And it is Friday, party people. Have a terrific weekend! No column today, but we’ll see you back here next week with some good stuff. (Web visitors, click here for an easier-to-read version of today’s email.)

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Top News in the A.M.

Another day, another threatened crackdown on car services Uber and Lyft, this time from L.A. and San Francisco prosecutors.

FBI Director James Comey criticized Apple and Google yesterday for developing smartphone encryption so secure that law enforcement officials have trouble gaining information stored on devices, even when they have valid search warrants.

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New Fundings

BioMotiv, a two-year-old, Cleveland, Oh.-based therapeutic accelerator, has raised $25 million from the Japan-based pharmaceutical company Takeda Pharmaceutical in exchange for exclusive access to many of BioMotiv’s drugs. The financing constitutes a “significant minority investment,” says BioMotiv.

Coinify, a four-year-old Copenhagen-based bitcoin payment services company, has raised an undisclosed amount of funding from SEED Capital, a Danish venture firm. According to the outlet Unquote, the investment marks just the second bitcoin-related investment for a Nordic firm, the other being Creandum’s recent Series A investment in KnCMiner, a Stockholm-based maker of bitcoin mining hardware.

Context Relevant, a two-year-old, Seattle-based company that sells prepackaged applications intended to solve specific, data-related business problems, has raised $13.5 million in Series B-1 funding from Goldman Sachs, Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Formation 8, New York Life, and Bloomberg Beta. In late May, the company announced $21 million in Series B funding led by Formation 8. The newest round brings the company’s total funding to $42 million.

CureLauncher, a two-year-old, Bloomfield Hills, Mi.-based startup that helps users find medical treatments (including via clinical trials) based on their conditions, has raised $500,000 in Series B funding, a year after raising $500,000 in Series A funding. The new round was led by the early-stage venture capital firm InkWell.

Exo, a 1.5-year-old, Brooklyn, N.Y.-based producer of protein bars made from crickets (really), has raised $1.2 million in new seed funding fromCollaborative Fund, Start Garden and author and angel investor Tim Ferriss. The company had previously raised $100,000 via the New York-based packaged food and beverage accelerator, AccelFoods.

Fundrise, a four-year-old, Washington, D.C.-based real estate crowdfunding platform, has added $3.6 million to its Series A funding round, bringing its total funding to $38 million. New investors in the round — which remains open — include the Chinese social networking company Renren; Guggenheim Partners; Rockrose President Justin Elghanayan; and James Ratner, the chairman and chief executive of Forest City Commercial Group. Venture Capital Dispatch has the story along with a longer look at the crowded, crowdfunding sector in which Fundrise now finds itself.

Hootsuite, the six-year-old, Vancouver-based startup known for its social media management dashboards, has raised $60 million in new venture funding, it told Re/code yesterday morning. The latest funding was led by a new Boston-based investor that Hootsuite hasn’t revealed, as well as earlier investors Insight Venture Partners, Accel Partners and OMERS Ventures. The company has now raised a total of $250 million.

MiaoPai, a three-year-old, Beijing-based short-video mobile app maker, has raised $50 million in Series C funding led by Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers China, according to China Money Network. Sina Corp., Redpoint Ventures and StarVC also participated. The company had raised at least $25 million in priof funding, says the report.

Nubank, a year-old, São Paulo-based financial services start-up whose first product is a MasterCard Platinum credit card that users can manage through an Android or iOS app, has raised $13.8 million led by Sequoia Capital, with participation from new investor Berggruen Holdings and earlier investor Kaszek Ventures, a Buenos Aires-based venture capital firm. Dealbook has more here.

Skillz, a two-year-old, Boston-based cash tournament platform for mobile games that allows players to win rights, cash and other prizes, has raised $3 million in equity funding and $3 million in venture debt led by Atlas Venture, with NextView Ventures and individual investors participating. The new tranche brings the startup’s total equity funding raised to $10.3 million, reports Venture Capital Dispatch.

Zeptor, a five-year-old, Menlo Park, Ca.-based company whose silicon anode enables battery makers to produce high-powered lithium ion batteries, has raised $5.2 million in fresh funding, shows an SEC filing. The company has raised at least $8.4 million to date.

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New Funds

The Small Business Administration is expanding its venture capital program for “impact investments,” reports the Austin Business Journal.More here.

UpWest Labs, a two-year-old, Palo Alto, Ca.-based accelerator program for Israeli entrepreneurs, has raised $4 million for its second fund, according to an SEC filing that shows a $15 million target. UpWest mentors founders for four months and provides them with $20,000 in exchange for an 8 percent stake in their business. Some of the outfit’s many investments include Honeybook, a 1.5-year-old, San Francisco-based invite-only planning platform that helps creative businesses and their clients collaborate and that earlier this week announced $10 million in new funding led by Aleph. The company has also backed Sentinel Labs, a year-old, Palo Alto, Ca.-based cybersecurity startup that raised $12 million in Series A funding led by Tiger Global Management back in April.

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IPOs

Coherus BioSciences, a four-year-old, Redwood City, Ca.-based company that’s developing similar versions of widely used biotechnology drugs, has filed to go public, with a maximum offering amount of $86.2 million. The company’s principal shareholders are Daiichi Sankyo Company, which owns 11.13 percent; Lilly Ventures (the venture arm of Eli Lilly), which owns 11.17 percent; KKR, which owns 9.7 percent; MX II Associates, which owns 9.67 percent; Sofinnova Ventures, which owns 8.28 percent; and Venrock, which owns 7.65 percent.

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People

Investor Marc Andreessen decided yesterday was the day to send the startup world into panic mode, tweeting that the many “cash-incinerating” startups up and running will be vaporized when the market turns. For good measure, he elaborated on the point, noting that venture-backed startups that have raised a bunch of cash and rented fancy offices and hired a lot of people (which describes a good number of companies at this point) should “worry.”

Andreessen Horowitz has brought on Stanford University professor Vijay Pande to be its first Andreessen Horowitz Distinguished Visiting Professor of Computer Science. Pande, who teaches chemistry, computer science and structural biology at Stanford, will essentially act as a liaison between the firm and the university, so that computer science and other students will know where to turn when they’re considering commercializing their research.

Deric Emry has left Baltimore, Md.-based ABS Capital after 15 years, saying in an email to his contacts that he has “decided to pursue my passion for venture capital in a different format” as a venture partner at Greenspring Associates in Owings Mills, Md. Before joining ABS Capital in 1999, Emry was an associate at the bank Alex.Brown & Sons.

Sam Waksal is back in a big way, seemingly. Having quietly raised $500 million in debt and equity for his newest drug company, Kadmon, whose products aim to treat and manage hepatitis C, he’s now planning to take it public, he tells CNBC. More here. As many readers know, Waksal founded the biotech company ImClone Systems; he was later jailed for five years following insider-trading charges. Three months after his release, Eli Lilly bought ImClone for $6.5 billion.

It’s a worldwide contagion. In an open letter addressed to his portfolio companies, Matrix Partners China co-founder David Zhang warns that the investment market is about to cool off, a direct reaction to public warnings by venture capitalist Bill Gurley about the current climate. The letter, which quotes Gurley, has since gone viral on Chinese social media, reports Tech in Asia.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg personally set up the Facebook account of comic Andy Samberg because Zuckerberg was horrified to discover that Samberg was not on Facebook. So Samberg tells “Tonight Show” host Jimmy Fallon.

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Job Listings

Dawn Capital, an early-stage firm in London, in looking for an analyst. (Senior associate Teddie Wardi tells us this person will be wearing two hats, as an investor and as someone who can help with the firm’s marketing efforts.)

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Data

Some top reasons that startups fail, in the words of founders and investors who’ve seen these craters up close.

Why the Winklevoss twins are so bullish about bitcoin, in 33 slides.

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Essential Reads

Inside the building where Apple tortures the iPhone 6.

WWYD? (What will Yahoo do?)

How to start a startup: Lectures by Y Combinator president Sam Altman (here’s one; here’s two).

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Detours

To see every swing of the bat that Derek Jeter has made in his professional career, you would need to watch this motion nonstop for more than 4 days.

People feeling insecure about their relationships post about them more on Facebook, according to a new study that has misanthropes high-fiving.

A yacht-shaped hospital and spa that, if made, will kind of make every other hospital in the world look like prison.

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Retail Therapy

This seems like a bad idea.

It is Thursday! Hope you have a wonderful morning, everyone, and if you’re celebrating Rosh Hashanah right now, Shana Tova.

For web visitors interested in a more readable version of today’s newsletter, click here.

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Top News in the A.M.

Software giant Adobe is closing down its China-based R&D facility, as tensions between China and a growing number of Western tech companies grow.

Apple is sorry and embarrassed about what it did to your phones yesterday. A fix is coming in the next few days.

A new security bug, Bash, is reportedly worse than the Heartbleed bug that surfaced last spring.

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A Young VC Resurfaces with His Year-Old Startup: Spruce

Every month, a few startups that enable patients to consult with doctors without visiting their offices seem to emerge from nowhere. It’s no wonder. According to the research firm IHS, revenue from these so-called telemedicine companies could hit $1.9 billion in 2018, up from $240 million last year. That shift owes largely to the Affordable Care Act, which is pressuring doctors to help drive down costs, but it’s also easy to imagine that a growing number of doctors likes the prospect of practicing medicine from anywhere, at any time.

Some companies, like Teladoc — which just raised $100 million from investors — have begun partnering with insurance companies like Aetna and Blue Shield of California to offer subscribers telemedicine services as an added benefit in their coverage. Others like venture-backed HealthTap and Doctor on Demand, which offer live videoconferences with doctors, are going straight to consumers.

A year-old company, Spruce — founded by former Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers partner Ray Bradford and launching publicly today — has a slight twist on the latter model. The 11-person, San Francisco-based company is debuting a mobile app that enables patients to pay $40 to consult with doctor but doesn’t give them instant care. Instead, users log on to the app, provide details about their specific condition, and receive a response from a board-certified physician within a day. (If a prescription is required, that information gets forwarded on to the pharmacy of the user’s choice.)

It doesn’t sound terribly revolutionary, but as Bradford explains it, the market opportunity makes up for a lot. “The majority of healthcare will be tech enabled and delivered via mobile devices. If you think about size of market and volume of doctors, you start to appreciate what a massive shift this will be, and we think the trend is just getting started.”

Earlier this week, we chatted briefly about Spruce, which is first targeting patients with acne problems but plans to expand into other ailments once it nails down its act.

Why acne first?

Fifty million Americans have acne. It’s not just a teenage problem. Most doctors visits are by adults. Meanwhile, the average wait time to see a dermatologist in the U.S. is 30 days, so the majority of people settle for over-the-counter solutions.

Why not employ videoconferencing, as are many other telemedicine startups?

It’s more convenient. Both the patient and doctor are doing things on their own time. If you’re on the clock with a doctor [Doctor on Demand customers pay $40 for 10 minutes or so with a physician, for example], maybe I can’t share everything I want to share. Likewise, the [offline] doctor is answering my questions, rather than going through the motions of collecting information in a rote way.

You left Kleiner to start this company in August of 2013. How much have you raised and will you be in the market again soon?

We raised $2 million in seed funding from Kleiner, with participation from Baseline Ventures and Cowboy Ventures. We raised it later last year [so we’re not raising again just yet].

You spent a couple of years with Kleiner and you worked previously in product development at Amazon Web Services. How do those experiences inform what you’re doing now?

The biggest way is seeing the importance of picking a big market, and you don’t get a much bigger market than healthcare.

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New Fundings

Adaptimmune, a six-year-old, University of Oxford spin-out that focuses on the white blood cells called T-cells to treat several types of cancer, has raised $104 million in funding led by New Enterprise Associates. Other new investors in the round include OrbiMed Advisors, Wellington Management Company, and Fidelity Biosciences. Dealbook has morehere.

Apptentive, a three-year-old, Seattle-based company whose software acts as a communication layer between mobile app users and developers, has raised $5.3 million in Series A funding led by the online-survey company SurveyMonkey and Origin Ventures. Earlier investors Founders Co-op and Golden Venture Partners also participated in the round.

Array Health, an eight-year-old, Seattle-based company that builds software that health insurers like Blue Cross and Blue Shield use to offer a private health exchange, has raised a first institutional funding round of $13 million led by Noro-Moseley Partners, with participation from Vocap Investment Partners. GeekWire has more here.

Catawiki, a six-year-old, Netherlands-based online auction house that sells rare items, has raised $12.7 million in Series B funding led by Accel Partners. The Berlin-based investor and company builder Project A Ventures, Booking.com’s former CMO Arthur Kosten, and Dutch media and Internet entrepreneur Willem Sijthoff, who was an earlier investor, also participated. TechCrunch has more here.

Centage Corp., a 12-year-old, Natick, Ma.-based company that makes budgeting and forecasting software for small and mid-size businesses, has raised $9.5 million in Series A funding led by TVC Capital, with Northgate Capital joining the round.

CommonFloor.com, a seven-year-old, Bangalore, India-based online real estate and apartment management portal owned by MaxHeap Technologies, has raised $30 million in Series E funding from earlier investor Tiger Global Management. Early this year, CommonFloor had raises Rs 64 crore ($10.4 million) in Series D round of funding from Tiger Global and Accel Partners. VCCircle has more here.

E la Carte, a six-year-old, Palo Alto, Ca.-based startup whose technology lets restaurant-goers order food and pay their bills from the table using a tablet and cloud-based software, has raised $35 million in new venture capital and debt financing. Investors included Intel Capital, Romulus Capital, TriplePoint Capital and individual angel investors including Y Combinator president Sam Altman. The company has raised $52.5 million altogether.

Favor, a two-year-old, Austin, Texas-based delivery service for local stores and restaurants, has raised $2 million in seed funding from backers like Silverton Partners and Tim Draper.

FiveStars, a three-year-old, San Francisco-based “consumer identity platform” whose technology helps small businesses offer loyalty rewards to their customers, has raised $26 million in Series B funding led by Menlo Ventures. Earlier backers Lightspeed Venture Partners, DCM and Rogers Communications also joined the round, which brings the company’s total funding to $42.7 million.

InstaMed, a 10-year-old, Philadelphia-based heathcare payments network, has raised $15 million funding of new capital from new and existing (and unnamed) investors. The round brings the company’s total funding to $77.2 million.

Lodgeo, a 1.5-year-old, London-based price comparison and booking app for hotel stays, has raised $2.5 million in funding from Javest Investment Fund, along with numerous, unnamed angel investors. TechCrunch hasmore here.

Magnitude Software Corp., a new, Austin-based company that was created by the merger of companies Noetix and Kalido Co. and that produces enterprise information management software, has raised $100 million in funding, including from Audax Group. Austin Business Journal has more here.

Massdrop, a two-year-old, San Francisco-based company whose platform invites customers to join together to purchase a product from manufacturers at a discount, has raised $6.5 million in Series A funding led by Mayfield Fund. Earlier backers Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, First Round Capital, and Cowboy Ventures, also participated in the round, which brings the company’s total funding to $8 million.

MasteryConnect, a five-year-old, Sandy, Ut.-based maker of evaluation software that helps teachers assess their students’ performances, has raised $15.2 million in Series B funding led by Trinity Ventures, with participation from Pelion Ventures and Catamount Ventures. The funding brings the company’s total capital raised to about $24 million

Numerify, a two-year-old, Cupertino, Calif.-based cloud-based business IT analytics company, has raised $15 million in Series B funding led by Sequoia Capital, with earlier investor Lightspeed Venture Partners participating. The company has raised $23 million to date, shows Crunchbase.

POW, a 12-year-old, Seattle-based company that makes winter sports apparel that it sells in more than 35 countries, has raised $2.5 million from Columbia Pacific Advisors. It appears to be the company’s first institutional round.

Pro.com, a 1.5-year-old, Seattle-based company whose pricing engine promises to estimate the cost of any home project in real time, has raised $14 million in Series A funding co-led by Maveron and Madrona Venture Group, with participation from earlier investors. The company has now raised $17.5 million altogether, including from Andreessen Horowitz, Redpoint Ventures, Bezos Expeditions, Two Sigma Ventures and Sherpa Ventures.

Qzzr, a five-month-old, Lehi, Ut.-based company whose software allows anyone to create their own viral quizzes and embed in their own site, has raised $2 million in seed funding led by Kickstart Seed Fund, with participation from Pelion Venture Partners, Peterson Partners, RPM Ventures and various angel investors. TechCrunch has the story here.

Rithmio, a one-year-old, Champaign, Il.-based maker of gesture recognition software, has raised $650,000 in seed funding led by Marcin Kleczynski, CEO of Malwarebytes. Illinois Ventures, Techra Investments, Hyde Park Venture Partners, Serra Ventures, BonaVentura, Fox Ventures, and numerous angel investors also participated in the round.

WaterHealth, a 19-year-old, Irvine, Ca.-based company whose water purification facilities offer sustainable, decentralized access to clean and affordable drinking water in underserved communities, has raised $10 million in funding from Vital Capital Fund, a vehicle that invests primarily in sub-Saharan Africa.

Wedding Spot, a 1.5-year-old, San Francisco–based online marketplace for booking wedding venues, has raised $3 million in seed funding co-led by Atlas Venture and KEC Ventures. Earlier investors Great Oaks Venture Capital, Maiden Lane, Canyon Creek Capital, and individual angels also joined the round. Crunchbase shows the company had previously raised $225,000 in seed funding, including from Eric Liaw and Erik Blachford.

WiserTogether, a six-year-old, Washington, D.C.-based company that makes healthcare treatment comparison software, has raised $9 million in Series B funding co-led by Martin Ventures and Merck Global Health Innovation Fund. Earlier investors Grotech Ventures, Harbert Venture Partners, 7Wire Ventures and Blue Heron Capital also joined the round, which brings the company’s total funding to $19.5 million.

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New Funds

Two executives with network experience in next-generation media and social TV have formed BRaVe Ventures, a New York-based outfit that will advise on and invest in companies and invest in digital technologies, reports Broacasting & Cable. David Beck, former senior VP and general manager of social media at Univision, and Jesse Redniss, who had been senior VP of digital for USA Network, are teaming with Vayner Media CEO and seed capital investor Gary Vaynerchuk in the new venture.

Commonfund Capital, the 26-year-old, Wilton, Ct.-based fund of funds firm, is looking to raise up to $500 million for its 11th vehicle, shows an SEC filing first flagged by VentureWire. The first sale has yet to occur.

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IPOs

The stock of CyberArk Software, a 15-year-old, Newton, Ma.-based cybersecurity software company, soared 87 percent yesterday, its first day of trading. CyberArk sold 5.36 million shares at a price of $16 per share.

Evernote — the six-year-old, Redwood City, Ca.-based company known for its note-taking apps — is considering an IPO in the next few years, its CEO, Phil Libin, tells the WSJ, adding: “We’ve been approached by lots of companies as an acquisition target and I would never rule anything out.” Evernote has raised more than $250 million from investors, including Sequoia Capital, Morgenthaler Ventures, Valiant Capital Partners and T. Rowe Price.

Shares of camera maker GoPro hit an all time high yesterday, notes the WSJ. At above $78, the stock has more than tripled from its initial public offering price of $24 in late June, likely on rumors that GoPro will release a new camera in mid October.

Vitae Pharmaceuticals, a 13-year-old, Fort Washington, Pa.-based clinical stage biotechnology company with multiple product candidates to treat various autoimmune diseases, saw its shares drop nearly 5 percent on its IPO debut yesterday. The company had priced its 6.9 million shares at $8, down from earlier plans to sell five million shares at $11 to $13 apiece.

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Exits

Civitas Therapeutics, a five-year-old, Chelsea, Ma.-based biopharmaceutical company that’s developing an inhaled formulation of an existing drug for Parkinson’s Disease, is being acquired by Acorda Therapeutics, a commercial-stage biopharmaceutical company, for $525 million in cash. Civitas had confidentially filed to go public in May; its plans were made public last month and the company was expected to go public yesterday. Its biggest shareholders include Longitude Capital Partners, which owns 19.9 percent of the company; Canaan Partners, which owns 18.9 percent; Fountain Healthcare Partners, which owns 10.2 percent;Bay City Capital, which owns 10.5 percent; and Alkermes, which owns 7 percent.

Covario, an eight-year-old, San Diego-based digital marketing agency, is being acquired by Dentsu Aegis Network of London for an undisclosed price. Covario raised $21 million in venture capital, including from Dubilier & Co., FTV Capital and Voyager Capital. The San Diego Union-Tribune has more here.

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People

Bill Carr, Amazon‘s head of digital music and video, is leaving at the end of the year, he announced internally yesterday. Carr, who joined Amazon in 1999, has been “instrumental in Amazon’s push to compete with Netflix and Hulu in streaming online video, including reaching deals with Viacom and others for exclusive content,” says the WSJ. Carr also oversaw the creation of original programming. No word yet on his next career steps. Amazon tells the WSJ that Carr’s immediate plans involve spending more time with his family and traveling.

Oracle cofounder Larry Ellison owns the Hawaiian island of Lanai, and as the New York Times Magazine reports, he views it “less like an investment than like a classic car, up on blocks in the middle of the Pacific . . . He wants to transform it into a premier tourist destination and what he has called ‘the first economically viable, 100 percent green community’: an innovative, self-sufficient dreamscape of renewable energy, electric cars and sustainable agriculture.”

After years of legal fees and unflattering press, venture capitalist Vinod Khosla has lost his battle to prevent the public from accessing Martins Beach, a cove that runs alongside his property, through an access rode that he blocked in 2010. Reports Forbes, San Mateo County Superior Court Judge Barbara Mallach “specifically ruled that Khosla’s blocking of the beach was done illegally because he did not obtain a coastal development permit first. Her ruling is not final, but it’s unlikely to change before she issues a final ruling in a month.”

Sarah and Elizabeth Turner, who were Stanford students in 2011 along with Evan Spiegel, are now suing Spiegel, the cofounder and CEO  of Snapchat. The sisters say they allowed Spiegel to photograph them for use in marketing materials for Snapchat’s predecessor app, Picaboo, but that those photos are now tarnishing their reputations for reasons they couldn’t have foreseen. More here.

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Job Listings

In late August, we told you of some openings at Samsung in Mountain View, Ca. Now Samsung is looking for an investment associate for its Open Innovation Center in New York.

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Data

Corporate VCs put $4 billion to work across 187 deals in the second quarter of this year, says CB Insights. That’s more than double the amount of $1.73 billion in capital they invested during the same year-ago period. More here.

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Essential Reads

Amazon is definitely going long on hardware. According to a Reuters report yesterday, Amazon is spending $55 million and increasing head count by at least 27 percent at its low-flying Silicon Valley-based hardware unit as it tests “smart” home gadgets.

Fifty percent of Yahoo shares have changed hands over the past four days, reports Business Insider, which has some theories as to why.

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Detours

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio has been implicated in the death of a Staten Island groundhog named Charlotte.

Michael Wolff writes of the “ever-downward glide” of Forbes Media in Town & Country.

We do love the Kloons.

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Retail Therapy

Maple bacon deluxe smoked coffee. We doubt Juan Valdez would approve.

Good morning, everyone! (Psst, here‘s an easier-to-read version of today’s issue.)

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Top News in the A.M.

Apple has announced that iOS 8 adoption has already reached 46 percent.

Google has to improve its proposal to settle European Union concerns over its search practices or face formal antitrust charges, the EU’s competition chief said earlier today.

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Venture Debt Giant WTI on Good Times — and Dangers Ahead

The 34-year-old venture debt firm Western Technology Investment (WTI) has seen a few cycles, and its CEO, Maurice Werdegar, thinks investor Bill Gurley had a point when he talked publicly last week about the excessive risk that startups are taking on.

He doesn’t think Gurley scared anyone straight, though. “I think the [dot com bubble of the late ‘90s] is a distant memory to many participants in the ecosystem, so we’re not seeing anyone panic or ring the alarm bell,” says Werdegar. “We’re seeing burn rates increase across the board, and that’s emblematic of companies that think they’re supposed to accelerate into their opportunity without thinking about whether they can raise the next round.”

It can mean brisk business for venture debt companies like WTI, which is currently joining about 100 financing deals a year, but it’s also dangerous, notes Werdegar. We talked about the environment, and WTI’s role in it, yesterday morning. Our chat has been edited for length.

For readers who don’t completely understand venture debt, can you explain why a startup would turn to you?

There are a number of cases, including to finance equipment, like when it comes to Bitcoin mining. Venture debt is also used as money in between plans. When a startup is behind on its plan, venture debt can give it time to achieve the milestones it needs to obtain. It can also be used to provide more runway to a company that may be hiring and spending ahead of its original plans because it sees a product-market fit and doesn’t necessarily want to be forced into raising another [VC] round prematurely.

Another case is to get to profitability. Sometime companies close enough to achieving breakeven raise debt rather than raise capital again, which can change acquisition discussions. Some startups also turn to venture debt to take out a competitor. Maybe they didn’t contemplate an acquisition when they raised their last round; venture debt [enables them to acquire that competitor anyway].

What types of deals are you doing and what’s your minimum threshold?

Ninety percent are tech deals right now. Another 10 percent are life sciences. We’ve done deals right out of Y Combinator on the low end; many of the deals we’re doing are with seed syndicates. We’ve also done deals north of $30 million, with several greater than $10 million in size this year, including Jet.com [the new e-commerce company by Quidsi cofounder Marc Lore].

The seed stuff is interesting. You were actually involved with Facebook, as reported in David Kirkpatrick’s book, The Facebook Effect.

We were the first venture debt for both Google and Facebook. We supplied debt along with Google’s Series A. With Facebook, we supplied two consecutive venture debt rounds of $300,000; they were buying servers because the cloud didn’t exist yet. We were also a seed equity investor in Facebook, writing a $25,000 check alongside Peter Thiel’s $500,000 check and the $37,000 checks of [entrepreneurs] Reid Hoffman and Mark Pincus, and we did a $3 million venture debt deal when Accel [led Facebook’s] $12 million Series A round [to cover the cost of computers and other hard assets]. The debt, in addition to the equity the company raised early on, helped position it for that next round. They don’t all go that way, though. [Laughs.]

What kinds of convenants do you ask for?

We have none . . . so we’re taking true risk. Our industry is known for taking money back when it gets nervous. Our firm actually loses money. It’s easy to lend money to a famous company, but much harder to work through unforeseen difficulties to keep a company alive and we’ll work through that adversity.

What kind of return are you looking for when you get involved with a company?

We have to deliver reasonably consistent, positive returns, but I’d rather not quote a number. There are often competitors that offer money less expensively, but it will come with covenants. Ours is more expensive but more usable. It’s a bit of you-get-what-you-pay-for in this industry.

There are obvious upsides to venture debt, including that it reduces dilution to the founder. What are the biggest downsides?

If it’s overused or abused, it can kill you. In any application of debt, there’s an amount that’s too much and it can get in the way. Say you’re a Y Combinator company and you raise $10 million in debt; the next round of investors won’t be interested in coming in with that kind of debt load. No one wants to finance a company that’s overburdened with debt.

If debt can be called back, it can cause unforeseen calamity, too. If your bank account has been swept, legally, that’s scary for companies.

You haven’t seen any reaction outside of the media to Bill Gurley’s proclamations last week. Does that worry you?

We ourselves feel as if things can’t get a whole lot better than the current environment. A lot depends on Facebook and Google. If they trade down 20 percent, you can be sure the venture market will take a pause. It’s imperative that they keep feeding the pump from the M&A side.

Any thoughts on valuations?

Most valuations that you’re seeing are by no means the value of company if it were to try to sell itself today. It’s the Black-Scholes model – [pricing options] based on what a company might become worth, which could be very different than what it’s worth [currently]. That, I think, is dangerous.

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New Fundings

Agari, a five-year-old, San Mateo, Ca.-based company that develops data-driven security software to detect and prevent email cyberattacks, has raised $15 million in Series C funding led by Scale Venture Partners, with earlier investors Alloy Ventures, Battery Ventures, First Round Capital and others participating in the round. The company has now raised $22.7 million altogether.

AppNexus, the seven-year-old, New York-based ad tech firm, has raised $25 million in funding from the communications services firm WPP. If you’re thinking it’s a strange deal for a company that has now raised at least $225 billion and is reportedly valued at $1.2 billion, you aren’t alone. Business Insider gets to the bottom of things here.

Authorea, a two-year-old, New York-city based startup whose software tools are designed to help scientific researchers write and manage scholarly documents, has raised $610,000 in seed funding led by ff Venture Capital and NY Angels. Earlier, the company received a $33,000 grant from a Digital Science Catalyst competition. TechCrunch has morehere.

Branch Metrics, a 1.5-year-old, Palo Alto, Ca.-based mobile software company focused on deep linking technology, has raised $3 million in seed financing led by New Enterprise Associates, with participation from Pejman Mar Ventures, Ben Narasin and TriplePoint Capital.

Circle Pharma, a year-old, San Francisco-based early-stage biotechnology company, has an undisclosed amount of seed funding from Pfizer and QB3’s seed-stage venture fund, Mission Bay Capital. BioPortfolio has more here.

Duo Security, a 4.5-year-old, Ann Arbor, Mi.-based company that provides two-factor authentication services to organizations, has raised $12 million in Series B led by Benchmark. Google Ventures, Radar Partners and True Ventures also joined the round, which brings the company’s total funding to $20 million, shows Crunchbase.

Gametime, a 1.5-year-old, San Francisco-based mobile-first ticketing platform for last minute sports tickets, has raised $4 million in Series A funding led by Accel Partners. Other participants in the round include Jeff Mallett, the founding president and former COO of Yahoo (and now a principal partner of the San Francisco Giants), Tibco founder Vivek Ranadive (now owner of the Sacramento Kings); HotelTonight cofounders Sam Shank and Jared Simon; Box cofounder Aaron Levie; and Colin Evans, a founding executive at StubHub. The company has now raised $5 million to date.

IronSource, a five-year-old, Tel Aviv-based ad tech company, has raised $85 million from a syndicate of U.S. and China-based investors that the company describes as among the largest strategic partners in mainland China. TechCrunch has more here.

Jiff, a 3.5-year-old, Palo Alto, Ca.-based company whose digital health platform helps employers design and implement programs that motivate their employees to adopt healthy behaviors, has raised $18.3 million in Series B funding led Venrock, with earlier investors Aberdare Ventures and Aeris Capital participating. The company has now raised $26.8 million to date, shows Crunchbase.

Kinvey, a four-year-old, Boston-based backend-as-a-service platform that makes it easier for developers and enterprises to set up and operate a cloud backend for their mobile, tablet and web apps, has raised $10.8 million in Series B funding from new investors NTT DOCOMO Ventures and Verizon Ventures, along with earlier investors Avalon Ventures and Atlas Venture. The company has now raised $17.8 million to date.

Le Vision Pictures, a three-year-old, Beijing-based film production and distribution company, has raised $55.4 million in Series B funding fromCHT Capital and other unnamed investors, reports China Money Network. The company had previously raised $32.7 million in Series A funding by Shenzhen Capital Group, says the report.

NexSteppe, a four-year-old, South San Francisco, Ca.-based company that develops seeds for the production of sugars and biomass, has raised $22 million in Series C financing from new investors Total Energy Ventures and ELFH Holding GmbH and earlier backers Braemar Energy Ventures and DuPont Ventures. The company has now raised $36 million altogether, shows Crunchbase.

Ometria, the 1.5-year-old, London-based e-commerce intelligence startup that analyzes customer histories to provide personalized shopping experiences, has raised $500,000 in seed funding from 17 investors, adding to a $1.5 million seed round that the company raised in March from 16 investors. TechCrunch has more here.

Performance Horizon Group, a four-year-old, South Shields, U.K.-based online marketing technology company that sells a suite of performance marketing products and services, has raised $10 million in Series B funding led by Mithril Capital Management. Earlier investors DN Capital and Greycroft Partners also participated in the round, which brings the company’s funding to at least $13.1 million, shows Crunchbase.

Radius Intelligence, a five year-old, San Francisco-based marketing automation software company, has raised $54.7 million in fresh funding from Founders Fund, Glynn Capital Management, Slow Ventures,Western Technology Investment, Yuan Capital, Morgan Stanley Chairman John Mack, former Microsoft executive Charles Songhurst, entertainer Jared Leto and earlier investors BlueRun Ventures and Formation 8. The company has now raised $78.9 million altogether, shows Crunchbase. Venture Capital Dispatch has more here.

SeqLL, a 1.5-year-old Woburn, Ma.-based developer of single molecule sequencing technology, has raised $1 million in Series A funding led by Genomic Diagnostic Technologies.

Silvercar, a nearly two-year-old, Austin, Tx.-based high-touch car-rental service that exclusively owns Audi A4s that rent for roughly $90 per weekday, has raised $14 million in new funding led by Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin and Velos Partners. Austin Ventures and CrunchFund also participated in the round, which brings the company’s total funding to $31.5 million. Venture Capital Dispatch has a nice overview of Silvercar and its new round here.

Teladoc, a 12-year-old, Dallas-based telemedicine company, has raised $50 million in Series F funding, according to an SEC filing first flagged by VentureWire. This brings the company’s total funding to just more than $100 million, the company tells the outlet. Its investors include New Capital Partners, Trident Capital, HLM Venture Partners, and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers.

Tiggly, a two-year-old, New York-based company whose physical toys interact with learning apps on iPads and other tablets, has raised an undisclosed amount of Series A funding led by Habermaass GmbH, a Germany-based early play and learning company and owners of the toy brand HABA, which is now entering the U.S. edtech market. The funding reportedly brings Tiggly’s funding to $5 million. TechCrunch has more here.

Tracon Pharmaceuticals, a nine-year-old, San Diego-based biopharmaceutical company whose product aims to complement existing cancer treatment drugs and vision disorders by inhibiting the creation of new blood vessels, has raised $27 million in Series B funding from New Enterprise Associates, BioMed Ventures and an unnamed institutional investor, with participation from new investors Nextech Invest and Brookline Investments and earlier investors Jafco and Arcus Ventures. The company has raised $42.5 million to date, shows Crunchbase.

Traxpay, a two-year-old, Frankfurt, Germany-based business-to-business payment platform company, has raised $15 million in new funding led by Commerzbank’s main incubator and Software AG, with participation from earlier investors Earlybird Venture Capital and Michael Phillips of Castik Capital. The company has now raised $19 million to date.

Verse Innovation, a seven-year-old, Bangalore-based owner of local-language mobile platform NewsHunt, has raised more than Rs 100 crore in its second round of funding led by Sequoia Capital India, which was joined by Matrix Partners India and Omidyar Network. The Economic Times has more here.

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New Funds

Mosaic Ventures, a new early-stage venture firm based in London, has officially launched a $140 million debut fund to invest in European startups, says the firm, whose founders are Mike Chalfen, formerly of Apax Partners and Advent Venture Partners; Simon Levene, who spent four years as a VP of corporate development at Yahoo, as well as worked as a VC with Accel London and Index Ventures; and Toby Coppel, long an EVP at Yahoo who later spent 4.5 years as a partner at Virgin Green Fund in London. They share what they’re aiming to do here.

Takwin Labs, a new, Haifa, Israel-based incubator for the Arab Israeli community, has raised $4.5 million in Series A funding to focus on mobile and internet technology startups, with the hope that it will be able to help Arab Israeli entrepreneurship grow. According to Haaretz, the outfit was founded by Erel Margalit, the founder of Jerusalem Venture Partners; Chemi Peres, founder and managing partner at Pitango Venture Capital; Al Bawader, an Israeli Arab venture capital firm; and Imad Telhami, founder of Babcom Centers, which supplies call center and software development services to Israeli companies. The incubator reportedly plans to raise a total of $20 million and to invest hundreds of thousands of dollars in four to six startup companies.

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IPOs

Following Alibaba‘s debut, this week could prove to be a “litmus test for the IPO market,” with 14 deals expected to raise $7 billion, says Renaissance Capital. More here.

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Exits

Apcera, a two-year-old, San Francisco-based startup behind an enterprise application platform, has sold a majority stake in its business to Ericsson in an all-cash deal whose price was not disclosed. Apcera will retain its name and operate as a standalone company, with CEO Derek Collision remaining in place. Apcera had previously raised $7.2 million from investors, including Data Collective, True Ventures, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Andreessen Horowitz, and Rakuten. Data Center Knowledge has the story.

Aviary, a seven-year-old, New York-based photo editing platform, has been acquired by Adobe for undisclosed financial terms. Aviary had raised a total of $19 million in funding, including a recent $2 million debt round. The company’s investors include Spark Capital, Bezos Expeditions, Vision Ventures, Reid Hoffman, Joi Ito, Thomas Lehrman, and Payman Pouladdej. TechCrunch has more here.

Bookpad, a year-old, Bangalore, India-based digital content startup whose flagship product enables cloud-based document embedding, annotations and editing features on enterprise applications, has been acquired by Yahoo for undisclosed terms that sources of the Economic Times peg at $8.3 million. More here.

Engodo, a two-year-old, San Francisco-based social advertising startup, has been acquired in a cash-and-stock deal by the video monetization platform ZEFR, a five-year-old, Venice, Ca.-based company. Engodo doesn’t appear to have raised outside funding. ZEFR has raised $60 million from investors, including from SoftTech VC, MK Capital, Shasta Ventures, U.S. Venture Partners, and First Round Capital. TechCrunch has more here.

Fullscreen, a 3.5-year-old, Culver City, Ca.-based company that has grown into one of the biggest YouTube networks, has sold a controlling stake in its business to Otter Media, the Web video joint venture between AT&T and the Chernin Group. Fullscreen CEO George Strompolos will remain in charge of the company, in which he continues to hold a stake. The deal is likely to value Fullscreen, which says it has four billion monthly video views, between $200 million and $300 million, reports Recode. Fullscreen had previously raised $30 million from investors, including the Cherin Group, Comcast Ventures, WPP Digital and SV Angel.

Mopp, a 1.5-year-old, U.K.-based cleaning service, has been acquired by the New York-based on-demand home cleaning and repair service Handy. No financial terms were disclosed. Mopp never disclosed outside funding. Handy has raised at least $45.7 million from General Catalyst Partners, David Tisch, Highland Capital Partners, BoxGroup and Revolution Growth, shows Crunchbase.

Hitch, a young, San Francisco-based ride-sharing service based in San Francisco, has been acquired by its bigger, seven-year-old rival Lyft for undisclosed terms. Hitch had raised at least $150,000 from Kima Ventures, Winklevoss Capital, and Scott Banister. Bloomberg has more here.

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People

What has Ray Ozzie been focusing on since leaving his position as Microsoft’s chief software architect? Here’s the answer.

And it begins in earnest. “Signaling that he may be edging closer to a 2016 White House run, Republican Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky said Saturday he plans to open an office in the San Francisco Bay Area, one of the nation’s strongest Democratic bastions – and a convenient link to Silicon Valley,” reports the San Francisco Chronicle.

Neighbors are fed up over the large and loud construction zone outside the San Francisco home of Facebook cofounder Mark Zuckerberg, where 40 to 50 contraction workers have at work daily on a complete remodel since April of last year. The San Francisco Chronicle has the story here.

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Job Listings

Little John Ventures, a small, Baltimore-based venture capital fund investing in early-stage media and entertainment tech startups, is looking to hire a research analyst.

The Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York is looking for an investment associate to help manage its $4 billion in assets.

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Data

The old and the new: a look at global install bases, c/o Benedict Evans.

Princeton University’s endowment is “probably the largest investor” in New York-based Thrive Capital, its president, Andrew Golden, tells the Daily Princetonian.

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Essential Reads

The Ivanpah solar power plant in the Mojave Desert, which took four years and thousands of workers to complete and officially opened in February, may already be in deep trouble. As VentureWire notes, the “world’s largest solar thermal electricity project is applying for a federal grant–to pay off its federal loan,” of hundreds of millions of dollars. Even as the plant opened — backed by BrightSource Energy, NRG Energy and Google — it faced doubts about its future, the New York Times had reported earlier. “Companies that are supplying these systems have questionable futures,” an analyst had told the outlet back in February. “There’s other prospects for renewables and for solar that look a lot better than this particular solution.”

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Detours

Look who was in line for new iPhones last weekend.

Six billionaires and their effing sons.

John Oliver’s very smart take on the spectacle that is “Miss America“: “They asked one of the contestants to solve ISIS. And she only had 20 seconds to do it!”

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Retail Therapy

A little peace offering for Mark Zuckerberg’s furious neighbors, perhaps?

Hi, everyone, we don’t have a column today (kid stuff). Hope you have a great morning! Web visitors, here’s an easier-to-read version of what you see below.

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Top News in the A.M.

A message from Tim Cook about Apple’s commitment to your privacy. “Our business model is very straightforward: We sell great products. We don’t build a profile based on your email content or web browsing habits to sell to advertisers. We don’t ‘monetize’ the information you store on your iPhone or in iCloud. And we don’t read your email or your messages to get information to market to you,” Google, cough.

Scotland heads to the polls. (Related: Nine questions about Scottish culture answered.)

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New Fundings

Augmate, a 1.5-year-old, New York-based wearable platform that accelerates the development of digital eyewear applications, has raised $2.8 million in seed funding from Tim Draper and others.

Beyond Verbal, a two-year-old, Tel Aviv, Israel-based company whose technology can extract, decode, and measure a full spectrum of human emotions in a person’s voice over any voice-enabled device, has raised $3.3 million in Series A funding, reports Venture Capital Dispatch. The company, whose earlier investors include Genesis Angels and angel investor Kenges Rakishev, has raised $7.1 million to date.

Chobolabs, a two-year-old, mobile gaming startup that brings competitive synchronous multiplayer gaming to smartphones and tablets, has raised $1.3 million in funding led by Innovation Endeavors, with XG Ventures and numbers angel investors participating. Chobolabs is part of Stanford’s StartX community. (Meanwhile, here is a list of 11other startups that are just emerging from the StartX accelerator program.)

ClassPass, 1.5-year-old, New York-based membership program for fitness classes across multiple gyms and studios, has raised $12 million in Series A funding, led by angel investors Fritz Lanman (who led ClassPass’s seed round) and Hank Vigil. Other investors in the round include SV Angel, Gordy Crawford, Owen van Natta, and Blake Krikorian. The company has now raised $14 million altogether, shows Crunchbase.

Colorescience, a 14-year-old, Carlsbad, Ca.-based makeup company that sells through medical and resort spa channels, has raised $15 million in Series B funding led by Longwood Fund, with existing investors contributing half the capital. The company had previously raised $10 million in Series A funding from Montreux Equity Partners and Split Rock Partners.

CrowdFlower, a seven-year-old, San Francisco-based platform to help data scientists collect, clean and label data to make it useful, has raised $12.5 million in Series C financing led by Canvas Venture Fund, with participation from earlier investors Bessemer Venture Partners and Trinity Ventures. The company has raised $25.7 million to date, shows Crunchbase.

CyActive, a 1.5-year-old, Be’er Sheva, Israel-based cybersecurity company takes existing malware strains and mutates them into every possible format to predict and head off future attacks, has raised an undisclosed amount of funding from Siemens Venture Capital. Venture Wire Dispatch has more on the company here.

EatWith, a two-year-old, Tel Aviv, Israel-based company whose community marketplace offers dining experiences in people’s homes around the world, has raised $8 million in funding from Greylock Partners. Part of the funding will be used to relocate the 18-person company to San Francisco, says the company, which currently has 500 “hosts” on the platform who’ve cooked for guests in more than 160 cities worldwide.

HowGood, an eight-year-old, Brooklyn, N.Y.-based app that rates grocery products according to both their nutritional content and how sustainably they were created, has raised $2 million in funding from FirstMark Capital, Highline Ventures, Great Oaks Venture Capital, Serious Change LP, Jake Lodwick and Joanne Wilson.

Jack Erwin, a 1.5-year-old, New York-based men’s footwear company, has raised $9 million in Series B funding led by the footwear companyBrown Shoe Co., with participation from earlier investors CrossLink Capital, Shasta Ventures and FundersGuild. StrictlyVC talked with the company in February, when it raised $2 million in Series A funding. The company had raised $750,000 in seed funding in 2013.

JW Player, a seven-year-old, New York-based online and mobile video platform and player technology company, has received $20 million in Series C funding led by Greycroft Growth and Greenspring Associates, with participation from Cue Ball Capital and e.ventures.

LightSpeed Retail, a nine-year-old, Quebec-based company that makes point-of-sale software for retailers, has raised $35 million in funding led by iNovia Capital, with participation from earlier Accel Partners. The company has now raised a total of $65 million.

PeerSpace, a year-old, San Francisco-based startup whose online platform facilitates the rental of short-term space (from offices to theaters to exercise studios), has raised a seed round of $1.5 million led by Structure Capital. Individual investors, including Ran Makavy, Michael Horowitz, and Ron Pizzuti, also participated.

Ping Identity, a 12-year-old, Denver-based company that sells cloud-based identity management software to companies and government organizations, has raised $35 million in new funding led by KKR, with participation from Ten Eleven and numerous earlier investors. The company has now raised $110 million to date, including from SAP Ventures, DFJ Growth, W Capital Partners, Avista Partners, Triangle Peak Partners, General Catalyst Partners, and Appian Ventures.

Porch, a two-year-old, Seattle-based startup that helps homeowners make decisions regarding home improvements, has raised $27.6 million in Series A funding from Lowe’s, the home improvement giant told Dow Jones yesterday. Porch had previously raised $6.25 million in seed funding from SV Angel and a long list of individual investors.

SocialChorus, a 6.5-year-old, San Francisco-based brand marketing company that puts employees and “brand ambassadors” to work to share a company’s content, has raised $7.5 million in Series B funding led by earlier investor Kohlberg Ventures. The company has raised $15.5 million to date, including from Windforce Ventures.

Splice, a 1.5-year-old, New York-based music production storage and collaboration startup, has raised $4.5 million in Series A funding led by True Ventures, with participation from Union Square Ventures. The company was founded by Steve Martocci, who previously cofounded the messaging app GroupMe. (As a reminder, GroupMe was acquired by Skype in 2011 for a reported $68 million, including earn-outs.)

Swrve, a three-year-old, San Francisco-based company whose app marketing platform helps mobile product teams optimize their applications and games, has raised $10 million in Series B Capital from Acero Capital, with participation from earlier investors, including Intel Capital and Atlantic Bridge. The company has now raised $22 million from investors.

TouchPal, a six-year-old Shanghai-based company whose keyboard app is among several third-party keyboards coming to the iOS for the first time, has raised “significantly” more than $20 million in new funding, reports TechCrunch. Sequoia Capital led the deal, with earlier investor Qiming Venture Partners and Qualcomm Ventures participating. The company had previously raised $5 million in funding.

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New Funds

Lowe’s, the 68-year-old, North Wilkesboro, N.C.-based home improvement company, is in the early stages of forming a venture arm,says VentureWire. The company has already made four bets, including on smart energy and home monitoring startup AlertMe; membership-based workshop TechShop; the solar services company Sungevity; and Porch. (See more about the last above, in New Fundings.) “We are starting to build the capacity for a fund,” a company executive tells the outlet. “We don’t have a dollar amount attached to it.”

Nova Founders Capital, a two-year-old, Hong Kong-based firm that builds and invests in companies, has raised $50 million from Pacific Century Group, one of Asia’s leading investment groups. The firm, run by Mads Faurholt-Jorgensen and Raphael Strauch, two former partners of Rocket Internet, has disclosed a handful of investments to date, including GlassesGroupGlobal, a two-year-old Asia-Pacific online eyewear retailer that has so far raised $3 million, and Lion & Lion, a year-old, Jakarta-based digital advertising company that has raised an undisclosed amount of seed funding.

Top Tier Capital Partners, the San Francisco-based fund-of-funds manager, has raised $202 million for its seventh fund, which is targeting $404 million, according to an SEC filing. The company held a $441 million final close on its sixth fund just earlier this year, in January.

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IPOs

About $8 billion worth of Alibaba shares are not locked up and could be sold as soon as the e-commerce company goes public later this week,reports the WSJ.

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Exits

FeedHenry, a four-year-old, Waterford, Ireland-based provider of a platform for mobile app developers, specifically for enterprises to build apps, has been acquired by Red Hat, the open source company, for $82 million in cash. TechCrunch has more here. FeedHenry had raised $9 million in funding from Kernel Capital Partners, Intel Capital, VMware,Enterprise Ireland, and ACT Venture Capital.

Metacloud, a three-year-old, Pasadena, Ca.-based company that powers enterprise-grade cloud platforms for its corporate customers, has been acquired by Cisco. Financial terms of the deal weren’t disclosed, but Metacloud has raised at least $25 million in funding over the past few years, including from Pelion Venture Partners, Silicon Valley Bank, UMC Capital, AME Cloud Ventures, Canaan Partners, and Storm Ventures.

GitHub, the six-year-old, San Francisco-based web-based repository hosting service company, is shutting down the Easel website-designing service it acquired back in January. VentureBeat has more here.

Stonestreet One, a five-year-old, Louisville, Ky.-based developer and licensor of Bluetooth software, was acquired yesterday by Qualcomm Atheros, the networking and connectivity subsidiary of Qualcomm. Terms of the deal weren’t disclosed, but a Stonestreet investor tells StrictlyVC it was a “great strategic exit.” The company has raised $3.4 million from local angels and seed funds.

Ubersense, a three-year-old, Boston-based company specializing in interactive video analysis and instruction, has been acquired by the privately held sports video software company Hudl. Terms of the deal weren’t disclosed. Ubersense had raised a small amount of seed funding from BDS Venture Fund, Google Ventures, Atlas Venture, and Boston Seed Capital. Recode has more here.

—–

People

Apple CEO Tim Cook talks with BusinessWeek in what’s a must-read profile. Reports BW: “Cook says he wishes he could make [Apple Watch, which starts at $349] more affordable, particularly since the company boasts of its potential to help customers manage their health and wellness (‘that’s the humanitarian coming out’), but he won’t compromise Apple’s large profit margins to make it happen.”

Uber has David Plouffe. Now former House Democratic Leader Dick Gephardt’s lobbying group is working with Lyft to “advocate for the removal of barriers that inhibit ride sharing,” according to Recode.

Hightail, the cloud storage and file-sharing company that last week parted ways with CEO Brad Garlinghouse and brought back cofounder Ranjith Kumaran to run the show, is cutting roughly 100 people, which is roughly half its employees, reports Recode.

Microsoft is also reportedly laying off a lot of people today.

Sequoia Capital’s Michael Moritz talks with the WSJ, telling the paper that Sequoia owns shares in Alibaba (news to us) and that he thinks U.S. companies have a disadvantage right now to their China-based counterparts. “Over the next decade, to some extent, I think the advantage lies with the Chinese companies. The Chinese companies will have an easier time competing in the West then the Western companies will have competing in China.”

Google cofounder Larry Page has a lot of things on his to-do list, including creating a second major research lab alongside Google X and, well, also building a model airport and city. The Information has more here.

Bill Pescatello has been promoted from principal to partner at Lightbank, the Chicago-based investment fund started by Groupon co-founders Eric Lefkofsky and Brad Keywell. Pescatello had joined the firm in 2011 from NBCUniversal in New York, where he was a VP and founding member of Peacock Equity Fund, NBCUniversal’s venture capital arm.

Uh oh. Roughly one week into his new post as chief strategy officer at Hampton Creek, serial entrepreneur Ali Partovi has abruptly left the company, which has raised $30 million from Founders Fund and Khosla Ventures and others (including Partovi and his brother, Hadi) to develop egg-free food alternatives. The WSJ has the story here, including an email that Partovi sent friends, confirming his departure. “This will surely come as a surprise to you, and I’m sorry for waiting so many days to share the news,” he wrote. “We parted ways with mutual respect. The people at Hampton Creek are incredible, and we’ll continue to wish each other well.”

Investor Peter Thiel doesn’t think Alibaba is such a great long-term investment. He tells CNN: “Alibaba is sort of this protected Chinese company – it will do well, but it is fundamentally a political entity that is somehow very deeply connected with the Chinese government . . .You’ll get a pop and you’ll do well if it continues to stay in the good graces of the Chinese government, but it’s fundamentally a political investment.”

George Zachary of CRV had talked with investor Semil Shah about Silicon Valley bubbles on the eve of Facebook’s May 2012 IPO, and it’s an interesting discussion — particularly in light of the current bubble chatter. Shah just reposted it here if you’re interested in browsing the transcript.

The most powerful people in tech at every age, including an eight-year-old who is clearing more than a million dollars a year by reviewing games and toys on YouTube(!).

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Job Listings

Credit Suisse is looking for an equity capital markets analyst in New York.

Prosper, the peer-to-peer lending marketplace, is looking for a senior business development manager. The job is in San Francisco.

—–

Essential Reads

Apple has partnered with everyone who’s anyone in the payments world for its new Apple Pay service, including Visa, MasterCard, and American Express. Then there’s Stripe, the five-year-old, San Francisco-based payments company.

Even San Francisco International Airport has startup fever. It just opened a “place for travelers to innovate and collaborate while waiting for their flights,” reports Government Technology. Adding the space just made sense, according to the airport’s public relations officer, who was presumably not joking.

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Detours

The scourge of “relatability.”

The 20 colleges with the most billionaire alumni.

A man and his dog.

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Retail Therapy

The best first-class airline seats in the world.

Do you need a $199 e-reader? Because Amazon thinks you do.

Hi, good Wednesday morning, everyone! (Web visitors, here‘s an easier-to-read version of today’s newsletter.)

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Top News in the A.M.

Investor Peter Thiel appeared on CNBC this morning and had some provocative things to say about Twitter, calling it “hard to evaluate. They have a lot of potential. It’s a horribly mismanaged company—probably a lot of pot-smoking going on there. But it’s such a solid franchise it may even work with all that.”

Yet another firm, Battery East, wants to convince start-ups to let it arrange secondary transactions in their stock. It opens its doors today.

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The Best-Funded Connected Home Startup You’ve Never Heard of

You probably haven’t heard of Leeo, a 1.5-year-old, San Francisco-based maker of smart home products and services. But investors are well aware of it, along with a growing number of engineers. Indeed, the now 60-person company has quietly raised $37 million in financing, including from Formation 8; E.ON, one of the world’s largest investor-owned power and gas companies; and Visionnaire Ventures, the fund of billionaire Taizo Son, who is the youngest brother of Softbank magnate Masayoshi Son.

The attraction isn’t surprising, given the murderer’s row of operators that Leeo has assembled. Cofounder Adam Gettings was cofounder and CTO of RoboteX, a maker of first responder robots that he launched with his brother Nathan, who also cofounded the data analysis company Palantir Technologies and is now Leeo’s chief data advisor.

Adding product development smarts is chief operating officer Charles Huang, who with his brother founded RedOctane, publisher of the best-selling videogame franchise “Guitar Hero.” And on the form factor side, Leeo’s chief designer is Robert Brunner, who was Apple’s first design chief and most recently the chief designer at Beats Electronics.

It sounds like a winner. Just don’t ask what the company is making. (It’s not saying yet.) I talked with Gettings and Huang last week about their secretive company.

Why start Leeo?

Gettings: It was largely inspired by a friend who saw a fire from a distance and realized it was her home. She wound up losing the house and all of her pets and it was tragic for our circle of friends to be so close to the situation. [Afterwards], we started wondering how we could create a connection between the home and people so people could be better linked to their homes when they’re away. Our first product coming out [will address the issue], then a series of other products [will follow].

Is this a smoke detector? Is it something that exists in the market that you’re improving on or is this a new device entirely?

Huang: It’s a product that takes advantage of existing infrastructure. It isn’t difficult for consumers to use in their homes yet uses the benefits of connected devices.

That was quite a non-answer! Should Nest Labs be nervous?

Gettings: I don’t know. I think our design chops are pretty good. It’s an interesting space and relatively early when you consider how long Nest Labs has been around. Every day there seems to be new entrants into the [Internet of Things] market. The space will be very big in the future – it’s the next big evolution of the Internet.

Huang: One thing we’re excited about is getting enormous incumbents involved through strategic investors, like E.ON [for which we’ll create] custom-designed smart home products and services. [E.ON has roughly 35 million customers in more than 10 European countries.] We’re also working with Softbank, which owns Sprint and has more than 180 million mobile phone subscribers to which they want to provide more products and services, including through their Sprint stores in the U.S. and their Softbank stores in Asia.

Why this staggered launch announcement, with details about your funding but not about your product?

Gettings: We’re very excited about building the team and assembling the product and it’s a chance for us to say hello to the world.

Huang: There are a lot of interesting parts to this story, so we’re trying to tell it chapter and chapter and not overload people with one massive press campaign.

Okay, tell us this: You’ve both formed companies with your brothers. What’s it like to work with your sibling?

Huang: Great. You have an instinctive trust. You can almost know what he’s thinking before he says it. But you do behave just like you did as kids. One of you will say something and the other will respond, “That’s just the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard,” like you’re eight years old. [Laughs.]

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New Fundings

Bellabox, a three-year-old, Singapore-based company that has become Australia’s biggest beauty subscription site, has raised $2.7 million in funding from Allure Media, a digital publishing company owned by Fairfax Media. The company has raised $4.1 million altogether. TechCrunch has the story here.

Daojia, a four-year-old, Shanghai, China-based restaurant food delivery startup, has raised $50 million in new funding co-led by Chinese e-commerce giant JD.com and Macquarie Capital. Morningside Ventures and CDH Venture also participated in the round. To date, the company has raised roughly $75 million. Venture Capital Dispatch has more here.

eJiaJie, a 1.5-year-old, Beijing-based platform centered around hourly housekeeping services, has raised $4 million in funding from Shanda Capital and Tencent. According to Tech in Asia, the company had previously raised $650,000 in seed funding, including from Tencent.

eSentire, a 13-year-old, Cambridge, Ontario-based cyber security company, has raised a $12.7 million in Series C funding led by Georgian Partners, with participation from Cisco Investments and Northleaf Venture Catalyst Fund. Earlier investors Edison Partners and VentureLink also participated in the round, which brings the company’s total funding to $19.6 million, shows Crunchbase.

Fastly, a three-year-old, San Francisco-based content delivery network, has raised a $40 million in Series C funding led by August Capital. Earlier investors Battery Ventures, O’Reilly AlphaTech Ventures and Amplify Partners also participated in the round, along with new investor IDG Ventures. To date, the company has raised $54 million, shows Crunchbase.

Gousto, a two-year-old, London-based online web application that sends customers the ingredients they need to cook meals they’ve pre-selected, has raised $8.3 million from Unilever Ventures, with participation from earlier investor MMC Ventures. The company has now raised $11.4 million altogether, shows Crunchbase.

Jet, a six-month-old, Montclair, N.J.-based e-commerce company that was founded by entrepreneur Marc Lore, has raised $20 million in growth capital from Western Technology Investments and a $5 million asset-backed facility from Silicon Valley Bank, bringing its Series A round — which also includes $55 million from New Enterprise Associates, Accel Partners, Bain Capital Ventures and MentorTech Ventures — to a whopping $80 million. Lore, whose company is operating in stealth mode for now, previously cofounded Quidsi, parent company of Diapers.com, which sold to Amazon for $550 million in 2010. He’s building Jet with his Quidsi co-founders, former VP of special operations Nathan Faust, and project director Mike Hanrahan. TechCrunch has the story here.

MileIQ, a two-year-old, San Francisco-based mileage tracker app, has raised $3 million in seed funding led by CRV, with participation from Salesforce founder Marc Benioff, SV Angel and others.

Newsela, a New York-based education tech startup that provides daily news articles that are extracted from national and regional newspapers, has raised $4.1 million in Series A funding led by Owl Ventures, a new venture firm that solely backs ed-tech startups. Other participants in the round include Knight Foundation’s Knight Enterprise Fund, Cambridge Information Group and earlier investors NewSchools Venture Fund and Kapor Capital. The company has raised roughly $5.7 million to date. Venture Capital Dispatch has the story here.

RightCare Solutions, a three-year-old, Horsham, Pa.-based company whose software helps hospitals and other health care providers optimize their discharge planning process, has raised $4 million in funding from NewSpring Health Capital. The company had previously raised $6.8 million from Domain Associates and Compass Partners.

Semmle, an eight-year-old, Oxford, England-based business analytics platform that aims to optimize other companies’ IT projects by analyzing the quality of their developers’ code and how much they’re spending on software development, has raised $8 million in Series A funding led by Accel Partners. TechCrunch has more here.

Synereca Pharmaceuticals, a five-year-old, Chapel Hill, N.C.-based company that develops drugs that restore the effectiveness of existing antibiotics, has raised $1.4 million in convertible debt led by Accele Venture Partners. i2E, a not-for-profit corporation focused on growing small businesses in Oklahoma, also participated in the round along with individual investors.

Talkdesk, a three-year-old, Mountain View, Ca.-based company that says its software enables companies to create a call center in the browser in less than 5 minutes, has raised $3 million in seed funding from Storm Ventures.

TrueAccord, a year-old, San Francisco-based company that uses behavioral engineering and machine learning to automate the process of debt collecting, has raised $5 million in Series A funding from Khosla Ventures, Homebrew, serial entrepreneur Max Levchin, and Braintree founder Bryan Johnson.

WeiChaiShi, a 20-month-old, Shanghai, China-based Chinese mobile task outsourcing platform, has raised $3.2 million in funding led by ClearVue Partners, with Nokia Growth Partners participating. The company has raised at least $6.2 million to date, shows Crunchbase.

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New Funds

Providence Health & Services, a not-for-profit Catholic health-care ministry in Renton, Wa., says it will invest $150 million in early- to mid-stage companies that aim to improve patient care. The fund is being led by Aaron Martin, who came to Providence earlier this year from Amazon’s publishing and print-on-demand business. He reportedly led Amazon’s content acquisition Kindle’s North American trade publishing business. The Puget Sound Business Journal has more here.

Stem, a five-year-old, Millbrae, Ca.-based energy storage startup whose battery systems are meant to be used when grid power is too expensive, has created a new fund to finance up to $100 million in new projects featuring its technology. More here.

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IPOs

Proteon Therapeutics, a 13-year-old, Waltham, Ma.-based biopharmaceutical company that develops drugs for renal and vascular disease, has filed to go public. The company has raised at least $126 million over the years, shows Crunchbase. Its principal shareholders include TVM Capital, which owns 19.4 percent; Abingworth Bioventures, which owns 19.1 percent; Prism Venture Partners, which owns 15.6 percent; Skyline Venture Partners, which owns 15.3 percent; Deerfield, which owns 10.5 percent; Pharmstandard International, which owns 10.5 percent; Intersouth Partners, which owns 10.4 percent; and MPM Capital, which owns 10.3 percent.

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Exits

Darjeelin, a 1.5-old, Paris-based startup whose online flight search engine is powered by “flight hackers” who tell users when there are cheaper flights available, has been acquired by Voyage Privé Group-owned L’Officiel des Vacances, a site that offers travel deals from around the web. Terms of the deal weren’t disclosed. TechCrunch has more here.

Mail.ru, a publicly traded Russian Internet company, confirmed yesterday that it has acquired the remaining shares of “Russia’s Facebook” Vkontake that it didn’t already own for $1.47 billion. The deal means Mail.ru now controls Russia’s two most popular social networks, VK and Odnoklassniki (“classmates”). Circa has more here.

Ostrovok.ru, a Russian travel booking site that raised $28 million in a Series B round last year led by General Catalyst Partners, has seen a change in ownership, reports Venture Capital Dispatch, which says both General Catalyst and earlier backer Accel Partners have quietly divested their holdings, likely owing to continuing conflict in neighboring Ukraine. (They aren’t saying.) Whatever the case, they wanted out. Lev Leviev, a co-founder of Vaizra Investments, which recently invested in Ostrovok.ru, tells the outlet that Accel and General Catalyst “didn’t sell their shares, they gave them up.”

Pounce, a two-year-old, Tel Aviv-based mobile shopping app that surfaces deals from retailers, has been acquired by visual search company Slyce for $5 million in shares, cash and earn-out incentives. TechCrunch has more here.

Virtual, a Delray Beach, Fla.-based pre-launch virtualization platform for both Android and iOS, has been acquired by Citrix, reports TechCrunch. Terms of the deal aren’t being disclosed.

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People

The 30 most important women under age 30 in tech, according to Business Insider.

Scott Bartlett, the technical lead behind Google’s Nexus phone program, has left to become the director of hardware at Hello, maker of a spherical sleep sensor called Sensor that we wrote about last month. TechCrunch has much more here.

Emergence Capital Partners has promoted Santi Subotovsky to partner and Joe Floyd to principal. Prior to joining Emergence in 2010, Subotovsky was an advisor at Aqua Capital Partners. Before joining Aqua Capital Partners, he was a summer associate at Storm Ventures. Before joining Emergence in 2012, Floyd was an associate at both American Capital and McKinsey & Co. He was also a Kauffman Fellow.

Marty Hanaka has joined Highland Capital Partners as an operating partner. He most recently was interim chief executive of Guitar Center, a Highland portfolio company. Previously, he was chairman and CEO of Golfsmith International Holdings, chairman and CEO of Sports Authority, and president and chief operating officer of Staples.

Peter Thiel, Reid Hoffman, Paul Graham, and Marc Andreessen are among other prominent investors and founders who’ve signed on to teach a 20-session Y Combinator course at Stanford called “How to Start a Startup.” In nice news for founders everywhere: all materials from the class, including videos, will be posted to the site of Y Combinator president Sam Altman.

VCs weigh in on Bill Gurley‘s public warning that companies are taking on too much risk. Says Jeff Clavier of SoftTechVC: “The thing I am missing with Gurley’s piece is, so what? There wasn’t a clear call to action. If you believe everything is in overdrive and you have shares of Uber at [an $18 billion valuation] and shares of Snapchat at [a $10 billion valuation], you wonder if he should sell some of them.”

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Job Listings

McKinsey & Co. is looking for an M&A analyst. The job is in New York.

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Essential Reads

Worth noting: Most of technology’s most notable names aren’t soaring along with today’s Internet darlings, as happened in the late ’90s.

Facebook has built an app for super private sharing.

The seven new startups capturing San Francisco’s attention right now.

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Detours

A wife’s happiness is more crucial than her husband’s in keeping marriage on track, a Rutgers study finds. (What? We’re just reporting the news here!)

Aerial views of a colorful Italian beach town.

Postcards for ants.

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Retail Therapy

Looks like we’re all getting new iPhones.

Hi, everyone, good morning! (Pst, web visitors, here’s an easier-to-read version of this morning’s email, below, right here.)

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Top News in the A.M.

PayPal just attacked Apple Pay in a full-page New York Times ad that reads: “We the people want our money safer than our selfies. PayPal, protecting the people economy.” Well. This should be interesting!

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DataFox Aims to Disrupt Company Intelligence, Upset Michael Bloomberg

Bloomberg and Thomson Reuters had better watch their backs – or else get out their checkbooks. The financial information giants suddenly face a spate of startups ready to take a big bite of their businesses, with DataFox, a year-old, nine-person team in Palo Alto, Ca., among the newest.

So far the company, run by Stanford alums, has raised $1.78 million in seed funding from Google Ventures Ventures, Sherpalo Ventures, and Green Visor Capital, among others, for its subscription-based deal intelligence platform. The idea: replace expensive and sometimes far-flung analysts with algorithms that can turn structured and unstructured data into real-time, competitive insights about companies.

DataFox, which has three subscription tiers — $49 per month, $399 per month, and “call us,” essentially — says it isn’t ready for another round of funding just yet. At the moment, at least, it’s more focused on launching its beta product, after testing out its service for the past year with more than 2,000 trial users. Still, cofounder and CEO Bastiaan Janmaat says paying customers, including Box, Twitter and Bloomberg Beta, think the company is on the right path. In fact, he says of his company (only half-kiddingly): “This probably isn’t what ex-Mayor Bloomberg is looking for upon his return as CEO.” He shared more with us yesterday.

DataFox mines all kinds of public information to do its job. Does it create new data, too, or might it?

We do create new data, but we do it automatically. One example is competitors lists. Other databases suck at this. Human analysts at [the business data and analytics company] Dun & Bradstreet update their list just once a year. Our algorithms look at things such as co-mentions in news articles and similar press releases to automatically generate a list of similar companies, updated in real-time. The same is true of sector classifications. We invented our own sector taxonomy of more than 70,000 keywords . . . so now a company like Box is classified as “file sharing, web hosting, cloud computing, ftp replacement” plus 20 other terms, instead of just “file storage.”

You “push” out information that you deem relevant to your customers, like a headcount mention deep in a news article. How is that information delivered?

People get one weekly email. We’ll soon allow for opt-in daily alerts. Meanwhile, people login to DataFox for the real-time feed.

A lot of your customers are interested primarily in private company information, but you also track public companies, correct?

Yes, which is why our business is such a radical departure from the status quo, meaning CapIQ, Thomson Reuters, Bloomberg, and so forth. We’re building entity-agnostic algorithms that, over time, we can apply to any company, person or theme. We have around 7,000 public companies in our database currently. Whenever a customer requests that a company to be added, all we need is the URL, and we’ll auto-generate a one-pager in a matter of hours.

What’s on your roadmap? What else will DataFox offer customers next year?

Collaborative and team features. Expanded company coverage. We’re currently at 450,000, but I expect to cover more sectors within a year and more international companies. We’ll also be tracking more types of events. We have the pipes and parsers built, so we’ll continue to write more rules to identify more structured data points beyond the headcount, revenue, and valuation data we currently collect — like new major customers and new offices.

You say you aren’t raising money again until some time next year. What milestones do you plan to reach before talking again with investors?

We’re a subscription business, so we’re looking to continue growing revenues, but the one metric we care about most is engagement, meaning the frequency of logins and alert email opens, as well as the number of companies that [customers currently] follow, which is 35 per user. If we can continue to get daily engagement from analysts at Intuit, Bloomberg Beta, Google, Goldman Sachs, and the like, we’ll bolster our prognosis that we’re disrupting the large incumbents, and that data can’t be “pull” anymore. It needs to be predictive.

Why are you so convinced that “push” is the way to go?

The volume of communication and data is exploding, there are too many streams to pull from, so mathematically it’s necessarily becoming less likely that you are able to pull the right data point at the right time. Specifically for our customers, companies’ online footprints are expanding, so there’s more information out there, but they don’t have time to monitor a company’s employees on LinkedIn, their Twitter account, their Delaware filings, and the regional papers that cover them. Hence the need for push. I train my delivery pipe to understand my interests, schedule, and priorities. The pipe decides what’s important and surfaces that for me.

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New Fundings

Carta Worldwide, a seven-year-old, Ontario-based company behind a digital transaction processing platform, has raised $7 million in Series D funding led by Toronto-based merchant bank Difference Capital and DC Thomson in the U.K. The round represents the first tranche of what is expected to be a $12 million round. To date, the company has raised roughly $50 million altogether, reports the outlet Cantech.

DHgate, a 10-year-old, Beijing-based business-to-business e-commerce platform that connects small and medium-size businesses with buyers overseas, has raised $16.3 million in Series D funding from China Growth Capital and TDF Capital, according to China Money Network. According to the report, the company had raised previously north of $30 million from investors, including Jafco, Warburg Pincus, and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers.

DipJar, a six-year-old, New York-based company that makes a jar containing a standard credit card reader (so people can tip their barista, even when cashless), has raised $420,000 in seed funding to fuel further software development of its product, reports TechCrunch. The round was led by Project 11, a new fund created by Brightcove founder Bob Mason, and numerous other angel investors.

Docker, a four-year-old, San Francisco-based open platform for distributed applications for developers, has raised $40 million in Series C funding led by Sequoia Capital, with participation from earlier investors Benchmark Capital, Greylock Partners, Insight Ventures, Trinity Ventures and Jerry Yang. The company had previously raised $25.8 million. Venture Capital Dispatch has more here.

Kateeva, a six-year-old, Menlo Park, Ca.-based maker of flat panel OLED displays, has raised $38 million in Series D funding from Samsung Ventures, Sigma Partners, Spark Capital, Madrone Capital Partners, DBL Investors, New Science Ventures and VEECO Instruments. The company has now raised more than $110 million altogether.

Molecular Templates, a five-year-old, Georgetown, Tx.-based company that develops antibody-drug conjugates, has added $3.5 million to its $8.5 million C round, with the new funding coming from AJU IB Investment, a new investor. The company has now raised about $33.5 million to date, shows Crunchbase. Its previous backers include Excel Venture Management and Santé Ventures.

NeoSystems, a 14-year-old, Tysons Corner, Va.-based company that that performs strategic back office services for government contractors, nonprofit organizations, and commercial entities, has raised $15 million in funding led by OFS Capital. The company has raised at least $20 million to date, including from Salem Halifax Capital Partners, shows Crunchbase.

Palantir Technologies, the 10-year-old, Palo Alto, Ca.-based data analysis company, has raised a round of equity, options, warrants and rights amounting to $444.2 million, according to an amended SEC filing flagged by VentureWire. The company has now raised at least $950 million from investors, shows Crunchbase.

Power2SME, a 2.5-year-old, Gurgaon, India-based online buying hub for small and medium enterprises, has raised roughly $6.9 million in Series C funding from earlier investors Accel Partners, Kalaari Capital and Inventus Capital. VCCircle has more here.

QuanTemplate, a three-year-old, London-based company behind what it promises is a secure, web-based platform for finance and insurance business transactions, has raised an undisclosed amount of seed funding from Anthemis Group and existing investors. The company had previously raised a little more than $2 million from investors, including Techstars and Burlington Capital.

RJMetrics, a six-year-old, Philadelphia, Pa.-based analytics platform for online businesses, has raised $16.5 million in Series B funding from August Capital and earlier investors Trinity Ventures and SoftTech VC. RJMetrics has now raised a total of $22 Million.

Sidecar, the four-year-old, San Francisco-based ridesharing startup, has raised $15 million in fresh funding from earlier investors Avalon Ventures and Union Square Ventures, which were joined in the round by Virgin founder Sir Richard Branson. Sidecar has now raised $35 million altogether. GeekWire has more here. Fred Wilson of Union Square explains why his firm “doubled down” on the company despite stiff competition from Uber and Lyft here.

WebTeb, a three-year-old, Ramallah, Palestine-based health and lifestyle portal aimed at Arabic-speaking users, has raised $3.2 million in Series C funding led by Sadara Ventures. Earlier investors, including Siraj Palestine Fund, also participated in the round.

WorkPop, a seven-month-old, L.A.-based online job board, has raised $7 million in Series A funding led by Trinity Ventures. The company had previously raised $900,000 in seed funding, including from SV Angel, Box Group, Obvious Ventures, Cornerstone OnDemand, Slow Ventures, Ironfire Capital, Plus Capital and individuals investors. Venture Capital Dispatch has much more here.

Yongche, a four-year-old, Beijing-based car rental service company, has raised as much as $100 million in Series D funding led by the Singaporean sovereign wealth fund GIC Private Limited, says China Money Network, which adds that several unnamed investors also participated in the round. Yongche had previously raised at least $80 million from investors, according to the report. Its earlier investors include Ctrip, DCM, Morningside Ventures, Qualcomm Ventures, CBC Capital, and Zhen Fund. The company also runs a taxi calling mobile app Dache Xiaomi.

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New Funds

A group of Dartmouth alums is forming a small, early-stage venture fund to help startups with ties to the school, reports Venture Capital Dispatch. Green D Founders Fund, which Boston-based Launch Angels will advise, is targeting $1 million to $2 million; Dartmouth has no direct involvement in the the fund.

The University of California is planning a $250 million venture fund to finance startups formed around research conducted by its faculty and students, it announced yesterday. Assuming it’s approved by the UC Regents, who will vote on it this Thursday, the fund will be one of the largest of its kind. The University of California has 10 campuses, 233,000 students, 190,000 faculty and staff, five medical centers and three affiliated national laboratories — in addition to more than 20 incubators and accelerators, notes the San Francisco Business Times.

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Exits

Euvision Technologies, a four-year-old, Amsterdam-based specialist in image recognition applications powered by artificial intelligence, has been acquired by Qualcomm for undisclosed terms, reports TechCrunch.

FolioDynamix, a seven-year-old, New York-based cloud-based investment and wealth management technology platform, is being acquired by Actua Corp., a Radnor, Pa.-based cloud computing business that specializes in the public sector, chemical compliance and insurance markets. Actua is paying $199 million in cash.

GrabCAD, a five-year-old, Cambridge, Ma.-based online community that has been described as the “Github for mechanical engineers,” is being acquired by 3D printing giant Stratasys for around $100 million in all cash,reports TechCrunch. GrabCad has raised at least $13.6 million from investors, shows Crunchbase. Its backers include David Sacks, CRV, NextView Ventures, Atlas Venture, and Matrix Partners.

Make Believe Labs, a year-old, Santa Monica, Ca.-based company, has been acquired by JibJab Bros. Studios in the latter’s first major purchase in its 15-year history, reports TechCrunch. Make Believe Labs hadn’t raised outside funding before its acquisition, says the the report. Terms of the all-cash deal were not disclosed.

TriZetto, an Englewood, Co.-based company that serves about 350 health-care plans and supplies software to almost 245,000 doctors and other care providers, is being acquired by publicly traded Cognizant, an IT, consulting, and business process outsourcing company, for $2.7 billion in cash and stock. TriZetto, once a publicly traded company, was acquired by Apax, the London-based private-equity firm, for $1.19 billion in 2008. BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee and Cambia Health Solutions are minority shareholders.

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People

Adams Street Partners, the Chicago-based private equity firm, announced a raft or organizational changes yesterday, including the promotion of Jeff Diehl, a partner on its venture capital and growth equity team, to the Head of Investments. Much more here.

After only two years, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff has decided to leave Cisco’s board of directors, according to documents filed with the SEC. Business Insider has the story here.

“Real estate is one of the few industries in the world that’s bigger than transportation,” writes former Facebook exec Sam Lessin in The Information. “But in the coming decades, companies like Uber and Lyft—eventually super-charged by self-driving cars—are likely to change living patterns and upend property markets in ways that we’ve only begun to understand.”

Sean Parker of Napster and Facebook fame, is expecting a son with his wife Alexandra, the couple tell People magazine. The baby will be the couple’s second child. The pair, who famously married last year in an expensive and controversial ceremony in Big Sur, are also parents to 20-month-old Winter Victoria, who reportedly “can’t wait to be a big sister.”

Michael Tseytlin, an executive who’d been working on Google’s efforts to deliver Internet service via satellite, has taken a similar role at Facebook, reports the WSJ. An expert in satellite design, Tseytlin had been working on Google’s satellite efforts with satellite entrepreneur Greg Wyler, who also recently left Google.

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Job Listings

LinkedIn is looking for candidates for its two-year business leadership program, comprised of four six-month rotations across the company’s finance, strategy, corporate development and sales operations groups. The program is in Mountain View, Ca.

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Happenings

Applications for Y Combinator‘s winter batch are due in roughly one month, and it sounds like the incubator is still looking for teams to apply.

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Data

With companies taking ever longer to exit, the number of still-private companies to raise more than $100 million from investors has ballooned.Mattermark looks at which VCs have funded the most of these “potential unicorns, or heavily funded duds.“

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Essential Reads

Tony Fadell hatches a connected home. In Fast Company.

Despite raising $49 million from top investors, online recruiting company BranchOut — which once flourished on Facebook’s platform — is now in discussions with several acquirers about selling itself off. TechCrunch hasmore here. (We wish we’d been wrong, but we sort of called this one in 2011.)

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Detours

Facing customers who weren’t thrilled to discover U2’s newest album on their phones as a gift from Apple, the company has posted instructions on how to wrest “Songs of Innocence” out of one’s iTunes library.

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Retail Therapy

The Unpocket. It lets you block all cell, WiFi, GPS and RFID signals. Perfect for drug dealers, contract killers and anyone else concerned about privacy. (Europeans, we’re talking to you.)