Good Friday morning, everyone, hope you have an outstanding weekend! (Also, here’s an easier-to-read version of today’s newsletter.)

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Top News in the A.M.

Google is planning to release a whale of a smartphone.

Twenty-year-old Amazon is opening its first bricks-and-mortar store, right across from the Empire State Building in New York.

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L.A. has been receiving a lot of attention from investors lately, as local venture capitalist Mark Suster enthusiastically observed in a detailed overview of the market yesterday. Indeed, as Suster noted, SVAngel’s David Lee and early Twitter investor Chris Sacca are among a small but growing number of investors who’ve relocated to L.A. to capture its upside.

Erik Rannala certainly gets it. Rannala was a product manager at eBay who went on to spend nearly three years running the seed-stage firmHarrison Metal with his former eBay colleague Michael Dearing.
The gig, in Palo Alto, was great. But when another former eBay colleague, Will Hsu, proposed working together in L.A., where Rannala’s wife grew up, he leapt at the opportunity, forming the L.A-based accelerator MuckerLab with Hsu in 2011. (The two have since raised a $20 million seed fund called Mucker Capital.)

As far as Rannala is concerned, there’s a lot of love about the L.A. scene. For one thing, entrepreneurs are “more cautious with their burn because capital isn’t nearly as plentiful in L.A. as in the Bay Area, or even New York.” He likens their mindset to someone “growing up during the depression . . . even when you eventually have infinitely more capital, it’s harder to shake the frugality that was learned the hard way in leaner times.”

Many entrepreneurs in the Bay Area “haven’t experienced that,” he notes.

Valuations are also “more reasonable,” Rannala says, insisting that “dollar for dollar, you’re getting more for your money down here than in the Bay Area at the top of the cycle.”

Rannala thinks it’s a little easier for L.A. entrepreneurs to escape the groupthink of Silicon Valley, too. “We’re seeing a lot of entrepreneurs here who are looking at existing industries that are getting software enabled [and figuring out how to expedite their transition] rather than doing purely derivative things like social,” though there’s plenty of that, too.

Rannala points, for example, to Santa Monica-based Surf Air, a members-only, California-based airline that offers unlimited flights for a $1,750 a month. The venture-funded company started flying last year with three used single-engine turboprops that seat seven passengers. It recently ordered 15 new Pilatus PC-12 NG aircraft. (MuckerLabs wrote the company’s first check; it has gone on to raise $18.8 million altogether.)

Everything said, Rannala, who still travels regularly to the Bay Area, is trying to be pragmatic about L.A.’s boom times. Though he doesn’t think for a minute that “LA is a flash in the pan” – for a long list of familiar reasons, he argues that the tech ecosystems in both L.A. and New York “are not short-term phenomena” — he also notes that a “shortage of indigenous local capital up and down the stack,” could mean problems if the market turns.

Bay Area investors are “inclined to invest outside the Bay Area right now, particularly when it comes to companies that are further along,” Rannala observes. “It’s [to be determined] how this evolves when we’re at the bottom of the cycle.”

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New Fundings

Agronomic Technology, a year-old, New York-based company that provides software and data to help growers improve their financial and environmental performance, has raised $2.2 million in seed funding from Armory Square Ventures, Arthur Ventures and Cayuga Venture Fund.

Alien Technology, the 20-year-old, Morgan Hill, Ca.-based maker of RFID chip tags, has raised $35 million in new funding led by Shanghai Ruizhang Investment Co., with some unnamed, earlier investors participating. The round brings the company’s total funding over the years to a $330 million. VentureBeat has more here.

BitFury, a three-year-old, San Francisco-based company that makes specialized chips for bitcoin mining, has raised $20 million in new funding, including from venture capitalist Bill Tai, former VeriFone CFO Bob Dykes, Google Maps co-founder Lars Rasmussen and earlier investor, the Georgian Co-Investment Fund. The company has now raised $40 million altogether.

BrightFunnel, a two-year-old, San Francisco-based predictive analytics software company that targets business-to-business marketers, has raised $2.5 million in seed funding led by Resolute Ventures, with Bloomberg Beta, Crosslink Capital and Tekton Ventures participating. The company has raised $3.2 million to date, shows Crunchbase.

CloudFactory, a four-year-old, Durham, N.C.-based distributed workforce company, has raised $3 million in Series A funding, including from Durham investor Sovereign’s Capital and VRBO founder David Clouse. The company had previously raised $700,000.

Devign Lab, a new, Korea-based company that’s building a peer-to-peer marketplace and merchant payment tools around bitcoin, has raised $200,000 in seed funding from K Cube Ventures, a Korean venture firm. Coindesk has the story here.

Digital Reasoning, a 14-year-old, Nashville, Tn.-based company whose machine learning algorithms are capable of analyzing human language data (to assess fraud and more), has raised $24 million in Series C funding led by Goldman Sachs and Credit Suisse NEXT Investors. The company has raised at least $29 million to date, shows Crunchbase.

mParticle, a two-year-old, New York-based mobile data startup, has raised $1.5 million in seed funding from Harbinger Capital, Battery Ventures and earlier investor Bowery Capital. mParticle has now raised $6 million altogether, including from Google Ventures and Greylock Partners.

Muufri, a months-old, San Francisco-based company making “animal free milk,” has raised $2.1 million from 10 investors, shows an SEC filing. More here.

PathSensors, a four-year-old, Baltimore, Md.-based company whose biological aerosol collector system detects and identifies biological threat agents, is looking to raise $2.1 million, shows an SEC filing. The company has previously raised $1.9 million, including from Maryland Venture Fund.

Peel, a five-year-old, Mountain View, Calif.-based company whose smartphone and tablet apps allow users to control their TVs, has raised $50 million in new funding from Alibaba Group. The company has now raised $86.7 million altogether, including from Lightspeed Venture Partners, Redpoint Ventures and Translink Capital.

Puralytics, a seven-year-old, Beaverton, Or.-based maker of water purification systems, has raised $1.1 million as part of a round that’s targeting $2.3 million, shows an SEC filing. The company had raised $4 million last year from Keiretsu Forum.

Ranovus, a 2.5-year-old, Ottawa, Ontario–based maker of multi-terabit interconnect solutions for datacenter and communications networks, has raised $24 million in Series B funding from Azure Capital Partners, Deutsche Telekom, BDC Venture Capital, OMERS Ventures and Export Development Corp. The company has raised at least $35 million to date, shows Crunchbase.

Shine Medical Technologies, a four-year-old, Madison, Wi.-based company that makes medical tracers and cancer treatment elements, has raised $125 million of debt and equity financing from Deerfield Management, a New York-based health-care investment firm.

Spensa Technologies, a five-year-old, West Lafayette, Ind.-based precision agricultural startup that operates an online pest management system, has received $1.3 million from investors, including Elevate Ventures, an Indiana-based nonprofit to help entrepreneurs and emerging startups; Foundry Investment Fund, a Purdue fund; mTerra Ventures; Zionsville Precision Ag Venture; and individual investors. The company has now raised $2.5 million to date.

Spin Transfer Technologies, a seven-year-old, Fremont, Ca.-based developer of magnetoresistive random access memory technology (to bring faster switching speeds to chips), has raised $70 million in new funding led by Woodford Investment Management, with Invesco Asset Management and the London private wealth management fund SandAire participating. The company had previously raised $36 million in a 2012 round, shows Crunchbase.

Totspot, a six-year-old, New York-based mobile marketplace for parents to buy and sell children’s clothing, has raised $1.8 million in seed funding led by GGV Capital. Other investors include 500 Startups, AME Cloud Ventures, and QueensBridge Venture Partners.

Voxa, a year-old, Atlanta-based email intelligence startup, has raised $1.5 million in seed funding co-led by Ethos Capital Partners and Information Security Systems founder Tom Noonan, with participation from Premiere Global Services and earlier investor Atlanta Ventures. PandoDaily has more here.

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IPOs

HubSpot, the eight-year-old, Cambridge, Ma.-based marketing software company, went public yesterday, raising $125 million in the process. Its shares opened at $32.99 — a 32 percent jump from their IPO price of $25. They closed at $30.10, giving the company a valuation of $914 million.

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Exits

Equivio, a 10-year-old, Tel Aviv, Israel-based text analysis company, is being acquired by Microsoft for $200 million, reports the WSJ.

MedXT, a two-year-old, San Francisco-based startup that has developed technology to host and display medical images from the cloud, is being acquired by the storage company Box for undisclosed terms. The company appears to have raised just $140,000, including via Y Combinator. VentureBeat has more here.

Xyo, a four-year-old, Berlin-based app search engine and contextual advertising technology, has been acquired by publicly traded Mandalay Digital Group for undisclosed terms. The company had raised an undisclosed amount of funding in 2012 from Eric Wahlforss, Klaas Kersting, and Signia Venture Partners, shows Crunchbase. TechCrunch has more here.

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People

Gregg Brockway has been named the chief executive of Maker Media, the publisher of Make magazine; producer of the Maker Faires events franchise; and operator of Maker Shed, an online retailer of DIY electronics, kits and books. A serial entrepreneur who previously cofounded Chairish, Tripit, and Hotwire, Brockway had spent the last six months as a venture partner at O’Reilly AlphaTech Ventures.

There’s no love lost between investors Carl Icahn and Marc Andreessen, who began battling publicly over the fate of PayPal earlier this year. Now, the two have taken comically pointed jabs at each other on television, with Andreessen characterizing Icahn as the “evil Captain Kirk,” and Icahn — throwing restraint completely out the window — saying Andreessen has “screwed more people than Casanova.” Icahn added that Andreessen’s “squeaky voice” is so high-pitched that “only a dog” can hear it. (Andreessen has since updated his Twitter bio to read: “The quintessential guy that is wrong with corporate America… Hard to hear, talks with a squeaky voice that only a dog can understand.”)

Brian McLoughlin has stepped down as a general partner at the L.A.-based venture firm Upfront Ventures, reports Fortune’s Dan Primack. He spent a dozen years with the firm; he’s becoming a venture partner atFintech Collective, a New York-based firm that focuses on seed and early-stage investments in the financial services industry. Last last year, Upfront promoted former HauteLook CMO Greg Bettinelli to partner.

Yesterday, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella told an audience of mostly women at the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing that asking for a raise isn’t the best way to get one. “It’s not really about asking for a raise, but knowing and having faith that the system will give you the right raise,” he said, shocking attendees. Nadella later backtracked, writing a memo to Microsoft employees that said, “I answered that question completely wrong.”

George Reichenbach, who cofounded Braemar Energy Ventures, has passed away at age 85. More here.

Y Combinator founders Paul Graham and Jessica Livingston sit down with Bloomberg’s Emily Chang for what they say is their first joint interview.

Scenes and photos from this week’s Vanity Fair New Establishment Summit in San Francisco.

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Jobs

McKinsey & Company is still in the market for an M&A analyst in New York.

Nike is looking for a senior director of business development for its “innovation” unit to research and source partnership opportunities, including for its Converse brand. The job is in Portland, Or.

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Essential Reads

Both Uber and Lyft get an “F” from the Better Business Bureau.

The “D,” meanwhile, gets an A+ from reporters.

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Detours

The intelligent life of the city racoon.

Commercial break handshakes.

The world’s coolest offices.

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Retail Therapy

Killer sugar cubes.

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

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Top News in the A.M.

Billionaire investor Carl Icahn to Apple CEO Tim Cook: It’d be really terrific if you repurchased “a lot more” of your “dramatically undervalued” stock and soon.

You may need to wait to buy that new, larger iPad, says the WSJ.

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Planning for the End of a Bubble

With so much talk lately of bubbles and burn rates, venture capitalists seem to be hoping for the best but planning for the worst. None will tell you with certainty that we’re at the top of the market, but they say they’re trying to be as prudent as ever — just in case.

Investor Stewart Alsop, for example, whose firm is in the process of raising a third, $100 million, fund, says the way his firm is planning for the end of today’s go-go cycle is by “not investing in momentum businesses right now.”

It’s not an entirely new trend for Alsop-Louie Partners, which has always stuck to atypical and very early-stage investments, and that’s largely because Alsop remembers the last bubble so well. “I was at [New Enterprise Associates] and we’d raised a new fund in 2000 and invested in telecom companies through that fall,” he recalls. “The idea was that these were real companies, buying real stuff.”

When it became apparent that the telecoms’ endless growth possibilities weren’t so endless (they eventually built up an oversupply of capacity), they tanked, and NEA — along with many other firms — had to write off almost all of their investments. The lesson for Alsop: “That venture capital isn’t based on what happens in the next 12 months.”

Venky Ganesan of Menlo Ventures says his firm is also being cautious. For one thing, Menlo is taking a good long look these days at whether the unit economics of the startups it meets with make sense. The firm is also focused on business models that aren’t dependent on the availability of cheap capital, and it’s “orienting toward more seed and Series A rounds so we don’t have a timing issue,” says Ganesan.

Ganesan says he doesn’t believe we’re in a bubble, citing some of Menlo’s portfolio companies like Uber, which are “growing revenue at a pace we haven’t seen in our history.” Even still, he says, by funding companies that will “go to market in 18 to 24 months,” Menlo is essentially buying itself time to better understand “whether this is a bubble or a long-term secular trend,” he says.

It’s an approach to which Greg Gretsch of Sigma West can relate. Gretsch says he doesn’t know whether or not we’re “in a bubble and headed for a crash” and that “anyone who says they know is a fool.” But he sees plenty of companies whose “business model is the ever-decreasing cost of capital that’s freely available” and says Sigma has been steering far clear of them.

Like Alsop, Gretsch suggests that his firm is mostly sticking to its knitting, meaning “focusing on companies that have a fundamental business with real customers who are buying.” He adds that while most of Sigma’s portfolio companies are spending their revenue on growth at the moment, “a large percentage [of them] could cut back to profitability if they had to. We don’t have any [portfolio companies] that will hit the wall hard” if the winds change.

That’s not to say that Sigma West is insulated from what’s happening around it. Says Gretsch: “The challenge in this market is that everything is expensive and you have to make sure you’re not making investments to keep up with the Joneses. We hear a lot of, ‘Our competitor has this great space and employee perks and they look better to [outsiders].’ And it’s like, yeah, those things would be optimal from a cultural standpoint, but those competitors are spending a ton.”

Gretsch says he tries to be sympathetic to his startups, but he’s not taking anything for granted right now. He points to a Chicago-based portfolio company that’s doubling its workforce every year and recently asked his opinion about whether it should move into a big new building whose landlord wanted a 10-year-lease, or into several smaller satellite offices that required shorter commitments but could come at a cultural cost.

He nudged the company toward the satellite offices.

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New Funds

10 Minutes With, a 1.5-year-old, London-based startup behind a career matchmaking platform for graduates, has raised $4 million from a group of undisclosed investors. The company had previously raised $400,000 in seed funding, says TechCrunch.

Avaamo, an eight-month-old, Los Altos, Ca.-based company behind a new, secure mobile message app designed specifically for the mobile workforce, has raised $6.3 million in seed funding led by WI Harper Group, with Rembrandt Ventures Partners, Streamlined Ventures,Eleven Two Capital and Ovo Fund participating. (Scott Irwin of Rembrandt tells StrictlyVC that this firm was particularly excited about Avaamo’s founders, both former TIBCO execs, adding that “for the U.S. and Europe, [the opportunity Avaamo is addressing is] primarily a compliance issue. For Asia, it’s more about a mobile workforce that changes jobs frequently and could take sensitive information with them.”)

Fortuna Retail, the year-old, Gurgaon, India-based company behindGemPundit.com, an online store for gemstones, has raised an undisclosed amount in seed funding from angel investors, including Anand Kumar, partner of the Mumbai-based law firm Sand Hill Counsel. VCCircle has more here.

GrownOut, a year-old, Gurgaon-based online recruiting company, has raised an undisclosed amount of Series A funding from Matrix Partners, with earlier investor OutBox Ventures participating. Livemint has more here.

Jukely, a two-year-old, New York-based startup that sells access to a wide number of local concerts for $25 a month, has raised $2.4 million in seed funding co-led by Northzone and 14W. Other participants in the round include AngelList’s fund Maiden Lane, Bullet Time Ventures, Amol Sarva, Larry Marcus, Hany Nada, Paul Sethi, David Lerner, andCharles Goldstuck, among others. The company had previously raised $900,000 in seed funding, shows Crunchbase.

LightCyber, a three-year-old, Ramat Gan, Israel-based cybersecurity startup, has raised $10 million in a new funding led by Battery Ventures, with participation from earlier investors Glilot Capital Partners and Check Point Software cofounder Marius Nacht. The company has raised $11.5 million to date, shows Crunchbase.

Move Guides, a three-year-old, London startup whose cloud software helps companies manage the relocation of their employees, has raised $8.2 million in Series A funding led by New Enterprise Associates, with participation from earlier investor Notion Capital and individual investors. The company has raised $10.6 million to date.

MyHealthDirect, a nine-year-old, Nashville, Tn.-based scheduling platform used by hospitals, health systems, and managed care organizations, has raised $8 million in funding from Ares Capital Corporation, along with earlier investors Chrysalis Ventures and Arboretum Ventures. The company has raised at least $22.9 million to date, shows Crunchbase.

Nepris, a year-old, Austin, Tx.-based online platform that brings together curriculum and industry experts to engage students, has raised $550,000 in seed funding from NewSchools Venture Fund and numerous angel investors. EdSurge has more here.

Perkville, a 4.5-year-old, Oakland, Ca.-based company whose cloud-based software enables businesses to create customer rewards programs, has raised $2.4 million in Series A funding led by Moneta Ventures, with participation from MDO Holdings, Keiretsu Forum, Sand Hill Angels,Xandex Ventures, Fifth Era, and members of the Berkeley Angel Network. The company has now raised $3.4 million altogether.

PillPack, a 1.5-year-old, Manchester, N.H.-based online pharmacy that aims to simplify medication management, has raised $8.75 million in new funding led by Accel Partners, with participation from earlier investor Atlas Venture. The company has raised roughly $13 million to date, including from Founder Collective and Techstars.

Regen Energy, a nine-year-old, Toronto-based company that designs, develops, and markets wireless energy management tools, including controllers, has raised $12 million in Series B funding led by new investors including an unnamed U.S utility company, Export Development Canada, and EnerTech Capital. Earlier investors BDC Capital and NGEN Partners also joined the round, which brings the company’s total funding to $25 million, shows Crunchbase.

ROLI, a five-year-old, London-based maker of a new musical instrument akin to a digital piano, has added $3.7 million to what is now a $12.8 million Series A round. The new capital comes from Hong Kong-basedHorizons Ventures. The company’s earlier investors include Universal Music Group, Index Ventures, FirstMark Capital, and Balderton Capital.

TagCommander, a four-year-old, Paris-based cloud service that helps users manage meta tags in their website pages and mobile apps, has raised about $8.3 million in Series B funding led by Hi Inov, the venture arm of Dentressangle Initiatives, with participation from XAnge Private Equity and Bpifrance’s Digital Ambition Fund.

TheGrid, a three-year-old, San Francisco-based company whose software can automatically create websites out of any content, has raised $3.1 million from investors, including former Facebook VP Greg Badros, and former Disney VP John Pleasants.

Thync, a three-year-old, Los Gatos, Ca.-based company that makes a neurosignaling, mood-changing wearable, has raised $13 million in Series A funding led by Khosla Ventures. BusinessWeek takes its prototype device for a spin here.

Truecaller, a five-year-old, Stockholm-based mobile phone directory and called ID app that lets people search for other mobile users by name or number, has raised $60 million in Series C led by Atomico, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, and Sequoia Capital. TechCrunch has more here.

Vive, a two-year-old, Berlin-based anonymous video chatting site, has raised $1.5 million funding round from a number of prominent Eurpoean angels.

Zenedge, a two-year-old, San Jose, Ca.-based company that detects distributed denial-of service attacks, SQL injections of malicious code commands and other cyber attacks with the goal of thwarting them before they do damage, has raised $3.5 million in funding, including from Needham & Company Chairman Andrew Malik. Venture Capital Dispatch has more here.

Zomato, a six-year-old, Gurgaon, India-based online restaurant has reportedly entered into talks with numerous private equity and strategic investors to raise about $200 million by December, a development that could push its valuation into the billion-dollar-plus club, says the Economic Times. Zomato has thus far raised $53.8 million from Sequoia Capital and Info Edge, shows Crunchbase. More here.

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New Funds

OpenView Venture Partners, the eight-year-old, Boston-based venture firm that backs expansion-stage companies, has closed its fourth fund with $250 million, up slightly from its $206 million predecessor.

Wellington Management, the 86 year-old mutual fund manager, is reportedly raising a $500 million fund expressly to back privately held companies. Fortune has the story here.

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People

The 100 “coolest” nerds in New York, per Business Insider.

Marc Andreessen and his wife, Laura Arrillaga-Andreessen, are giving $500,000 to three non-profits that were created to increase the ranks of women and blacks and Hispanics in the high-tech industry: Code2040, Girls Who Code and Hack the Hood. “Laura and I basically set out to identify three groups doing an effective job,” Andreessen tells USA Today. “These grants are intended to boost their capabilities and help them scale for the next several years.”

Carol Gallagher, the former CEO of Calistoga Pharmaceuticals (acquired by Gilead Sciences in 2011), has joined New Enterprise Associates as a partner on its life sciences team.

Last night, entrepreneur Elon Musk took the stage at the Vanity Fair New Establishment Summit, telling interviewer Walter Isaacson that artificial intelligence is advancing faster than almost anyone realizes, and that it might eventually wipe us out, too. Said Musk, “Particularly if [the machine is] involved in recursive self-improvement … and its utility function is something that’s detrimental to humanity, then it will have a very bad effect.” Here’s video of the sit-down.

Vivian Schiller, a high-profile NBC and NPR exec whom Twitter hired to run its news unit, is leaving the company after barely a year into the job. Recode has the story. Schiller joined Twitter at the behest of Ali Rowghani and Chloe Sladden, Twitter’s former COO and media head, respectively. Both have left the company in the last five months.

Last Friday, we told you that retiring Oracle CEO Larry Ellison is hostinga Republican fundraiser for Senator Rand Paul at his Woodside, Ca. home this coming Wednesday. What we didn’t know is that at the very same time, on the same street in Woodside — Manzanita Way — venture capitalist John Doerr will be on a fundraising mission for Democrats, hosting former President Bill Clinton along with Democratic SenatorsBarbara Boxer of California, Mark Begich of Alaska, Michael Bennet of Colorado and Ron Wyden of Oregon at his own home. The San Francisco Chronicle has the story.

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Jobs

JPMorgan Chase is looking to add a business analyst to its Global Technology Strategy and Partnerships group. The job is in New York.

Osage University Partners, which invests exclusively in startups that are commercializing university research, is looking for an associate to work in Philadelphia.

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Data

Sixty U.S. venture firms raised $6.1 billion in new commitments during the third quarter of 2014, a 26 percent decrease compared to the number of funds raised during the second quarter of 2014 and a 21 percent decline by dollar commitments, according to newly released figures fromThomson Reuters and the National Venture Capital Association. The silver lining: the amount committed to U.S. venture capital funds during the first nine months of this year has already eclipsed all of last year.

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Essential Reads

Snapchat is turning on the revenue spigot soon. Specifically, CEO Evan Spiegel said yesterday to expect ads in the company’s “Stories” feature.

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Detours

How “normal” is your drinking?

Why Marvel works: a scholarly investigation.

What kids around the world eat for breakfast.

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Retail Therapy

Well, this daybed has late-stage startup office written all over it.

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• The Funniest Part Of Carl Icahn’s Letter To Apple (AAPL)

Hi, good Tuesday morning, everyone! No column this a.m., but stay tuned for interviews this week with MuckerLab cofounder Erik Rannala and longtime VC Stewart Alsop, among other good stuff. (Psst, web visitors, this version of today’s email is easier to read.)

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Top News in the A.M.

Samsung warned last night that another disappointing earnings report is coming, as cheaper Android phones, along with those new, giant iPhones, eat into its profits.

Yahoo is making some some major-league job cuts in India, according to a new report in Next Big What.

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Blockchain, a three-year-old, U.K.-based bitcoin wallet company, has raised $30 million in its first institutional round of funding. The capital comes from Lightspeed Venture Partners, Wicklow Capital, Mosaic Ventures, Prudence Holdings, Future Perfect Ventures and individual investors, including Richard Branson.

BloomNation, a three-year-old, Santa Monica, Ca.-based online flower marketplace that invites florists to take pictures of their creations and price them, then manages those transactions for a 10 percent cut, has raised $5.55 million from investors. A Capital led the round, with participation from earlier investors Andreessen Horowitz, Spark Capital and Chicago Ventures. Venture Capital Dispatch has more here.

Cabify, a two-year-old, Madrid, Spain-based company whose app allows people to book and pay for chauffeur-driven vehicles, has raised $4 million in funding led by earlier investor Seaya Ventures, with Black Vine and other, unnamed investors from Latin America participating. Cabify had previously raised $16 million, including from Resolute Partners and Red Swan Ventures.

DocuSign, the 11.5-year-old, San Francisco-based electronic-signature software company, has raised $115 million in Series E funding from three Japanese firms — NTT Finance, Mitsui & Co., and Recruit Holdings – which brings its total funding to date to $230 million. Others of the company’s investors include the Australian telecommunications giant Telstra, Ignition Partners, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Accel Partners, Google Ventures, and Salesforce. Geekwire has more here.

EatStreet, a four-year-old, Madison, Wi.-based online restaurant ordering service, has added $4 million to its Series B round, which had previously closed with $6 million in April. New investors in the expanded financing are local venture firm 4490 Ventures and the State of Wisconsin Investment Board. The company has now raised $12 million altogether. Xconomy has more here.

Eversight, a year-old, Palo Alto, Ca.-based company whose cloud-based analytics and machine learning service helps manufacturers optimize in-store promotions, has raised $9.7 million in Series A funding from Emergence Capital Partners.

Infusionsoft, a 13-year-old, Chandler, Az.-based company that makes sales and marketing software for small businesses, has raised $55 million in Series D funding led by Bain Capital Ventures, with earlier investors Signal Peak Ventures, Goldman Sachs, Arthur Ventures and Allure Ventures participating. The company has now raised roughly $128 million altogether, shows Crunchbase.

JobVite, an 11-year-old, Burlingame, Ca.-based job recruiting platform, has raised $25 million in Series D funding led by Catalyst Investors, with participation from earlier investors CMEA, ATA Ventures and Trident Capital. The company has now raised $55.5 million to date shows Crunchbase.

Loanz, a 1.5-year-old, Irvine, Ca.-based private credit lending platform, has raised $2 million in seed funding from undisclosed “financial services and lending industry executives and entrepreneurs.” Loanz was incubated by Outset Ventures, a development studio for Internet companies in strategic vertical markets.

MiniLuxe, a seven-year-old, Boston-based tech-enabled nail and beauty salon franchise, has raised $23 million in Series C funding led by private equity investor Horowitz Group. Other investors in the round included Cue Ball (which had incubated the first salon), Murano Group, Silverado Interests, Beechwood Capital, Barrier Island Capital, Valley Oak Investments, and MIT Media Lab founder Nicholas Negroponte. TechCrunch has more here.

SynGen, a five-year-old, Sacramento, Ca.-based regenerative medicine company focused on stem cell harvesting system, has raised an undisclosed amount of new funding from earlier investor Bay City Capital. The company had previously raised at least $11.5 million from investors, including GE Capital, shows Crunchbase.

Printi, a 2.5-year-old, São Paulo, Brazil-based web-printing startup, has sold a meaningful minority stake in its business for $25 million to the printing company Vistaprint, which acquired all of Printi’s previous investors’ stakes for $25 million. According to Crunchbase, the company had raised just $1.2 million in Series A funding in August 2012, including from Greenoaks Capital, Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale, serial Brazilian entrepreneur Fabrice Grinda and Groupon Brazil co-founder Florian Otto. TechCrunch has more here.

Tuva Labs, two-year-old, New York-based online startup that’s teaching data science to to K-12 classrooms, has raised $430,000 in seed funding led by NewSchools Venture Fund, with participation from Ben Franklin Technology Partners and angel investors. The startup is also a participant in the Kaplan EdTech Accelerator. EdSurge has more here.

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New Funds

Amiti, a four-year-old, Chicago-based venture capital firm that invests alongside leading Israeli investors in late-stage Israeli startups, is looking to raise a $75 million second fund, according to an SEC filing that shows its first sale has yet to occur. Last week, another firm, Magma Venture Partners, a 15-year-old, Tel Aviv, Israel-based firm, closed on a new, $150 million fund to invest exclusively in Israeli entrepreneurs.

Data Collective, a three-year-old, San Francisco-based firm that focuses on big data companies, has raised roughly $140 million for its third fund, shows an SEC filing. Among some of the firm’s newest bets are Drone Deploy, a San Francisco-based company with a smart drone management platform, and Authy, a San Francisco-based company whose API makes it easy for developers to add two-factor authentication to any site or app. Both companies closed on seed rounds last month.

Goodwater Capital, the new venture capital firm of Chi-Hua Chien, who spent seven years as a general partner of Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, closed a $130 million fund over the summer, he tells VentureWire. Chien, with cofounder Eric Kim, a longtime managing director at Maverick Capital, have already made numerous investments from the fund, including Imoji, a new, San Francisco-based company whose app enables users to take any picture and turn it into a shareable emoji/sticker. The firm also joined the Series B round of online menswear company Frank & Oak last month.

Innovation Works, a 15-year-old, Pittsburgh, Pa.-based seed-stage investor backed by Pennsylvania state agencies, has unveiled a $24 million venture fund called Riverfront Ventures that will invest between $1 million and $1.5 million in early-stage information technology, life sciences, medical devices, advanced electronics, advanced materials, robotics and energy companies that are based in southwestern Pennsylvania and which have received an investment from Innovations Works’s seed fund.

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Exits

Bluebeam Software, a 12-year-old, Pasadena, Ca.-based maker of PDF software used for architecture, engineering, and construction, has been acquired by the German software company Nemetschek for $100 million. Bluebeam was a spun out of Alliance Spacesystems, and had received funding from the Pasadena Angels and Tech Coast Angels. Nemetschek also produces software for the architectural and construction industries. SoCal Tech has the story here.

Koality, a two-year-old, San Francisco-based company that helps developers test software by letting them quickly set up multiple instances of a build, has been acquired by another venture-backed company, Docker, for undisclosed terms. Koality had raised $1.8 million in seed funding from Founders Fund, Index Ventures, Webb Investment Network, and Felicis Ventures, among others. Docker, an open-source engine that automates the deployment of any application as a self-sufficient container that will run virtually anywhere, has raised $55 million from investors. TechCrunch has more here.

Mopay, a 14-year-old, Munich-based company that enables customers to pay for good with their phones, has been acquired by its five-year-old, Munich-based rival Boku in a stock deal for an undisclosed amount. Mopay had raised at least $20 million from investors T-Venture Mobile, DFJ Esprit and Holtzbrinck Ventures. Boku has meanwhile raised $75 million from VCs, including Andreessen Horowitz, Benchmark Capital, DAG Ventures, Index Ventures, Khosla Ventures, New Enterprise Associates and Telefónica. CNBC has a good overview of the deal and what’s happening in mobile payments here.

Kulu Valley, a 12-year-old, U.K.-based video platform company, has been acquired for about $15 million by Qumu, a publicly traded enterprise video content management company. Kulu had raised outside funding from Andromeda Capital and Realise Capital Partners.

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People

Investor Marc Andreessen talks about the financial industry with Bloomberg Markets magazine, telling the outlet: “We can reinvent the entire thing.”

Billionaire entrepreneur and former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg is set to become an Honorary Knight of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire. As notes the Independent, the U.K. sometimes bestows these awards on foreign nationals who make an important contribution to British interests. Both Bloomberg’s company and charity have made London their European home.

Zavain Dar has joined the venture firm Lux Capital in Palo Alto, Ca., as a senior associate. Dar joins Lux from Eric Schmidt’s Innovation Endeavors. Prior to Innovation Endeavors he was an early employee at Discovery Engine, acquired by Twitter. According to Lux, Dar — who holds degrees in symbolic systems theoretical computer science from Stanford University — is also an adjunct instructor at Stanford and recently taught the school’s first cryptocurrency class.

Joel Kaplan, currently Facebook’s VP of U.S. Public Policy in Washington, is becoming its VP of Global Policy, a role Facebook created to manage growing interest from foreign and domestic lawmakers over privacy, copyright and security issues, says the Washington Post.

Duncan Niederauer, the former New York Stock Exchange CEO, has joined Battery East as a managing director. Battery East, if you missed its public debut last month, is a San Francisco-based brokerage firm that’s hoping to convince start-ups to let it arrange secondary transactions in their stock. Dealbook has more here.

Travis VanderZanden, who recently left his role as COO of the ride-sharing service Lyft, has joined its arch enemy Uber as its VP International Growth, reports Recode.

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Jobs

Monsanto, the corporate giant that sells agricultural products to farmers, is looking for an investment principal to help identify startups for Monsanto to back. The job is in St. Louis, Mo., and involves regular travel to San Francisco.

—–

Essential Reads

Why a company that was worth $1.5 billion on Friday fell off a financial cliff yesterday.

Spiraling prices aren’t the real reason to worry about bitcoin, says Quartz.

A new dating app unabashedly calls itself “Tinder, minus the poor people.” It’s Luxy, and we’re predicting big things, because these types of social networks are always hugely successful.

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Detours

It’s Russian president Vladimir Putin’s 62nd birthday today, and a pro-Putin Facebook group has given him an, erm, interesting gift.

Drug cheats in sports could benefit “for decades,” scientists find.

How the ice bucket challenge went viral: a data visualization.

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Retail Therapy

Standing in a long line, or waiting on a train to pass, or watching your kids at the park? Time to make an espresso!

Also: Nice bags.

Good morning, everyone, hope you had a terrific weekend. (Web visitors, this version of today’s email is a little easier on the eyes, fyi.)

—–

Top News in the A.M.

Hewlett-Packard is officially separating its PC and printer businesses from its corporate hardware and services operations, a maneuver that should “give rise to two publicly traded companies, each with more than $50 billion in annual revenue,” reports the WSJ. Meg Whitman will be CEO of the enterprise-focused business, to be called Hewlett-Packard Enterprise. She’ll also serve as nonexecutive chairman of the PC company, which will be called HP Inc. Dion Weisler, now head of HP’s printing business, will be president and CEO of that second business.

Bitcoin is trading at $325 this morning, way off its peak last year. Seeking Alpha has some theories about what’s going on. So does Dealbook.

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What Went Wrong(a) at Wonga

In the span of seven years, Wonga, a London-based online payday lender, managed to become one of the best known Internet brands in the U.K, with half the buses in London plastered with its ads, along with a good number of soccer players, through Wonga’s sponsorship of the English Premier League team Newcastle United.

Then, late last week, the company disclosed that it was writing off some $350 million of debt – at a cost of roughly $56 million to the company — following a “voluntary agreement” between the company and the U.K.’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), which took over regulation of the consumer finance sector last year. Wonga’s implicit admission: That despite the more than 8,000 pieces of information that its algorithm takes into account when assessing a potential borrower, the company had lent money to people (330,000 of them) it should have declined.

Andy Haste, an executive chairman who was installed at Wonga in July to rehabilitate the company, said that going forward, the company is committed to lending only to those who can “reasonably afford” a loan. Haste – who was hired into Wonga after it was caught sending bogus letters from nonexistent law firms to customers in arrears – also added that he “agreed with the concerns expressed by the FCA and as a consequence of our discussions we have committed to taking these actions.”

So when did things go south at Wonga and can the company — which has raised roughly $145 million from Balderton Capital, Accel Partners, Wellcome Trust, Oak Investment Partners, Greylock Partners, Dawn Capital, Meritech Capital Partners, and Index Ventures over the years — ever recover? Unsurprisingly, it depends on who you ask.

Insiders generally paint a picture of a company that’s been the victim of a changing regulatory environment. When Wonga was launched, its business was lightly regulated by the Office of Fair Trading (OFT), which was “not a banking oversight function that had a great deal of power or was intrusive,” observes one investor. Wonga suddenly faced a much more stringent set of checks and balances when the regulation of consumer credit was transferred last year from the OFT to the FCA.

The FCA’s regulators have been overly harsh, too, insists another source, who suggests its cozy relationships with established players is primarily why the FCA almost immediately began poring over the fine print at Wonga. “Wonga’s business was always regulated,” says the insider. “From the first day, it was licensed; it had its own underwriting agents and was being reviewed by regulators. But becoming such a large brand so quickly was hurting the established banks, which are very influential in a country like the U.K.”

Still, those who spoke with StrictlyVC also concede that Wonga made plenty of mistakes – not working earlier with financial services authorities, “running the business a lot looser than they should have,” and those threatening debt collection letters among them. (The latter proved an especially big embarrassment to the Church of England, which had unwittingly invested in Wonga through an investment fund; it ditched its stake in July.)

The company’s once-renowned algorithm also appears to have failed the company – a lesson, possibly, to many newer lending companies that believe the sophisticated algorithms they’re developing are akin to impenetrable moats.

As says one insider: “With algorithms, you always think you’re doing the right thing until the sh_t hits the fan. You ask the guys involved in Long Term Capital Management [the famous hedge fund that collapsed in the late ‘90s] whether they knew there was a ‘black swan’ in their algorithm; they didn’t.”

The question now is whether Wonga stands any chance of surviving. Haste has said he believes Wonga, which serves 1 million customers, can succeed as a small company. Others close to the company aren’t so sure about its fate. Says one source: “Will Wonga be a big business again? I doubt it because of the damage to their brand reputation.”

Say another: “If Wonga can afford to pay the penalty and stick around, they have a business to build. Consumers in the U.K. don’t have a lot of other good options. The banks are still doing a sh_tty job.”

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New Fundings

Appsee, a two-year-old, Tel Aviv, Israel-based mobile analytics service that helps measure user behavior within an app, has raised $2 million in Series A funding from earlier investors Giza VC and Moshe Lichtman, with participation from new investor Flint Capital. The company has raised $3 million altogether. TechCrunch has more here.

Alteryx, a four-year-old, Irvine, Ca.-based company whose software helps users build analytical apps from a variety data sources, has raised $60 million in Series B funding led by Insight Venture Partners, with participation from earlier investors SAP Ventures and Toba Capital. The company has now raised $78 million altogether.

Beepi, year-old, Los Altos, Ca.-based used car marketplace, has raised $60 million in funding, including from Sherpa Ventures, Foundation Capital, and earlier investors Redpoint Ventures, Sherpa Foundry CEO Tina Sharkey, OLX founder Fabrice Grinda, IG Expansion co-founder Jose Marin, Homeaway co-founder Brian Sharples, former Loopnet CEO Rich Boyle, and Silicon Valley Bank. The company has now raised $65 million to date. Venture Capital Dispatch looks at what all the fuss is about.

BuildZoom, a 2.5-year-old, San Francisco-based online marketplace for remodeling and construction services, has raised $2.15 million in seed funding led by Formation 8, with participation from Streamlined Ventures and Goldcrest Investments. The company previously raised roughly $1.4 million in earlier seed funding, including from Y Combinator, whose program it passed through last year.

Curbside, a year-old, Palo Alto, Ca.-based company whose app searches real-time local inventory across retailers and uses location-based technologies to alert stores when a customer is arriving for a pickup, has raised $8 million in Series A funding led by Index Ventures. Individual investors also participated, including former Yahoo president Sue Decker and former Visa president Carl Pascarella. The company has raised $9.5 million so far.

Estify, a two-year-old, L.A.-based company whose software enables insurance companies and automotive body shops to communicate more seamlessly, has raised $1.5 million in seed funding from Romulus Capital and ff Venture Capital. The two firms had previously provided the company with $800,000.

Ingogo, a three-year-old, Sydney, Australia-based mobile payments start-up, has raised the equivalent of $7.8 million from Australian investors, including John Ho, who runs the Pan Asian hedge fund Janchor Partners.

Opal Labs, a four-year-old, Portland, Ore.-based maker of collaborative planning software for brand marketing teams, has raised $8 million in Series A funding led by Madrona Venture Group. The company has now raised $10.1 million altogether, including seed funding from Portland Seed Fund, Oregon Angel Fund and others.

Reduxio Systems, a two-year-old, Tel Aviv, Israel-based next-generation hybrid storage company, has raised $15 million in Series B funding led by Seagate Technology, with earlier investors Intel Capital, Jerusalem Venture Partners and Carmel Ventures participating. The company has now raised $27 million to date.

Roost, a five-year-old, Sunnyvale, Ca.-based smart-home platform company whose still-stealth product will sell for less than $50 and relies on a “retrofit opportunity” versus creating new smart home devices, has raised $975,000 in seed funding from DCM Ventures; Legend Star, an investment division of Legend Holdings; and angel investors, including DCM’s general partner Jason Krikorian, who cofounded Sling Media.

Sourcery, a two-year-old, San Francisco-based payments and commerce platform that focuses on the wholesale foodservice industry, has raised $2.5 million in seed funding, including from Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale, Yammer cofounder and CTO Adam Pisoni, Techstars co-founder David Tisch, Postini founder Shinya Akamine, and former Oracle CFO Jeff Epstein.

Savara Pharmaceuticals, a seven-year-old, Austin, Tx.-based company that’s developing new pulmonary drug delivery solutions, including an inhaled antibiotic for certain infections seen in cystic fibrosis patients, has raised $10 million in bridge funding from previous (unnamed) investors, along with new (unnamed) investors. The company has now raised at least $47.7 million to date, shows Crunchbase.

Snapchat, the 3.5-year-old, Venice, Ca.-based mobile messaging startup, is set to receive some funding from Yahoo, which is looking to reinvest part of the $5 billion it has made by selling part of its stake in Alibaba, reports the WSJ. One WSJ source said Yahoo is investing roughly $20 million at a $10 billion valuation.

Square, the 5.5-year-old, San Francisco-based e-commerce start-up, has quietly closed on $150 million in fresh funding led by the Government of Singapore Investment Corporation, reports the New York Times. The round values Square at $6 billion.

Yoogaia, a year-old, Espoo, Finland-based interactive online yoga studio, has raised $630,000 in seed funding led by the Nordic venture firmInventure, with unnamed angel investors participating. TechCrunch has more here.

Zoomdata, a two-year-old, Reston, Va.-based company with a data visualization and analytics platform, has raised $17 million in Series B funding led by Accel Partners, with earlier investors New Enterprise Associates, Columbus Nova Technology Partners, Razor’s Edge Ventures and B7 participating. The company has now raised $22 million altogether.

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New Funds

North Atlantic Capital, a 28-year-old, Portland, Me.-based growth-stage venture firm, is hoping to raise up to $50 million for its fifth fund, shows anSEC filing first flagged by VentureWire. According to its Form D, the fund’s first sale has yet to occur.

Thrive Capital, the four-year-old, New York-based venture firm that has backed a long list of high-profile companies, including Twitch, Warby Parker, and Instagram, has closed its fourth fund with $400 million, more than double the size of its $150 million predecessor, which closed in 2012. Dealbook has more here.

TVM Capital Life Science, a Montreal and Munich-based venture firm focused on life sciences investments, has closed its latest fund, TVM Life Science Ventures VlI, with $201.6 million. Its cornerstone investors includeTeralys Capital and Eli Lilly and Company. More here.

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IPOs

Fifteen-year-old Yodlee, an aggregator of financial apps for both consumers and small enterprises, saw its shares rise 12 percent on its first day of trading Friday, closing at $13.44 up from $12.

As for this week, eight IPOs are expected to raise $1.3 billion.Renaissance Capital breaks them down.

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Exits

MessageMe, the two-year-old, San Francisco-based mobile messaging application startup, has been acquired by Yahoo in a deal that TechCrunch sources peg in the “double-digit millions” of dollars. MessageMe had raised $13.4 million across three rounds, shows Crunchbase. Its investors include Greylock Partners, True Ventures, First Round Capital, Google Ventures, SVAngel, Resolut.vc, Andreessen Horowitz, and Social+Capital Partnership, among others. More here.

MobileSpaces, a three-year-old, Silver Spring, Md.-based mobile app security company was acquired by Pulse Secure for an undisclosed amount. MobileSpaces had raised $11.6 million from Marker and Accel Partners, shows Crunchbase.

Rumgr, a three-year-old, Las Vegas-based location-based marketplace for buying and selling goods, has been acquired for an undisclosed amount by e-Bay, reports Tech Cocktail. The company had raised $500,000 in seed funding, including from VegasTechFund. The company’s small team reportedly moves over to eBay’s headquarters this month.

—–

People

500 Startups has promoted two investors from partner to managing partner: Bedy Yang joined the outfit in early 2012 and has been investing primarily in Brazil on behalf of 500 Startups. Khailee Ng joined the firm 18 months ago to lead its investments in Southeast Asia. TechCrunch has more here.

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Jobs

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is looking to hire a Program-Related Investments Fellow. Applicants must have an advanced degree, plus five to ten years in management consulting, investment banking, private equity or venture capital.

—–

Essential Reads

The WSJ gathers evidence of 1999-like spending, including a CEO who is “building an octagonal, mixed-martial-arts cage-fighting ring because one of his employees asked for it,” and an entrepreneur who drove to a meeting with Y Combinator’s president Sam Altman a week after completing a $10 million, early round of financing. He was driving a new Porsche sport-utility vehicle, says Altman.

Facebook Messenger is all set up to allow friends to send each other money.

—–

Detours

How a doctor, a trader, and billionaire Steven Cohen became entangled in a vast financial scandal.

Thirty minutes with the amazing Kilian Jornet Burgada.

Where skinny people sit at restaurants.

—–

Retail Therapy

New York’s major fall art auctions are coming up fast. Here’s some of what’ll be on the block.

Hello, Friday, old pal!

Have a terrific weekend, everyone. See you back here on Monday.:)

(If you’re just visiting online, you can see an easier-to-read version of today’s email here. Also, you should sign up.)

—–

Top News in the A.M.

Facebook is plotting its first steps into the “fertile field of healthcare,” Reuters is reporting this morning.

Meanwhile, Apple is asking music labels for a price cut on streaming subscriptions. (Hah. Good one, Apple.)

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Made in Japan: Osuke Honda on the Evolving Startup Scene

Osuke Honda is having a good week. In 2010, the DCM partner bet on Kakao Talk, Korea’s biggest messaging app, and on Wednesday, Kakao acquired Korea’s second biggest Internet company, Daum Communications, which was already public. Now the combined company, Daum Kakao, is expected to list on the Korean stock exchange in a couple of weeks with a market cap of roughly $10 billion.

It’s quite a feather in Honda’s cap, though he’s had a pretty prosperous career all along. We talked the other day about his work and, largely, the evolving startup scene in Japan, where Honda was born and lives today. Our chat has been edited for length.

You were born in Japan, but you’ve always been a global citizen.

I was born in Japan but came to the U.S. when I was eight months old because my dad was transferred here. We lived in Houston, then L.A. I went to Tokyo for my undergraduate degree [at Hitotsubashi University], then grad school [at Wharton] in Philadelphia.

Why head to Japan for college?

I always identified as Japanese, but I didn’t really know Japan. I’d spent a month and a half there in the summers, but that was it, and I wanted to know where my family is from. I’d also started doing martial arts when I was 11 and figured if I wanted to get better at Judo, I should go. I figured if I didn’t like it, I’d just come back, but I liked it.

Your first job was at Mitsubishi. What was that like?

Very Japanese – kind of like Samsung in Korea. It was the kind of company everyone wanted to get into. I spent seven years there and was lucky enough to be part of a new organization that in 1999 was [tasked] with figuring out the e-commerce thing in Japan, which Mitsubishi’s CEO recognized was going to be the Next Big Thing.

You were eventually lured into venture capital, first at Apax Globis Partners, then, in 2007, at DCM.

Yes, one deal I was involved in was Gree, the largest mobile gaming platform in Japan, which went public in 2008 and was valued at $5 billion at its market peak. There isn’t a big venture community in Japan and you get to know people, and [during that time, DCM’s] David Chao and I started talking about what we thought was a successful VC model moving forward, which is cross-border [investing]. And we eventually joined forces.

What shifts have you seen in your time as a VC in Japan? Are founders still seen as, well, crazy?

Relative to five years ago, things are changing very quickly for the good.
In the past, raising money in Japan was a challenge. That was one reason people didn’t do startups. But especially because the IPO market has been very good, a lot of corporate VCs are being established. And as [more capital emerges], the mindset of entrepreneurs is changing, too.

Is hiring still a challenge? I sometimes hear that more people are willing to start companies, but that it’s hard to extricate employees from their comparatively safe jobs to work for them.

I think it depends on the sector. When it comes to consumer Internet, I see a lot of folks [joining startups] if there’s a hot entrepreneur involved, especially someone from Google or Rakuten or Yahoo or Gree. They’re very much able to attract smart, capable people.

I noticed you’ve backed a number of people to come out of Google, including Daisuke Sasaki, the founder of the accounting software startup Freee, and Hiroshi Kuraoka, the cofounder of the online bookings company Coubic.

Folks who come out of Google are interesting based on what I’ve seen. Because at Google, they work across offices, their teams tend to follow what’s happening in the U.S. and other regions around the globe and to think: What can we learn from them? That mindset is very important. Also, if you’re a product manager at Google, the way it’s metric driven is a great way to be trained.

Are college graduates thinking about startups right out of school, as in the U.S.?

No. If you go to a top university and ask students what they want to do, they’ll still say they want to work for Mitsubishi. But it’s changing, and growing a company is something that people respect more these days.

Ten or 15 years ago, for example, no one could have imagined that SoftBank would own a carrier. But entrepreneurs like [SoftBank founder Masayoshi] Son are kind of encouraging people that, hey, I can do that, too. They’re looking at the CEOs of [the clothing company] Uniqlo and [e-commerce giant] Rakuten – these self-made billionaires – and getting inspired.

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New Fundings

Aclaris Therapeutics, a two-year-old, Malvern, Pa.-based company that’s developing new therapies to treat skin disorders, has raised $21 million in Series B funding led by earlier investors Vivo Ventures, Fidelity Biosciences and Sofinnova Ventures. The company has now raised $42 million altogether.

Adarza BioSystems, a six-year-old, St.Louis, Mo.-based company whose immunoassay technology can identify proteins and genetic markers in medical samples like blood, has closed on $6.8 million in Series A funding led by Cultivation Capital and Siemens Venture Capital. Other participants in the round included the nonprofit organization BioGenerator in St. Louis, the St. Louis Arch Angels, Missouri Technology Corp.,Serra Capital, and numerous angel investors.

Brewbot, a 1.5-year-old, Belfast, North Ireland-based company that makes consumer-friendly, in-home beer-making machines, has raised $1.5 million in seed funding led by Bebo cofounder Michael Birch, with participation from Bullet Time Ventures, Hallett Capital, TechStart NI, Galvanize, SparkLabs Global, and angel investor Federico Pirzio-Biroli. The company staged a successful Kickstarter campaign last year that netted it $194,000. You can still find that campaign here.

GoodData, a seven-year-old, San Francisco-based business intelligence platform, has raised $25.7 million in Series E funding led by Intel Capital, with participation from earlier investors Andreessen Horowitz, General Catalyst Partners, Tenaya Capital, Next World Capital, Windcrest, and Pharus Capital, among others. The company has now raised $101.2 million to date. TechCrunch has more here.

Insightpool, a 2.5-year-old, Atlanta-based marketing automation company, has raised $4 million in Series A funding led by TDF Venturesand Silicon Valley Bank, with participation from Checkfree founder Peter Kight, serial investor Steve Chamberlain, former Turner Networks president Steve Koonin, and others. The company previously raised $500,000.

SoftBank, the 33-year-old, Tokyo-based telecommunications and media company, is investing $250 million in the Hollywood production and finance company Legendary Entertainment, after reported talks about a buyout or partnership between SoftBank and DreamWorks Animation cooled. The WSJ has more here.

Locqus, a 1.5-year-old, Detroit-based company whose cloud-based software makes it easier for mobile workers to check in with their companies about everything from time cards to mileage reimbursements, has raised $2 million in seed funding from Moneris Solutions. VentureBeat has more here.

MedAware, a two-year-old, Israel-based developer of big-data analytics for the medical prescription market, has raised $1 million in Series A funding from the equity crowdfunding platform OurCrowd and GE Ventures.

NantHealth, a 6.5-year-old, Culver City, Ca.-based company that’s focused on delivering next-generation care and raised $25 million from the publicly traded drugmaker Celgene Corp. last month, has just raised an additional $250 million from the Kuwait Investment Authority. NantHealth is run by billionaire Patrick Soon-Shiong, who sold his cancer-treatment company Abraxis BioScience to Celgene in 2010.

Navdy, a 1.5-year-old, San Francisco-based company behind a Head-Up Display (HUD) unit that allows drivers to use their apps while keeping their eyes on the road, has raised $6.5 million in seed funding led by Upfront Ventures. Other participants in the round included Eniac Ventures,Lightbank, Ludlow Ventures, MESA+, Promus Ventures andWareness.io.

ScribbleLive, a six-year-old, Toronto-based content syndication marketplace that allows brands and companies to create and distribute content for their respective audiences, has raised $12 million in Series C funding led by Waterloo Innovation Network. Other participants in the round included Georgian Partners, Export Development Canada, Summerhill Venture Partners and Rogers Venture Partners. The company has now raised $20 million altogether.

ShipHawk, a two-year-old, Santa Barbara, Ca.-based company whose app aggregates packing and shipping options, helping users determine which carriers are optimal for particular shipments, has raised $5 million in fresh funding led by DN Capital, with participation from Karlin Ventures, Rothenberg Ventures, and Wavemaker Partners. The company has raised $6 million altogether.

Travador, a 1.5-year-old, Munich, Germany-based online platform for short-term and adventure travel, has raised $7.3 million in Series C funding co-led by Capnamic Ventures and Iris Capital, with XAnge Private Equity participating.

Viyet, a 1.5-year-old, New York-based e-commerce site for pre-owned furniture, lighting and accessories, has raised $1.5 million in seed funding from F Cubed, Metamorphic Ventures and other, unnamed investors.

Woto, a 1.5-year-old, London-based online publishing platform that enables users to publish standalone pages and publish them via social channels, has raised $500,000 in seed funding from Ingenious Venturesand Galata Business Angels, a Turkish business angel group. More here.

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New Funds

The Boston-based venture firm Atlas Venture is splitting its healthcare and IT teams into two separate groups, each with their own fund. Fortune has the story here. The healthcare team will reportedly retain the Atlas brand and plans to raise a new fund next year that would be similar in size to the $265 million that Atlas raised for its ninth fund early last year. The IT team will rebrand itself and expects its next fund to be in the range of $130 million.

Forbion Capital Partners, a seven-year-old, Netherlands-based venture capital firm, has held a first close of roughy $116 million on its new medical venture fund, reports VentureWire. The firm has raised two funds prior, a EUR200 million debut fund and EUR140 million fund that closed in 2010.

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IPOs

Calithera Biosciences, a four-year-old, South San Francisco, Ca.-based clinical-stage pharmaceutical company at work on small molecule drugs, saw its shares drop yesterday from $10 to $9.40 in their first day of trading. The company had initially expected to price its shares at between $13 and $15.

Wayfair, the 12-year-old, Boston-based online home-goods company, saw its share close at $37.32 yesterday, up more than 30 percent above their offering price in the company’s debut.

Fifteen-year-old Yodlee, an aggregator of financial apps for both consumers and small enterprises, is set to begin trading today. It raised $75 million in its IPO yesterday, with underwriters pricing the offering at $12 per share. Dealbook has more here.

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Exits

Adaptive Path, a 13-year-old, San Francisco-based design and user experience consultancy, has been acquired by the financial firm Capital One for undisclosed terms. TechCrunch has more here.

Pure Energies Group, a five-year-old, Toronto-based energy advisory services company, has been acquired by the residential solar business NRG Energy for undisclosed terms. Pure Energies had raised $11 million from New Enterprise Associates, NGEN Partners, and Western Technology Investment.

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People

Gazillionaire Larry Ellison is hosting a Republican fundraiser for Senator Rand Paul at his Woodside, Ca., home next Wednesday. Just $1,500-per-person, though hosts are being asked to cough up $32,400 and co-hosts have to pitch in $15,000.

During a podcast interview show last week, former Apple directors Nitin Ganatra and Don Melton dished on all the drawbacks of working at tech giant, including never truly getting time off. According to Melton, via Valleywag: “Sunday is a work night for everybody at Apple . . . This was especially worse after ‘The Sopranos’ ended because for a while there, you could count on the hour that The Sopranos was on that [former iOS leader] Scott [Forstall] wouldn’t bug you ’cause he was watching ‘The Sopranos.’ And that was your reprieve. You could go to the bathroom, you could have a conversation with your family, you know, whatever. But after that . . . And Scott was a late-night kind of guy. He was not a morning guy at all. You were basically on until, like, 2 o’clock in the morning.”

Rovio Entertainment, the Finnish maker of the “Angry Bird” franchise, said yesterday that it’s cutting 130 employees, or about 16 percent of its workforce, amid slowing growth. The Verge has more here.

Oh, it’s on. In the wake of a recent dig made by Apple CEO Tim Cook about Google’s privacy policies, Eric Schmidt, chairman of Google, took the opportunity to talk trash about Apple yesterday, telling CNN Money: “We have always been the leader in security and encryption. Our systems are far more secure and encrypted than anyone else, including Apple. They’re catching up, which is great.”

—–

Jobs

Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers is looking for post-graduate interns. More here.

Storm Ventures is looking for an analyst-associate. The job is on Sand Hill Road in Menlo Park, Ca.

—-

Data

According to a new study by New York-based equity fundraising platform SeedInvest and the data firm Crowdnetic, 4,700 U.S.-based companies have tried raising capital under the JOBS Act Title II rule in the last year, and at least 38.2 percent of them were tech companies. The WSJ has the story.

—–

Essential Reads

It may be time for Wall Street to give the ad tech space a second chance, says Fortune.

Camera maker GoPro found a way to maneuver around its lockup restriction, but the development spooked investors and sent the stock plummeting as much as 14 percent yesterday.

—–

Detours

The 25 most successful Wharton graduates, care of Business insider.

The most ticketed cars in the U.S.

A tourist map of laptops.

—–

Retail Therapy

Unstructured. Neat fitting. Meet the sweazer.

Hallelujah. Ikea furniture you can assemble without losing it.

Hello, everyone, and happy Thursday! (Here’s an easier-to-read version of this morning’s email if you’re just visiting online and haven’t yet signed up.)

—–

Top News in the A.M.

Apple Pay is coming in about two-and-a-half weeks, says a new report.

An attorney representing more than a dozen celebrities whose photos were recently stolen from their iCloud accounts, is now threatening Google with a $100 million lawsuit, writing in a letter to Google’s top brass that they should have removed the photos faster and that “Google’s ‘Don’t be evil’ motto is a sham.”

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Max Levchin’s Glow Closes on $17 Million

Glow calls itself a women’s health and fertility company, but like nearly everything launched by its cofounder, the serial entrepreneur Max Levchin, it has much bigger ambitions.

For the past year, the startup — with offices in San Francisco and Shanghai — has been focused around an iPhone app for women who are trying to get pregnant. It helps them track their fertility cycles and find optimal days when they might conceive, in exchange for a wide assortment of data that it anonymizes. The app is free but users can also opt-in to a program to which they pay $50 a month, with those who don’t conceive after 10 months receiving their money back, plus a split of all funds contributed by those who do.

The 21-person company claims it has already helped 25,000 women become pregnant. And it more recently created a post-pregnancy app for expectant mothers to track their progress.

But Glow isn’t interested in women’s health alone, says Levchin’s cofounder, Mike Huang. Glow plans to tackle a host of other areas where similarly focusing on “prevention” can keep users from costly corrective events later on (like the fertility clinic). Toward that end, the company, which raised $6 million in funding at the outset, has just added $17 million in fresh funding led by Formation 8, with help from initial backers Founders Fund and Andreessen Horowitz. Its idea, broadly: to generate even more data, which Glow sees as good for the apps, good for the broader medical community, and good for employers, too.

In fact, Glow’s chief (and possibly only) source of revenue is expected to come from enterprises that offer Glow apps as an employee benefit, paying $50 per month to help keep its workforce healthy.

Asked about obvious privacy concerns around issues like pregnancy, Huang says employers will never know which of its employees are trying to conceive or who hasn’t yet announced that she is expecting. Glow provides employers only with information about how many people have signed up for the service.

He adds that a small but growing number of companies, including the file storage company Evernote, the onine ticketing service Eventbrite, and the cloud computing company Pivotal, are already customers. The focus now, says Huang, is, “How do we get this to be bigger?”

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New Fundings

15Five, a three-year-old, San Francisco-based, SaaS-based inter-company employee feedback system, has raised $2.2 million in seed funding led by Matrix Partners, with participation from earlier investor Point Nine Capital and individual investors. The company has now raised $3.4 million altogether.

365Scores, a six-year-old, Tel Aviv, Israel-based mobile sports application company, has raised $5.5 million in new funding led by LETA Capital, with participation from Cedar Fund, Titanium Investments and other, unnamed investors. The company has raised $6.7 million altogether, shows Crunchbase.

Appboy, a 3.5-year-old, New York-based app optimization company, has raised $15 million in Series B funding led by InterWest Partners, with participation from earlier investor Marketo. The company has now raised $22.6 million altogether, shows Crunchbase.

Bridge US, a nearly three-year-old, San Francisco-based company whose software aims to make the complex immigration process easier and more affordable, has raised $800,000 in seed funding from 500 Startups, Ulu Ventures, and individual investors.

Building Robotics, a 1.5-year-old, Oakland, Ca.-based software company that makes it possible for office workers to control the temperature of their respective work stations, has raised $5.5 million led by The Westly Group and Claremont Creek Ventures. The company had previously raised $1.5 million in seed funding, including from Claremont, Google Ventures, Formation 8, Navitas Capital, Red Swan Ventures and individual investors.

Cognoptix, a 13-year-old, Acton, Ma.-based medical device company that’s developing an eye test to identify early-stage Alzheimer’s disease, has raised $15 million in Series D funding. The company has raised at least $20 million over the years, including from LaunchPad Venture Group, Inventages Venture Capital Investment, and Alopexx Enterprises.

Cohealo, a 13-year-old, Boston-based analytics and resource-sharing platform for major hospital systems, has raised $9 million in Series A funding from earlier investor Romulus Capital, with new investor Krillion Ventures and individual investors participating. The company had previously raised $750,000 in seed financing.

Coinapult, a two-year-old, Panama City, Panama-based bitcoin wallet service has raised $775,000 in seed funding, including from FirstMark Capital, Barry Silbert’s Bitcoin Opportunity Corp., angel investor Roger Ver, and Coinapult co-founders Erik Voorhees and Ira Miller. Coindesk has more here.

Eve, a new, San Francisco-based database company “that allows you to build anything from a simple website to complex algorithms” without needing any prior coding background, has raised $2.3 million in seed funding from Andreessen Horowitz partner Chris Dixon, Hunch engineer Tom Pinckney, and Y Combinator president Sam Altman, among others. Business Insider has more here.

Flocasts, an eight-year-old, Austin-based digital media content company for sports like track and field, wrestling, and gymnastics, has raised $8 million from Causeway Media Partners.

Front, a 1.5-year-old, Paris-based startup that operates a service for shared email inboxes, has raised $3.1 million in seed funding led by SoftTech VC, with Boldstart Ventures, Caffeinated Capital, Point Nine Capital and individual investors participating.

Houzz, a five-year-old, Palo Alto, Ca.-based home décor site that’s preparing for a major push into e-commerce, has raised $165 million in new funding led by Sequoia Capital, with participation from DST Global and T. Rowe Price. The company had earlier raised $48 million from investors, including Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and New Enterprise Associates.

Lever, a 2.5-year-old, San Francisco-based company that makes job-applicant tracking software, has raised $10 million in Series A funding fromMatrix Partners. The company had previously raised an undisclosed amount of seed funding from, among others, Box co-founder Aaron Levie, SV Angel, and Y Combinator. (Lever graduated from its program in 2012.)

MinuteKey, a six-year-old, Boulder, Co.-based company that operates self-service kiosks for duplicating keys, has raised $30 million in funding from earlier investor Main Street Capital Corp., a publicly traded investment firm. The company says it has now raised $81 million altogether.

Rowl, a four-year-old, Santa Monica, Ca.-based company whose app helps users discover events, activities and meet-up possibilities, has raised $4 million in funding from individual backers, including former Logitech CEO Jerry Quindlen and investor Gary Vaynerchuk. TechCrunch has more here.

StoreDot, a two-year-old, Ramat Gan, Israel-based company behind a battery charger that can recharge a smartphone in 30 seconds (wow), has closed a $42 million Series B round, reports Globes. Singulariteam, the private investment company of serial entrepreneur Moshe Hogeg (most recently of Yo) led the round, which also included a $10 million investment from Millhouse, the asset management company of Roman Abramovich. The company had previously raised $6.25 million. Others of its investors are Genesis Angels Fund and Nation-E.

Stratos, a two-year-old, Ann Arbor, Mi.-based Bluetooth-enabled mobile-payments service, has raised $5.8 million in funding from Toba Capital Partners, Hyde Park Venture Partners, Resonant Venture Partners, and Western Technology Investment.

Ticketbis, a five-year-old, Madrid, Spain-based online exchange for buying and selling after-market tickets to events in Europe, Latin America, and Asia, has raised €5.2 million ($6.6 million) in funding led by Active Venture Partners, along with participation from existing investors. The company has now raised roughly $12.6 million. TechCrunch has more here.

Visterra, a seven-year-old, Cambridge, Ma.-based company that’s developing antibodies for serious cases of influenza and other infectious diseases, has raised $30 million in Series B funding co-led by new investors Merck Research Labs Venture Fund, Vertex Venture Holdings, and Temasek. Other participants in the round included Cycad Group and earlier backers Polaris Partners, Flagship Ventures, Omega Funds and Alexandria Venture Investments. The company has now raised $73.4 million altogether, shows Crunchbase.

Zafin, a 12-year-old, Vancouver, British Columbia-based company that develops software for the financial-services industry, has raised $15 million in new funding from Kayne Partners, the growth-equity arm of alternative-investment firm Kayne Anderson Capital Advisors.

ZenMate, a year-old, Berlin-based service that encrypts one’s browsing history and hides IP addresses and locations, has raised $3.2 million in Series A funding led by Holtzbrinck Ventures. Shortcut Ventures and T-Venture also joined the round, along with earlier investor Project A Ventures. The company has reportedly raised $4.5 million altogether. TechCrunch has more here.

—–

IPOs

Box, the nine-year-old, Los Altos, Ca.-based cloud-storage company, won’t go public until later this year or early next year because of volatile market conditions, according to Bloomberg sources. The company had filed to go public in March, but first postponed plans to go public in May, citing market conditions. In July, it raised $150 million at a valuation of $2.4 billion. That capital gives Box more than two years of runway, notes a WSJ piece, but the company is still in a race against the clock, it suggests, noting that the “market for online storage is growing more competitive by the day as bigger companies bring the price closer to zero with similar features, and at lower costs or as an add-on to their existing service.”

Rocket Internet, the seven-year-old, Berlin-based e-commerce investor, went public earlier today in Frankfurt and things aren’t looking so great at this hour. Its shares, which it priced at the top of their book-building range yesterday at 42.50 euros ($53.77), dropped 14 percent within minutes of the stock’s debut. Reuters has much more here.

Wayfair, the 12-year-old, Boston-based online home-goods company, is also expected to begin trading today, with its shares initially priced at $29, above the expected range of $25 to $28 per share. The stock will trade on the New York Stock Exchange. It’s the first e-commerce company to make its public debut since Alibaba’s IPO last month. Wayfair’s biggest outside shareholders include Battery Ventures, which owns 6.15 percent of the company; Great Hill Partners, which owns 11.43 percent, and HarbourVest Partners, which owns 7.03 percent.

—–

Exits

Bering Media, a six-year-old, Toronto-based online advertising platform has been acquired by the privately held ad platform Audience Partners. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Bering had raised $7.5 million over the years, shows Crunchbase; its investors include MaRS Investment Accelerator Fund, Tech Capital Partners, and Ontario Emerging Technologies Fund.

Perzo, a two-year-old, Palo Alto, Ca.-based instant-messaging software company, has been acquired for $66 million by 14 financial-services firms that plan to turn it into a communications platform for traders. Goldman Sachs led the consortium. Other investors included Bank of America,Bank of New York Mellon, BlackRock, Citadel, Citigroup, Credit Suisse Group, Deutsche Bank, J.P. Morgan Chase, Jefferies,  Capital, Morgan Stanley, Nomura Holdings and Wells Fargo. Crunchbase shows that Perzo, which is being renamed Symphony Communication Services, had raised at least $5.5 million, including from Merus Capital.

Struq, a six-year-old, New York-based ad personalization platform, has been acquired by the privately held ad-targeting company Quantcast for undisclosed terms. Struq had raised at least $8.5 million from investors, including Allen & Company, Reed Elsevier Ventures, and Pentech Ventures.

Socialarc, a five-year-old, Emeryville, Ca.-based public relations boutique catering to technology startups, has been acquired by San Francisco-based SparkPR for undisclosed terms. The company’s 14 employees will remain in place in Emeryville. Terms of the deal aren’t being disclosed.

—–

People

Cindy Cheng has quietly joined Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers as a partner focused on its Digital Growth Fund. Cheng joined the firm from Hillspire, a family office in Menlo Park, Ca.. Earlier in her career, she worked as an analyst in the technology investment banking practice at Morgan Stanley.

Facebook cofounder Dustin Moskovitz — who at age 30 is the second youngest billionaire in the U.S. — says he plans to “be rid” of his money before he dies: “I’m very fond of this quote from Louis C.K. below and generally view the world through this lens: ‘I never viewed money as being My Money. I always saw it as The Money. It’s a resource. If it pools up around me, then it needs to be flushed back out into the system.’”

Alison Rosenthal, most recently COO of mobile messenger app company MessageMe, has been hired by the investment service Wealthfront as its VP of strategic partnerships, reports Recode. Before joining MessageMe, Rosenthal spent 1.5 years at Greylock Partners as an entrepreneur-in-residence. Before that, she spent five years as a business development director at Facebook.

—–

Data

The New York-based healthcare investment firm Psilos Group released its annual “healthcare outlook” report. Here’s the link if you’re interested in checking it out.

—–

Essential Reads

That Uber rider attacked by his driver might lose his eye.

Verizon is backing down on its plan to slow down unlimited data users.

Y Combinator cofounder Paul Graham just posted his guest lecture from Sam Altman’s startup class at Stanford.

—–

Detours

The Secret Service scandals explained.

Strategies on finding your right time to go to bed.

Socrates addresses the county school board.

—–

Retail Therapy

This is not a Prius.

And we’re not sure about connecting these slippers to our laptop, but they are kind of adorbs.

Hi, everyone, happy first day of October! StrictlyVC is juggling a little more than usual this week, so no column today, but stay tuned.

Also, if you’ve missed any recent editions of StrictlyVC, here is Monday’s issue; Tuesday’s newsletter is here. (You can also find an easier-to-read version of today’s issue here.)

—–

Top News in the A.M.

PayPal was in the running to be a prominent partner in Apple‘s rollout of Apple Pay, but talks reportedly soured after PayPal’s parent company,eBay, forced PayPal to strike a similar deal with Samsung. The pact didn’t just torpedo relations between PayPal and Apple; it prompted PayPal’s then-president David Marcus to hightail it for Facebook, says the report.

—–

New Fundings

Acutus Medical, a three-year-old, San Diego-based company whose 3-D imaging system for the heart helps in treating complex cardiac arrhythmias, has added $26.2 million to its Series B funding from unnamed investors. According to Crunchbase, the capital brings the company’s total funding to $63.2 million. Its investors include GE Ventures, Index Ventures, Advent Venture Partners, and OrbiMed Advisors.

Allakos, a two-year-old, San Francisco-based biotech company developing antibody-based therapeutics to treat various allergies and diseases, has raised $10 million in fresh funding from current investors, including Novo Ventures, Alta Partners, RiverVest Venture Partners and the Roche Venture Fund. The round brings the company’s total funding to $44.5 million, shows Crunchbase.

Aquion Energy, a six-year-old, Pittsburgh, Pa.-based company that makes sodium ion batteries, has raised $25 million from undisclosed investors. Earlier, the company — spun out of research at Carnegie Mellon University — had secured $20 million in venture debt from Trinity Capital Investment and CapX Partners. It had separately raised about $94 million in equity, including from Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Foundation Capital, Advanced Technology Ventures, Bright Capital, Microsoft cofounder Bill Gates, and Gentry Venture Partners.

Birds Eye Systems, a four-year-old, Mumbai, India-based company behind an traffic information app called Traffline, has raised an undisclosed amount of Series B funding from Qualcomm Ventures. The company reportedly raised an earlier round of funding from Matrix Partners India.

BRD Motorcycles, a five-year-old, San Francisco-based maker of all-electric racing motorcycles, has raised $4.5 million in Series A funding led by Modara Technologies. Other participants in the round includedCedarville Investments, Tesla Motors founders Martin Eberhard andMarc Tarpenning, and the chief executive of Baluarte Real Estate in Spain, Pedro Zapata Gil. The funding brings BRD’s total funding to $8.2 million. Venture Capital Dispatch has the story here.

Consensus Orthopedics, a 22-year-old, El Dorado Hills, Ca.-based company that makes artificial hip and knee replacements, has raised $8 million from Breakwater Investment Funds, an L.A.-based growth capital firm. MedCity News has more here.

Food52, a five-year-old, New York-based crowdsourced cooking and commerce site, has raised $6 million in Series A-1 funding led by investorAlex Zubillaga, with participation from Scripps Network Interactive, Walden Venture Capital, BDMI, Vocap Investment Partners, Thomas Lehrman, Robin Klein, Joanne Wilson, Gary Vaynerchuk and other individual investors. The company has raised $9 million altogether thus far. TechCrunch has more here.

Good Technology, the 18-year-old, Sunnyvale, Ca.-based mobile-device security company, which has already raised money from every investor in Silicon Valley (and beyond) and had finally filed for an IPO back in May, has raised yet another $80 million from unnamed investors. The company says it still plans to go public.

Heliatek, a eight-year-old, Dresden, German-based maker of organic solar films, has raised $22.7 million in Series C funding led by the family office of entrepreneur Stefan Quandt, with participation from earlier investors, including Bosch, BASF, Innogy Venture Capital, and Wellington Partners. The company has raised roughly $58 million to date.

Netuitive, a 12-year-old, Reston, Va.-based company that sells self-learning performance management software, has raised $6.5 million in new funding led by MK Capital and Rembrandt Venture Partners, with participation from Cross Creek Advisors and Columbia Capital. The company has raised at least $29.5 million to date, shows Crunchbase.

Oncoceutics, a five-year-old, Hummelstown, Pa.-based drug developer that’s focused on cancer treatments, has received an undisclosed amount of funding in a “substantially oversubscribed” round led by Spring Mountain Capital.

Pica8, a 2.5-year-old, Palo Alto, Ca.-based startup that specializes in software defined networking, has raised $12.5 million in Series B funding from VantagePoint Capital Partners, Cross Head and Pacific Venture Partners, among others. The company has now raised more than $20 million altogether.

Reddit, the nine-year-old, San Francisco-based social news startup, has raised $50 million in Series B funding at a $500 million valuation led by Y Combinator President Sam Altman, with participation from Alfred Lin of Sequoia Capital and Marc Andreessen of Andreessen Horowitz. Other investors in the round include Peter Thiel, Ron Conway, Paul Buchheit,Jared Leto, Jessica Livingston, Kevin and Julia Hartz, Mariam Naficy,Josh Kushner, Snoop Dogg (yes), and Reddit CEO Yishan Wong. In an unusual twist, investors in the round have proposed giving 10 percent of their shares to the Reddit community for helping to build the site — and possibly increasing that amount over time. Venture Capital Dispatch has more here.

Remerge, a six-month-old, Berlin-based adtech startup, has raised $1 million in seed funding led by Point Nine Capital. TechCrunch has more here.

Sharethrough, a six-year-old, San Francisco-based ad tech company, has raised $5 million from British Sky Broadcasting Group as part of a $10 million round that includes Elevation Partners, Floodgate, North Bridge Venture Partners and Silver Creek Ventures. The company has raised $38 million to date, shows Crunchbase.

StackEngine, a months-old, Austin, Tx.-based maker of application management software, has raised $1 million in seed funding fromSilverton Partners and LiveOak Venture Partners.

Tile, a nearly two-year-old, San Mateo, Ca.-based maker of tiny wearables that can be placed on things to keep track of them (like keys), has raised $9.5 million in Series A funding led by GGV Capital, with participation from Tencent, Tandem Capital, Go Pro founder Nick Woodman, Rothenberg Ventures, Jerry Yang’s AME Cloud Ventures, Slow Ventures, Guitar Hero cofounder Charles Huang and others. The company had previously raised $3.5 million in seed funding led by Tencent.

—–

New Funds

Health Enterprise Partners, an eight-year-old New York-based growth equity firm focused on health care, has raised a $148.5 million fund from investors, including Cigna Corp., reports VentureWire.

—–

IPOs

EndoStim, a five-year-old, St. Louis, Mo.-based medical device company whose neurostimulation system was created to treat severe gastroesophageal reflux disease, said yesterday that it plans to sell 3.2 million shares at $10 to $12 each in its IPO. (It filed a couple of weeks ago.) The company has raised at least $42.5 million from private investors, shows Crunchbase. The company’s biggest shareholders include Santé Health Ventures, which holds a 35.4 percent stake; Prolog Capital, which owns a 5.7 stake; and 1998 Co-Investing LLC, which owns a 5.8 percent stake.

—–

Exits

Alios BioPharma, a 7.5-year-old, South San Francisco-based company at work on a treatment for respiratory syncytial virus, a top cause of brochiolitis, is being acquired by Johnson & Johnson in a $1.75 billion deal that represents the largest acquisition of a venture-backed drug company on record, according to VentureSource. The company had raised $73 million in funding from investors, including Novo Ventures, SR One, Roche Venture Fund and Novartis Ventures.

MedSynergies, an 18-year-old, Irving, Tx.-based company that makes practice-management software for physician clinics, is being acquired for undisclosed terms by UnitedHealth Group’s data services division, Optum. MedSynergies had raised at least $90 million over the years from undisclosed investors, shows Crunchbase.

—–

People

The most beloved CEOs in tech (chart).

Sameer Dholakia has been named CEO of SendGrid, the email platform. He was formerly group VP and general manager of the Cloud Platforms Group at Citrix Systems.

Things in Las Vegas appear to be collapsing around Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh, the founder of Downtown Project, a costly development project in the city that Hsieh has been funding single-handedly. A few weeks ago, Hsieh stepped down as leader of the project, according to Recode. Yesterday, Hsieh also laid off about 30 percent of Downtown Project’s staff, or 30 people, which excludes entrepreneurs who’ve been funded by the project. Downtown Project has been hugely ambitious from the start, with Hsieh trying to transform 1.5 miles of desolate downtown Las Vegas into a bustling entrepreneurial center, using up to $350 million of his own money. As we noted during a trip to meet with Hsieh in 2012, Hsieh had also installed relatively inexperienced people at the helm of Downtown Project’s various intiatives, including Hsieh’s cousin and her husband, who’ve been handling Hsieh’s education and small business initiatives for Downtown Project. (Both previously worked at Citigroup in New York.) It’s too early to know if the layoffs mean more than a major calibration right now. In a statement to the media yesterday, Downtown Project wrote: “We remain focused on the long-term plan and the evolution of the downtown area. As such, we have restructured our support team. This change has affected approximately 30 positions, the majority of which were based in our corporate office. We continue to directly employ more than 300 people across our various operations in downtown Las Vegas.”

Jony Ive, Apple‘s senior vice president of design at Apple, talks with Vogue about feeling a bit like an outsider in life, like his former boss, Steve Jobs. “When you feel that the way you interpret the world is fairly idiosyncratic, you can feel somewhat ostracized and lonely and I think that we both perceived the world in the same way.”

Norwest Venture Partners has promoted Robert Mittendorff to principal,Sumer Juneja to principal, and Lisa Wu to vice president. MIttendorff joined Norwest as a vice president in 2012 from Hansen Medical, where he was a vice president. Juneja had joined NVP India in 2009 as a vice president; he was previously an analyst at Goldman Sachs. Wu, who joined Norwest in 2012, worked previously as an investor at Bessemer Venture Partners and Comcast Ventures, and in corporate development at Amazon.

Zynga founder Mark Pincus is reportedly selling his Pacific Heights home in San Francisco for $18 million. Pincus and wife Ali, co-founder of the home décor company One Kings Lane, purchased the home in 2012 for $16 million, and it sits on one of the toniest blocks in the city. In fact, a year ago, Vanity Fair wrote a breathless piece about the two-and-a-half-block “showcase of freestanding, stately mansions designed by such iconic 20th-century architects as Willis Polk and William Wursters” where the Pincuses’ home sits a stone’s throw from the homes of Yelp CEO Jeremy Stoppelman, Benchmark partner Matt Cohler, and Michael and Xochi Birch of Bebo.

Mark Zuckerberg, plantation owner? It may be the case, judging by a new report in the Pacific Business News that suggests the Facebook CEO just spent $66 million on the 357-acre, beachfront plantation Kahuaina on the northeast corner of the Hawaiian island of Kauai.

—–

Happenings

Chicago Ideas Week, an annual week long event founded by Groupon and Lightbank co-founder Brad Keywell, is coming up the week after next in Chicago, reports Forbes. With 30,000 engineers, technologists, inventors, scientists, economists, artists, and other professionals expected to attend, the event’s mission is to stimulate new collaborations.

—–

Data

Twenty-three venture-backed IPOs raised $2.6 billion during the third quarter, marking the sixth consecutive quarter to see 20 or more venture-backed IPOs, according to a new report out by Thomson Reuters and the National Venture Capital Association. More here.

This video is shown to all Google Ventures portfolio companies to educate them about unconscious biases against women at work. (H/T: Mike Butcher)

—–

Essential Reads

Huh. Jawbone looks to be getting out of the hardware business.

—–

Detours

The only footage of Mark Twain, in digitally restored films shot by Thomas Edison.

“Enhance your lighting.”

—–

Retail Therapy

Oh, the indignities that dogs are made to suffer.

Also, Lapkins.