a different framework. These shifts can be dramatic, with severe consequences for those still adhering to the prior paradigm. The market is reminding us of the potential for one of these systemic shifts now.

For the past couple years, investors of all stages have been chasing furiously after high-growth companies, and rewarding them with valuation multiples exponentially higher than the difference in their growth rate would otherwise imply. An almost single-minded obsession on growth rates has understandably driven companies to dramatically increase their sales and marketing spending, faster than historical norms, fueled by round sizes larger than historical norms.

The constraint, however – the gravitational impact of expansion economics – is that as more sales and marketing budget is spent in a period of time, the efficiency of that spend (in terms of qualified leads, sales prospects, sales, etc) naturally declines. This law of diminishing marginal productivity makes sense when you stop to think about it. When you move from the top 10 ROI marketing programs to the next 20 down the list, you’re investing in lower return programs. If you see 50 sales rep candidates in a quarter, and move from hiring the top 5 to hiring the top 20, you’re going to get lower productivity reps (assuming the manager is good at picking reps in the first place).

Despite this, in the recent environment, CEO’s have felt immense pressure, and a bit of economic rationale, in increasing sales and marketing spending even as the productivity of those dollars declines. In other words, even as it drives productivity and efficiency metrics down, some CEOs keep stepping on the gas. Why? There are 2 reasons: one bad and one (temporarily) good.

First the bad reason. Foremost, as some investors are pumping up round sizes, at all stages, much higher than normal, CEOs given this largesse naturally feel immense pressure to spend it. In too many cases, they have to increase spending dramatically in order to have any hope of reaching the herculean growth rates needed to justify the lofty valuation they just received. Shooting the moon is the only play in the book which has hope.

There is a second reason, which has slightly more economic rationale, but only temporarily.

More here . . .

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New Fundings

DreamBox Learning, a nine-year-old, Bellevue, Wa.-based company that makes elementary mathematics education software, has raised $10 million in Series B funding led by Owl Ventures, with participation from Tao Capital Partners. The company has now raised $45.6 million altogether, shows Crunchbase. More here.

Ele.me, a six-year-old, Shanghai, China-based online food ordering platform, has raised $90 million in fresh funding from the Shenzhen-listed Chinese shopping mall operator Beijing Hualian Department Store Co. In January, the company reportedly raised $350 million Series E funding led by CITIC Private Equity. More here.

iZettle, a five-year-old, London-based mobile payments company that’s expanding into small business loans, has raised $67 million in Series D funding led by earlier backers Intel Capital and Zouk Capital, with participation from other earlier investors Creandum, Dawn Capital, Index Ventures, Northzone and 83North. TechCrunch has more here.

Merus, a 12-year-old, Utrecht, the Netherlands-based cancer therapy developer, has raised €72.8 million ($80.5 million) in Series C funding co-led bySofinnova Ventures and Novo Ventures, with participation from earlier backers Johnson & Johnson Innovation, Pfizer Venture Investments, Bay City Capital, LSP Life Sciences Partners and Aglaia Oncology Fund. More here.

MimiVax, a three-year-old, Buffalo, N.Y.-based company that’s developing a cancer vaccine, has raised $1.55 million in venture funding from Buffalo Capital Partners. The company had earlier secured $2 million in government grants. Buffalo Business First has more here.

Narvar, a three-year-old, San Mateo, Ca.-based shipping and delivery platform, has raised $10 million in a round led by Accel Partners, with participation from Commerce Ventures, Crosscut Ventures and Freestyle Capital. TechCrunch has more here.

XL Hybrids, a seven-year-old, Boston, Ma.-based company whose hybrid electric powertrain for commercial fleet vehicles reduces fuel consumption by a reported 20 percent, has raised $10.5 million in Series C funding led by former Morgan Stanley executive Peter O’Brien. Venture Capital Dispatch has the story here.

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New Funds

Cross Valley Capital, a nine-month-old, Philadelphia, Pa.-based venture firm, has raised a $20 million seed fund, reports Dow Jones VentureWire. The firm, whose anchor LP is the Miami-based incuabor Rokk3r Labs, says it plans to invest in early-stage companies focused on digital health, hospitality, travel or logistics. More here.

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Exits

Motorola Mobility will absorb the mobile unit of Lenovo, the Beijing-based technology giant, with Motorola Mobility president Rick Osterloh leading the global smartphone business.

NumberFire, a five-year-old, New York-based predictive sports and advanced analytics platform that appears to have raised less than a million dollars in seed funding, has been acquired for undisclosed terms by the fantasy sports company FanDuel. More here.

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People

Google cofounder Sergey Brin (now president of newly minted Alphabet) has reportedly checked out a $49 million mansion in Alpine, N.J., a township whose other residents have included P. Diddy, Chris Rock, and Stevie Wonder. In case you’re remotely curious (and c’mon, you are a little bit), The New York Post saysthe “12-bedroom, 19-bathroom spread boasts an indoor basketball court, fitness center and a pool,” along with a “4,000-bottle wine cellar, movie theater, ballroom, formal dining room, dining terrace and three bars.” Oh, there’s also a “master suite with two spa bathrooms and dressing suites, and there’s also a fully equipped staff apartment.”

Kim Kardashian and Kanye West have reportedly settled up with YouTube cofounder Chad Hurley over a video of their 2013 engagement that he shot and then allegedly posting to MixBit, a collaborative video app owned by his newest company, Avos Systems. TMZ has the story about the reported $440,000 Hurley is paying in damages here.

Chris Lehane, who spent more than six years working in the Clinton White house and was the spokesman for former Vice President Al Gore in his 2000 presidential campaign, has joined Airbnb as its head of global policy and public affairs. The New York Times has more here.

Venture capitalist Tom Perkins — best known in recent years for putting hisfoot in his mouth — is back in the limelight, arguing in a full-page ad in the New York Times that presidential candidate Carly Fiorina is a visionary executive who helped revive Hewlett-Packard during her tenure as its CEO.

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Essential Reads

Snapchat is charging brands for video ads viewed less than a second, according to buyers.

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Detours

The art of the out-of-office reply.

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Retail Therapy

A flag in a frame. For proud ‘Mericans.

Hi, everyone, happy Thursday!

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Top News in the A.M.

China has cut its holdings of U.S. Treasuries to raise needed capital to support the yuan, reports Bloomberg.

Uber’s China arm has closed its $1 billion fundraising round early, reports Reuters. More here.

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VC Brian O’Malley on the Next Wave in “On Demand”

Brian O’Malley is good at his job. He’s good enough, in fact, that two years, ago, Accel Partners plucked him out of his former firm, Battery Ventures, so he could bat for its team instead.

As venture industry watchers know, these moves are rare, and they often pay off. Two famous examples include Sequoia Capital enticing Jim Goetz to leave Accel in 2004; Goetz has since led hugely profitable deals for Sequoia, including WhatsApp. Peter Fenton, also formerly of Accel, has similarly done a bang-up job for Benchmark, which lured him away in 2006.

Earlier this week, we sat down with O’Malley at Accel’s new San Francisco’s office to talk about switching firms, as well as why, despite a sudden cooling toward on-demand companies, he’s as bullish as ever about them.

We’re running one part of that chat today; stay tuned for the rest.

Across both Battery and Accel, you’ve backed numerous startups that meet on-demand needs, like HotelTonight, the sports ticketing app Gametime, and the food delivery app Sprig. Are you still interested in apps that meet last-minute needs?

At Accel, we’ve done three on-demand companies. We put a small piece in Sprig. We’ve backed the [Uber-for-kids startup] Shuddle. And we invested in Din [formerly called Forage], which is kind of like Blue Apron but that leverages the whole on-demand infrastructure, so you aren’t relying on all this packaging and UPS to get food across the country.

You mean Din is piggybacking off other on-demand startups?

If you think about it, Uber, Postmates, Sidecar — they all have APIs.

More here.

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New Fundings

Pronto, a year-old, London-based food delivery service, has raised $1.6 million in seed funding from Playfair Capital and Seedcamp. Other investors in the round include the London Co-Investment Fund, Ballpark Ventures, The Next Web cofounder Patrick de Laive and other unnamed angel investors. TechCrunch has more here.

Remerge, a 1.5-year-old, Berlin, Germany-based mobile app marketing platform, has raised $3 million in Series A funding led by earlier backer Point Nine Capital, with participation from VC Fonds Technologie Berlin and earlier backers German Startups Group and WestTech Ventures. The company has now raised $4 million altogether. TechCrunch has more here.

ReShape Medical, a seven-year-old, San Clemente, Calif.-based maker of non-surgical weight loss devices, has raised $38 million in Series D funding led by HealthCor Partners Management, with participation from Endeavour Vision and earlier backers SV Life Sciences, New Leaf Venture Partners, U.S. Venture Partners and Venture Investors. More here.

Resolution Games, a months-old, Stockholm, Sweden-based virtual reality games studio co-founded by Candy Crush developer Tommy Palm, has raised $6 million in Series A funding led by Google Ventures, with participation fromCreandum, Initial Capital, Bonnier Growth Media and Partech Ventures. VentureBeat has more here.

ServiceMax, an eight-year-old, Pleasanton, Ca.-based company that makes field service management software for technicians, has raised $82 million in Series F funding led by Premji Invest, with participation from GE Ventures,PTC Inc., and Cloud Apps Capital. Earlier backers also joined the round, including Emergence Capital Partners, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Mayfield, Meritech Capital Partners, Adams Street Partners, Crosslink Capital, Questmark Partners, Sozo Ventures, and Trinity Ventures. The company has now raised $204 million altogether, shows Crunchbase. More here.

Spoonflower, a 7.5-year-old, Durham, N.C.-based company offering custom fabric, wallpaper and gift wrap printing, has raised $25 million in funding led byNorth Bridge Growth Equity, with participation from Bull City Venture Partners. More here.

Yuneec, a 16-year-old drone and aerospace company with offices in Hong Kong, Shanghai, Ontario, Ca., and Hamburg, Germany, has raised $60 million funding from Intel Capital. Bloomberg has more here.

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New Funds

PCH, which designs custom products for startups and Fortune 500 companies, is teaming up with Johnson & Johnson Innovation to identify and financially support  consumer health hardware startups. If you’re an entrepreneur with a health hardware startup, you can learn more about the new program — as well as apply to be part of it — here.

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Exits

Life360, a seven-year-old, San Francisco-based maker of smartphone apps that help keep families connected, has acquired Chronos Mobile Technologies, a three-year-old, San Francisco-based startup whose mobile apps passively collect data from users’ smartphones in order to highlight trends and connections between various behaviors. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Life360 has raised roughly $76 million from investors, including DCM, Bessemer Venture Partners, and Fontinalis Partners. Chronos had raised an undisclosed amount of seed funding from Maven Ventures, Draper Associates, Major League Baseball, and Plug & Play Ventures, among others. TechCrunch has the story here.

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People

Amazon is scaling back its efforts to develop consumer devices and laying off dozens of engineers in the process. The WSJ has the story here.

Serial entrepreneur Garrett Camp is stepping in a second time to rescue his first company, StumbleUpon. Business Insider has the story here.

Former Apple CEO John Sculley has just helped launch a line of stylish smartphones for Asia-based consumers via his new company, Obi Worldphone. More here.

Y Combinator appointed a COO yesterday: Qasar Younis, a former YC alum who spent years at Google before joining the accelerator outfit as a full-time partner last year. Fortune has more here.

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Essential Reads

Watch out, Siri. Facebook has begun testing out a personal digital assistant technology dubbed “M.”

The Apple Watch isn’t a flop at all, says IDC.

Turns out almost none of the women in the Ashley Madison database ever used the site. [Pulls out world’s tiniest violin.]

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Detours

The 50 best colleges where students earn high starting salaries.

Tesla’s Model S P85D just broke Consumer Reports’ ratings system.

Ten popular grammar myths debunked by a Harvard linguist.

Street photography of Japan by Takashi Yasui.

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Retail Therapy

With Betabrand’s red-eye wrap sweater, you don’t have to look crazy anymore.

Cool clock.

It is Wednesday. We are halfway there, people!

No column today. (We have some good stuff coming your way tomorrow.)

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Top New in the A.M.

Windows 10 is evidently a giant hit for Microsoft. Corporate VP Yusuf Mehdi says that more than 75 million devices are now running the operating system, less than a month after its rollout began. ZDNet has more here.

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New Fundings

7Park Data, a three-year-old, New Hork-based analytics company that sells its information products to enterprises, has raised $3 million in Series A funding led by Mueller Ventures. More here.

Apto, a three-year-old, Denver, Co.-based maker of a commercial real estate CRM and deal management app, has raised $8 million in Series B funding led byAdam Street Partners. The Tech Bulletin has more here.

BasharSoft, the six-year-old, Cairo, Egypt-based company behind the popular, three-year-old Egyptian online recruiting platform Wuzzuf, has raised $1.7 million in Series A funding from the Sweden-based firm Vostok New Venturesand U.K.-based Piton Capital. TechCrunch has more here.

Charge Messenger, a year-old, L.A.-based messaging app that hopes to make room for itself in a crowded market that already includes WhatsApp, Line, and Viber, has raised $1.7 million in seed funding. Its investors and advisors includePelion Venture Partners, Atlas Venture, Maiden Lane Ventures,Metamorphic Ventures, Cherubic Ventures, GrandCentral founder Craig Walker, Twilio co-founder John Wolthuis, and Slicehost co-founder Matt Tanas. TechCrunch has more here.

Docady, a 1.5-year-old, Tel Aviv, Israel-based company whose iOS app lets users store and manage documents, has raised $1.5 million in funding from investors, including Pitango Ventures and Disruptive, the venture fund of Tal Barnoach, Eilon Tirosh and various former AOL video execs. TechCrunch hasmore here.

Everykey, a three-year-old, Cleveland, Oh.-based company whose access device intends to be the “master key” for users’ phone, computer, online accounts, and more, has raised $720,000 in seed funding led by IncWell, an early-stage venture firm founded in 2013 by former Chryser CEO Tom LaSorda. The company also received $195,000 from grants through the state of Ohio, including the GLIDE Innovation Fund and NCOTF. More here.

Fluxx, a five-year-old, San Francisco-based grants management platform for the philanthropic sector, has raised $10.2 million in Series A funding led byFelicis Ventures, with participation from The Kresge Foundation. More here.

Intercom, a four-year-old, San Francisco-based customer communication platform, has raised $35 million in  Series C funding led by ICONIQ Capital, with participation from earlier investors The Social + Capital Partnership andBessemer Venture Partners. The company, which has now raised $66 million altogether, has more here.

MOCACARE, a two-year-old, Palo Alto, Ca.-based maker of a heart tracker called MOCAheart, has raised $2 million in Series A funding led by the Singapore-based fund JDM, with participation from EMB International and earlier backers DCM Ventures, Lenovo Group, ONSET Ventures and Raven Ventures. TechCrunch has more here.

Onapsis, a six-year-old, Boston-based cyber security company focused on business-critical applications, has raised $13.8 million in fresh funding, shows an SEC filing. The company had previously raised $12.6 million from investors, including Endeavor Catalyst, TPG Capital, Endeavor, and .406 Ventures.

Velostrata, a year-old, Israel-based, early-stage hybrid cloud startup, has raised $14 million in Series A funding led by Norwest Venture Partners andGreylock IL Partners. TechCrunch has more here.

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New Funds

Looks like FedEx may be getting into more alternative investing, if not strict corporate venturing. A new SEC filing shows the company has set aside $150 million for a vehicle called FedEx Alternative Investments. Michael Brandmeyer, a VP at Goldman Sachs Asset Management who has been running a hedge fund investment vehicle for the bank called Petershill, is listed on the filing. So are Goldman Sachs managing directors Harold Hope and J. Christopher Kojima.

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Exits

Chic by Choice, a 1.5-year-old, London-based startup resembling RentTheRunway, has acquired its German competitor La Remia. Terms were undisclosed. TechCrunch has more here.

Hortonworks, the publicly traded, big data company built on Hadoop, is paying an undisclosed amount to acquire the months-old, Washington, D.C. based company Onyara, which makes scalable dataflow software. TechCrunch has more here.

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People

Former JPMorgan Chase analyst Ashish Aggarwal, a 27-year-old UC Berkeley graduate, has been charged along with two friends in an alleged insider trading scheme that netted more than $670,000 in illicit profits. The trades centered on two tech deals, including Salesforce’s acquisition of ExactTarget in 2013. CNN has more here.

Andrew Chen, an entrepreneur and popular blogger known for his focus on mobile products, metrics and user growth, has joined Uber in a role that will see him supercharge driver signups, referral programs and more. He writes about the move here.

Former Washington D.C. mayor Adrian Fenty, who joined Andreessen Horowitz as a special advisor in 2012 and joined the law firm Perkins Coie the following year as a business development manager, is positioning himself to advise more tech firms wanting to do business in Washington, suggests the Washingtonian.

“Angry Birds” maker Rovio is cutting another 260 jobs — or 38.8 percent of its 670 employees — after reducing its workforce by 110 employees roughly a year ago. TechCrunch takes a look at the news here.

Drew Vollero, a former finance executive at toy maker Mattel, is joining Snapchat as its VP of financing and acting CFO. He’ll report to Imran Khan, a former Credit Suisse banker who joined Snapchat in January as its chief strategy officer. The WSJ has the scoop here.
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Jobs

Osage University Partners, the venture firm, is looking to hire a tech associate. The job is in Philadelphia.

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Essential Reads

Apple has lost a ruling at Germany’s top civil court over a patent for unlocking smartphones with a finger swipe.

Why GoGo’s infuriatingly expensive, slow Internet still owns the skies.

Inside the fight over bitcoin’s future.

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Detours

Google’s eerie secret interview process for programmers.

The dog make-up tutorial you never wanted.

Impressive Oreo art.

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Retail Therapy

The Mercedes 2017 S-Class Cabriolet. It’s a full-size drop-top and it’s coming soon.

Lion Killer Dentist Halloween costume. (Not an endorsement, but also, notably, an actual product for sale!)