Hi, everyone. Semil Shah here, filling in with a shortened version of StrictlyVC while Connie is out for a couple of weeks. If you’d like to talk about today’s column or anything else, you can find me on Twitter at @semil.

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Top News in the A.M.

Google has revealed the identity of a user to police after discovering child abuse imagery in his Gmail account.

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LP Chris Douvos on the (Still) Difficult Case for VC

Chris Douvos is a rare animal — an LP who doesn’t shy from expressing his opinions publicly.

Since 2011, Douvos has been a managing director with Venture Investment Associates, a fund of funds group that commits capital to venture capital, growth capital, and private equity groups. Douvos worked previously for TIFF (The Investment Fund for Foundations) and the endowment for Princeton University, “despite having not one, but two degrees from Princeton’s bitter rival, Yale,” as he says at his personal blog. We caught up last week for an email chat, part of which we’ll run separately later this week.

Are you the only LP who blogs? Do you think other LPs will and/or should in the future?

I think I was the most prolific blogger. Some others had tried it, but it’s time-consuming to keep it up; I’m not writing as much as I’d like nowadays, either, so I’ve got to sharpen the pencil again. Too many topics, not enough time! It’s also tricky for LPs because part of the voodoo we do is done in the shadows. We’re in an information business and knowledge is a scarce currency There’s a real “close to the vest” mentality and LPs are always glad to share their second-best ideas, but that’s about it. I’d be surprised if many LPs pick up the blogging standard, as a result.

What’s the bull and bear LP view on the rise of equity crowdfunding and platforms such as AngelList, for example?

I love crowdfunding and think that AngelList Syndicates has the opportunity to be massively disruptive to the funds world. I’m an investor in AngelList’s Maiden Lane fund and am watching what happens there very closely. My neighbors in Palo Alto are building a crowdfunding platform for real estate that’s really getting traction. There’s going to be evolution in all this stuff, of course, but having a front row seat is pretty exciting; after all, sometimes, we make the road by walking.

As for the the broader LP world, it’s hard to say if there’s really a bull or bear view, as most LPs are still watching to see how some of this stuff shakes out. It’s more of a curiosity at the moment. Also, beyond [Bay Area] area codes, not that many people are really thinking about this stuff yet. As LPs, we’re trained to be patient, have an extremely long horizon, and gather data. Also, most LPs tend to be very risk averse. Jeremy Grantham famously says that 90 percent of decisions in finance first take into account career risk, and I think that’s true. It’s hard to get LPs to think — much less act — at start-up speed. That’s not a knock, it’s may even be a compliment as too many people have been run over by steamrollers looking to pick up shiny new pennies. That’s particularly true in long-dated, illiquid asset classes like VC.

Companies are staying private longer, especially the breakouts. How does that affect an LP’s strategy?

Venture capital is already the longest-dated, furthest-out-of-the-money option that most institutions invest in. In a post-Lehman world, institutions realized that illiquidity wasn’t free; it carried a risk premium for a reason. And once these institutions had touched the hot coal of liquidity risk, many started to actively seek to shorten the duration of their portfolios. Also, there’s a question about the evaluation horizon for funds. You rarely see results before a GP comes back with their next fund, and in a lot of cases, the evaluation horizon stretches longer than people’s attention span or tenure at an institution. This principal-agent problem is a big issue.

To be sure, some risk appetite is seeping back into the market now, but people are asking hard questions about how long it takes to see distributions. Indeed, we’re seeing more interim liquidity, but seeing companies stay private longer makes it harder for the PE portfolio manager to make the case for VC in the Monday meeting at a multi-asset class pool of assets.

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New Fundings

Airbnb, the six-year-old, San Francisco-based home-sharing company, has officially closed a new round of funding, shows an SEC filing first flagged by VentureBeat. The filing, which shows the round closed with $475 million, doesn’t list any new investors, including TPG Growth,Dragoneer Investment Group, and T. Rowe Price, all of which were separately reported to be involved with the financing.

Scytl, a 13-year-old, Barcelona-based maker of secure electronic voting technology, has tacked on $44 million to a round it began raising in April. The money, from Vy Capital, Adams Street Partners and Industry Ventures, brings the total round to $104 million. Earlier participants included Vulcan Capital, SAP Ventures, Balderton Capital, Nauta Capital and Spinnaker. Altogether, Scytl has raised $113.2 million, shows Crunchbase.

WearYouWant, a three-year-old, Bangkok-based fashion retail site, has raised $1.5 million in Series A funding, reports TechCrunch. The round was led by Digital Media Partners and Japanese e-marketing firm OPT SEA. Other investors include IMG Investment Partners and WearYouWant co-founder Julien Chalte.

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New Funds

German magazine-publishing giant Bauer Media has been investing in more digital media startups, and today, it announced Bauer Venture Partners, a new fund with $134 million set aside to invest in startups over the next decade. Created alongside VC Thomas Preuss, late of Neuhaus Partners, the fund will invest in European tech startups at a range of stages, reports GigaOm.

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IPOs

Loxo Oncology, a year-old, Stamford Ct.-based company that develops targeted small molecule therapeutics to treat cancer in genetically defined patient populations, went public on Friday, selling 5.3 million shares at $13 a piece. The stock closed at the same price. The company’s private investors include Aisling Capital, OrbiMed, Array BioPharma, AI Loxo Holdings, and New Enterprise Associates.

Mobileye, a 15-year-old, Har Hotzvim, Israel-based company whose software algorithms and camera-based technology helps drivers see and manage traffic risks, had a promising public market debut Friday. Its shares, priced at $25 a piece, ended their first day at $37. Bloomberg has more here. The company’s private investors include Goldman Sachs, Fidelity, Enterprise Holdings, and Blackrock.

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Exits

Caviar, a two-year-old, San Francisco-based food delivery service whose app lets users track their order on a map, is reportedly being acquired by the payments company Square for $90 million in stock. TechCrunch had reported on the talks last month, writing the Caviar would be sold to Square for up to $100 million. The official announcement is expected this week.

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People

Shiva Rajaraman, the executive in charge of YouTube‘s consumer products, is headed to Spotify, reports Recode. According to Recode’s report: “Rajaraman’s departure is notable for multiple reasons, but the most obvious is that one of his jobs was to shepherd YouTube’s long-delayed music subscription service. And now he’s headed to the world’s biggest music subscription service.”

Pinterest cofounder Evan Sharp talks to the Atlantic about when he knew he had something bigger than a bookmarking site. “You build something and it’s like, what can I build on top of that and what can I build on top of that and what can I build on top of that. Great companies, I think, are the ones that see what they’ve built and can build on top of it and iterate their product.”

Wealth managers are increasingly enlisting spy tools to map portfolios. The New York Times has more here.

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Job Listings

Nike is looking for a director of business development for its “innovation” unit to research, source, evaluate, and model partnership opportunities across the company, including, footwear, apparel, equipment, materials science, exploration, and athlete research. The job is in Portland, Or.

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Essential Reads

Yelp has the power to make or break proprietors, both financially and, apparently, psychologically. Now, an upscale hotel in Hudson, Ny., is fighting back by charging couples who book weddings at its venue $500 for every bad Yelp review posted online by their guests.

Here are some of the terrifying possibilities that have Elon Musk worried about artificial intelligence.

Drone use is outpacing regulations in New York.

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Detours

The power of a round face.

NFL players’ stunning evolution since the organization’s 1920 founding.

Quite a whisky advertisement: “The Gentlemen’s Wager,” a short film from Johnnie Walker starring Jude Law.

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Retail Therapy

Vertical dopp kit.

Five great sets of stationary, for those times when email just won’t cut it.

Hello, and happy Friday, everyone! If you missed yesterday’s newsletter in your inbox, it’s here. For the email version today’s newsletter (it’s easier to read), click here.

Also, a quick reminder that we’re stepping away for two weeks beginning this Monday for some downtime at home with the kiddos. In our place, we’re excited to feature Semil Shah, a smartypants when it comes to consumer products, a consultant to various venture firms, and an investor with Haystack Fund. He’ll be publishing an abbreviated version of the newsletter and if you don’t like it, feel to complain to him on Twitter at@semil. (Just kidding! Keep your complaints to yourself.) You can see some of the good stuff he has lined up here. Thank you again, Semil.:)

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Top News in the A.M.

Microsoft has to fork over customer’s e-mails held in a server overseas, a federal judge ruled yesterday. Writes the Washington Post, “”The case — the first of its kind in the United States — is a test of whether the government can assert a right to digital content wherever in the world it is stored.” More here.

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Homer is a Good Idea; Now, Will it Work?

A week ago, the latest creation to come out of Max Levchin’s R&D lab, HVF, was publicly released. Unfortunately for Levchin, a widely read review suggested the app, called Homer, was “creepily intimate” because it allows users to view other people’s home screens.

Given that users have to choose to make a conscious decision to upload their own home screens with Homer and have full control over what apps they share, it’s hard to see how the app is truly intrusive. On the contrary, in an era where an endless supply of apps now compete for attention, Homer can help users discover useful new apps that their friends enjoy. It also comes with more privacy protections than that initial review suggested.

Homer’s bigger problem, seemingly, is that it wasn’t ready for prime time when it launched. Though some VCs immediately began talking up the iOS app, users weren’t so charitable, giving Homer three out of five stars. Two called it “very buggy,” and a third commented, “Nice concept but can’t even use the app.” Perhaps not surprisingly, HVF says it doesn’t have a timeline for an Android version.

In an interview earlier this week, Homer’s creators, fellow Stanford grads Elliot Babchick and Jason Riggs, quickly volunteered that the app, which they began working on in April, isn’t perfect. “We’re still working on it full-time,” said Riggs. “There’s still plenty to do, like making it faster and fixing bugs … this is basically a [minimum viable product], and we’re making it better.”

The question is whether they’ll get another shot from users. Apple’s approval process can take days; it can also take weeks. That’s a lot of time for a buggy app to be out in the wild.

There’s also a slight risk that Apple will decide it doesn’t like the app after all, especially given the early public impression that it’s somehow meddlesome. Babchick noted that while “someone at Apple did check a box and let us through,” its guidelines are somewhat squishy. “Years ago, the rule was that you weren’t allowed to feature any other app within your app. Since then, the clause has evolved to say that you can’t promote an app unless it’s to a specific set of people for a specific use case.” Apple, he added, “is leaving itself the opportunity to interpret [new apps] how they wish.”

HVF is a member of Apple’s affiliate program — reason for the team to feel some degree of confidence. In fact, Homer can “technically be making money off apps that we refer people to,” though “we’re not doing that yet,” Babchick says.

Asked how long it makes sense to give an app a chance, Babchick told me, “We don’t set an arbitrary guideline that we’ll work on [this or that project] for an amount of time and if it doesn’t make it, [we’ll move on]. Once you start seeing solid retention, for a significant period of time, that’s when you know you have a thing. For something that [came out last Friday], we don’t have the answer.”

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New Fundings

Efficient Drivetrains, an eight-year-old, Beijing-based maker of hybrid and electric drivetrains, has raised $3.5M in Series A funding led by Jinyuan Development Company, with participation from Silicon Valley China Venture Partners and the Shanghai Gui Guo Assets Management Partnership.

Forage, a new, San Francisco-based meal-kit delivery startup focused on chef-approved recipes that customers can create at home in 20 minutes, has raised an undisclosed amount of seed funding, reports Venture Capital Dispatch. Its investors include Twitter and Medium cofounder Evan Williams, Whole Foods Market, and Hass Hassan, founder of the U.K.-based organic food retailer Fresh & Wild, a chain acquired by Whole Foods a decade ago.

Geekatoo, a four-year-old, Walnut Creek, Ca.-based platform for in-home tech support, has raised $1.7 million in seed funding from investors, including Eric Ries, Dave Mclure, Parker Thompson of 500 Startups, and Mikihiro Yasuda of DeNA.

Gen9, a five-year-old, Cambridge, Ma.-based synthetic biology company, has raised $25 million in new funding, shows an SEC filing flagged by the Boston Business Journal. The company has now raised at least $50 million from investors, shows Crunchbase.

Kabam, an eight-year-old, San Francisco-based mobile gaming company, has raised $120 million in strategic funding from the China-based giant Alibaba, money that Kabam plans to use to acquire other companies in Asia and other regions, the company tells the WSJ. Kabam had previous raised roughly $125 million from investors, including Canaan Partners, Redpoint Ventures, Intel Capital, Pinnacle Ventures, Google Ventures, SK Telecom Ventures, and Performance Equity Management.

KnowledgeVision Systems, a four-year-old, Concord, Ma.-based maker of interactive and multimedia software, has raised $1.2 million from undisclosed investors. The company had previous raised $8 million, including from GrandBanks Capital, shows Crunchbase.

Portea Medical, a 2.5-year-old, Bangalore-based provider of in-home healthcare and emergency medical services in India, has raised an undisclosed amount of funding from Qualcomm Ventures, reports LiveMint. Last December, the company raised $8 million from Accel Partners and Ventureast, a Bangalore-based venture firm. The company is looking to raise another $50 million in the next six to eight months, its CEO tells LiveMint.

Portfolium, a 1.5-year-old, San Diego-based startup whose online platform is designed to help students visually showcase their skills, projects and experiences to employers, has raised $900,000 in seed funding from Tech Coast Angels and others.

Qiniu, a three-year-old, Shanghai-based cloud storage service provider, has raised “tens of millions” of dollars in Series C funding led by CBC Capital, says China Money Network. Earlier investors Matrix Partners and Qiming Venture Partners also participated in the round.

Settle, a new, Ukraine-based mobile payment service for restaurant patrons, has raised $1.5 million funding round from the Moscow-based venture fund Life.SREDA. TechCrunch has more here.

Vakast, a year-old, Newport Beach, Ca.-based online travel agency for vacation rentals, has raised $1.3 million in seed funding led by Blackstone Group senior managing director Chinh Chu and Ken Pansuria, a founder of the Fine Hospitality Group. Nicky Nguyen, founder of NJ Enterprises, also invested in the round.

ViralGains, a two-year-old, Boston-based video marketing platform for brands, ad agencies, marketers, and media buyers, has raised $2.8 million of what it expects to be a $3.3 million seed round of funding. Its investors include Hub Angels, investor Dave McClure, and rapper Nas, among many others.

Wantable, a two-year-old, Milwaukee, Wi.-based e-commerce company that sends customers personalized beauty and fashion accessories, has raised $1.5 million in Series A funding from local angel investors. The company says it has raised $2.3 million altogether so far.

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New Funds

AOL has plans to invest in more Israeli startups. Nautilus, its new program, will invest $100,000 in as many as 10 projects at a time, according to an earlier Reuters report out of Jerusalem that notes AOL already has a development center in Israel. Merav Rotem-Naaman, formerly of Better Place, is directing the program. More information is coming soon, suggests Nautilus’s new site.

Canaan Partners, the 27-year-old venture firm, with offices in the U.S., Israel, and India, is raising a $600 million fund with a $650 million cap, reports peHUB. “The fundraising will go fast, their numbers are really good,” one unnamed LP tells the outlet. The firm closed its ninth and most recent fund with $600 million in 2012.

Venrock, the 45-year-old venture firm that began life, investing on behalf of the Rockefeller family, has just closed its seventh fund with $450 million in commitments. Venrock closed its last fund in 2010 with $350 million. TechCrunch has much more here.

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Exits

Mitro, a two-year-old, New York-based that stores and allows users to share cloud service credentials, has been acquired by Twitter, Mitro announced yesterday. The terms were undisclosed, but as TechCrunch notes, Twitter isn’t shutting down the service. Instead, Mitro is becoming an open source project, at least through year end. Mitro had raised $1.2 million in seed funding from Google Ventures and Matrix Partners.

Propeller, a one-year-old, San Francisco-based mobile startup that helps users create their own apps, has been acquired by the data analysis company Palantir for undisclosed terms. Propeller had raised $1.25 million in funding from investors, including Andreessen Horowitz, Menlo Ventures, Foundation Capital, Subtraction Capital, Great Oaks Venture Capital, Max Levchin, Ashton Kutcher, Keith Rabois, Scott Banister, Jason Portnoy, Lee Linden, Rothenberg Ventures, Alfred Mandel, and ffAngel, the seed fund of Founders Fund, cofounded by Peter Thiel, who has also backed Palantir, as Fortune notes. The deal marks the second acquisition that Palantir has announced this week. It’s other purchase: Poptip, a two-year-old, New York-based startup that helps companies conduct social media surveys and analyze online conversations and other unstructured conversation. Palantir has raised nearly $900 million from investors over its 10-year history, including a $107.5 million round last year that valued the company at $9 billion.

Simbionix, a 17-year-old, Cleveland, Oh.-based maker of 3D virtual reality surgical simulation and training, has been acquired for $120 million in cash by publicly traded 3D Systems. The company had raised at least $7 million from investors, shows Crunchbase. Its backers included River Cities Capital Funds, Early Stage Partners, and Western Reserve Partners. MedCity News has more here.

TOA Technologies, an 11-year-old, Beachwood, Oh.-based company that specializes in cloud services that coordinate customer service with field operations, is being acquired by Oracle for undisclosed terms. The company had raised roughly $96 million over the years, according to Crunchbase. Its investors included Draper Associates, Novitas Capital, Early Stage Partners, Draper Triangle Ventures, Intel Capital, Fort Washington Capital Partners Group, and Sutter Hill Ventures. ZDNet has a bit more here.

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People

All right, eBay. Finally, a tech giant that’s not so white, and not so male.

Venture capitalist Tim Draper is profiled in BusinessWeek, which reports that his father, Bill Draper, is “skeptical about [the younger Draper’s] Six Californias plan but has learned not to doubt his son. ‘He got hit three times by automobiles on his bicycle. He’s kind of a lucky guy as well as a risk-taker,’ he says, going on to recount a time when, in China, Tim at midnight walked up to a street vendor who was selling what he claimed was snake blood that would improve one’s brain. Tim downed a cup and was fine. ‘Tim has a way of getting away with murder, almost,’ Bill says.”

Snapchat’s VP of Engineering, Peter Magnusson, has left the company just six months after being lured away from Google. It’s not clear yet what happened, but TechCrunch has much more here.

Stanford’s StartX class has begun; here’s a bit of background about the founders and other participants taking part in the program.

Tinder CEO Sean Rad keeps pretending he’s the head of a self-funded startup, despite that Tinder is owned by IAC, says Valleywag. Writes Sam Biddle, “They want so badly to play startup, to trade on that image of entrepreneurial autonomy, like teens who insist on being dropped off a couple blocks away from the party.”

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Job Listings

Twitter is looking to hire a business development manager to help build and scale its commerce initiatives. The job is in San Francisco.

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Data

Pitchbook has published one of its “Daily Benchmark” summaries — this time about the 13 U.S. venture funds that closed in 2006 with between $500 million to $1 billion in commitments. Pitchbook says their median IRR is 10.1 percent; their top quartile IRR hurdle rate is 12.4 percent, and they’ve distributed an average of $227 million to their investors. The top performers of the bunch, based on net IRR: Caduceus Private Investments III, DCM V, and M/C Venture Partners VI.

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Essential Reads

Looks like Google is getting out the barge business.

Payment processor Stripe has launched an open source, decentralized payment network and protocol called Stellar. Unlike Bitcoin, reports VentureBeat, it supports traditional currencies, too.

Yo is evidently fed up with the numerous clones that have emerged, primarily to poke fun at the application. Says one developer of her app, whose interface is nearly identical, “YOLO is entirely different from Yo.“

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Detours

Thirteen strange things that can prompt people to fall in love.

Surreal photography by Oleg Oprisco.

When his wife refused to take maternity photos, this guy posed for them himself.

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Retail Therapy

You’ve probably heard that Grover Norquist is going to Burning Man this year. If you plan to go with your friends anyway, this could come in handy

It is Wednesday, people. Hope you have a great one!

(Web visitors: You can find an easier-to-read email version of today’s newsletter here. To receive it in your inbox, click here.)

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Top News in the A.M.

Twitter soundly beat Wall Street expectations yesterday, reporting 271 million monthly active users, second-quarter revenue of $312 million, and a two cent profit. CEO Dick Costolo tells Business Insider how the company did it.

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A New Venture Firm Bets on India

One of the biggest venture fundings ever was confirmed yesterday, a billion-dollar round for the India-based e-commerce company, Flipkart.

Vispi Daver and Murli Ravi hope it’s a good omen for their new venture capital firm, Unicorn Venture Capital — named not after a popular blog post, they say, but a mythological creature in East Asian culture associated with prosperity. Indeed, with a little luck, they’ll raise the $50 million they’re targeting for their debut fund, which they intend to invest in early-stage tech startups in India, Singapore and Southeast Asia.

Their backgrounds should help. Daver spent eight years at Sierra Venture Partners, where he led several deals in India-based companies, including Makemytrip, one of India’s largest online travel companies. (It went public on Nasdaq almost exactly four years ago.) Ravi, meanwhile, spent the last five years as the head of South Asia investments for JAFCO Asia in Singapore. I spoke with Daver earlier this week about the duo’s plans.

Murli is staying in Singapore while you move from the U.S. to India. What’s the competition like where you’re headed?

There are only about 40 people on the tech side of VC with early-stage investing experience in India and that’s probably across 10 groups, from indigenous funds to Sand Hill Road firms. It’s still very early there. MakeMyTrip is just one of three [India-based] venture-backed public tech companies, and the only one on Nasdaq.

Do LPs think it’s still too early? I’d read that $190 million was invested in early-stage tech firms in India last year, up 25 percent from 2012. But those are still small numbers.

No, the growth metrics are too exciting. Talk with any tech bellwether – Facebook, Google, Evernote, Dropbox, Salesforce – and they’ll tell you about downloads from India. Growth on the smart phone side has wowed everyone. Facebook already has 100 million users in India – the second biggest base of users after the U.S. If you take into consideration [other] app stats, the Philippines, Bangladesh, Vietnam – they’re all in the top 30 [in terms of users] and they’ll be in the top 10 soon, based on economic and population [trends].

How well do you and Murli know each other? Have you made investments together?

We’ve known each other for a year and looked at 75 companies together — two of which we’ve invested in and will grandfather into the new fund. We both grew up in Mumbai. He was one of those really smart kids who the Singaporean government sucks into the system, sending them to premier educational institutions and to a premier investment house after. [Before joining JAFCO, Ravi was a senior associate at Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund Temasek Holdings.]

Why does it make sense to operate from two different posts?

No tech company is focused on Singapore alone, where just five million people live, and similarly we think that Indian startups will be expanding into Southeast Asia and that having a presence there will be helpful. From a legal and regulatory perspective, it makes a lot of sense for India companies to [plant their] headquarters there. It’s very developed, with a government that works really well. There are also lots of positives in terms of easy living.

How do you feel personally about returning to India?

I’m excited. The environment in India is interesting. Entrepreneurship is generally in a lot of people’s blood. There weren’t as many professional jobs for the last generation, so a lot of people were entrepreneurs and it’s not a big convincing act to get people to [take the plunge]. It’s also the case the young developers are less and less different than their counterparts elsewhere. They’re using the same apps and learning the same ways to code. Big ideas can come out of India, too.

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New Fundings

Abodo, a 3.5-year-old, Madison, Wi.-based apartment listing service, has raised $1.25 million in Series A funding led by American Family Ventures. Other participants in the round included 4490 Ventures and Lakewest Venture Partners. The company has raised $1.3 million altogether, shows Crunchbase.

ChargePoint, a seven-year-old, Campbell, Ca.-based electric-vehicle charging network, has raised an undisclosed amount of Series E funding from Constellation Technology Ventures. Though the company isn’t breaking out the amount of the round, it says that it has now raised nearly $114 million, including from Braemar Energy Ventures, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Siemens Venture Capital, Voyager Capital, BMWand Rho Ventures.

Dianwoba, a 5.5-year-old, Hangzhou, China-based online-to-offline e-commerce company that guarantees same-day delivery service to customers of restaurants and shops, has raised $10 million in Series B financing from undisclosed sources, reports China Money Network. The company previously raised $2 million in Series A funding from Gobi Partners, says the report.

Epic Sciences, a six-year-old, San Diego-based company whose blood test can help physicians monitor a patient’s cancer, has raised $30 million in Series C funding from RusnanoMedInvest and Arcus Ventures. Earlier investors Domain Associates, Roche Venture Fund, Pfizer Venture Investments and numerous undisclosed individual investors also participated. MedCity News has more here.

EyeNetra, a three-year-old, Somerville, Ma.-based company whose device, the Netra-G, can measure the refractive error of the eye using a smartphone and a cheap pair of plastic binoculars that anyone can use, has raised $4 million in Series A funding, including from Khosla Ventures. MedCity News has more here.

Frameri, a 1.5-year-old, Cincinnati-based company that makes prescription eyewear with interchangeable lenses, has raised $750,000 in seed funding led by CincyTech. Numerous angel investors also participated in the round.

Jet, a new, Hoboken, N.J.-based e-commerce company founded by Marc Lore (former CEO of Diapers.com parent Quidsi), has raised $55 million in funding, Recode reports. Lore isn’t yet talking about the company yet, but Recode sources say it will “innovate around its logistics network.” The investment is being led by New Enterprise Associates, with additional investment from Accel Partners, MentorTech Ventures, and Bain Capital Ventures. Recode notes that all but Bain Capital were investors in Quidsi, which sold to Amazon in 2011 in a $545 million deal.

JuiceBox Games, a two-year-old, San Francisco-based mobile gaming company founded by three former Zynga employees, has raised $2.54 million seed funding led by Initial Capital, the company tells Venture Capital Dispatch. Other investors in the round include General Catalyst, Index Ventures, Maveron, and angel investors, among them Scott Dale (a former vice president of engineering at Zynga) and former Electronic Arts CEO John Riccitiello.

Kixer, a six-month-old, L.A.-based Los Angeles-based mobile ad tech company, has raised $1 million in a seed funding from TenOne Ten Ventures, Lowercase Capital, and numerous angel investors.

Knoa Software, an 11-year-old, New York-based maker of workforce optimization software, has $5.1 million in Series B funding from earlier investors Ascent Ventures, Gefinor Capital, Advantage Capital Partners and Rand Capital. The company has raised at least $14.4 million to date, shows Crunchbase.

Ludi, a 1.5-year-old, Chicago-based company whose software helps hospitals track administrative expenses while managing the legal risks of regulatory compliance with physician agreements, has raised $1 million in Series A funding from the Martin Companies, a healthcare and technology focused firm in Nashville.

Mind Palette, the three-year-old, Tokyo-based company behind the photo sharing app Snapeee, has raised $4 million from Japanese venture firmGlobal Brain Corp. along with Japanese magazine publishing giant Kodansha.

Privlo, a four-year-old, L.A.-based startup that offers private real estate loans online, has raised $3.8 million in Series A funding from Spark Capital and QED Investors. VentureWire has more here.

Proteus Digital Health, an 18-year-old, Redwood City, Ca.-based company that makes digital health products, including wearable sensor-based tools, has raised $172 million in Series G funding from both earlier backers and new “respected institutional investors,” none of whom the company has named. Proteus, which has raised money from Oracle and Novartis in the past, has now raised at least $291 million altogether, shows Crunchbase.

Thermalin Diabetes, a five-year-old, Cleveland-based biomedical company has raised $5.9 million in Series B funding from undisclosed investors. The money comes on the heels of a $1.5 million Phase 2 SBIR grant that the company recently received for a rapid-acting insulin it has developed.

ThredUP, a 5.5-year-old, San Francisco-based online consignment marketplace, has raised $23 million in Series D funding, per an SEC filing first flagged by TechCrunch. The company has now raised $46 million to date, including from Highland Capital Partners, Trinity Ventures, Red Point Ventures, and Upfront Ventures.

ZipZap, a four-year-old, San Francisco-based payment network that enables people to buy, sell or use digital currencies with cash or other payment options, has raised $1.1 million from Bitcoin Foundation board member Brock Pierce’s AngelList syndicate, 500 Startups, andBlumberg Capital. The round brings the company’s total funding to $2.7 million.

—–

New Funds

Accelerator Corp., an 11-year-old, Seattle and New York-based life science investment firm that invests in emerging biotechnology research, has held a first close of its fourth fund with $51.1 million. Investors includeAlexandria Venture Investments, ARCH Venture Partners, WRF Capital, Eli Lilly, Harris & Harris Group, Johnson & Johnson Development Corp., The Partnership Fund for New York City and Pfizer Venture Investments.

—–

Exits

Luvocracy, a three-year-old, San Francisco-based online community for consumers to discover cool products recommended by people whose style they trust, has been “acq-hired” by Walmart for undisclosed financial terms. Along with founder Nathan Stoll, a former Googler who also founded Aardvark, 16 employees from Luvocracy will now head over to Walmart’s R&D group, WalmartLabs. Luvocracy had raised $11 million in funding from Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Google Ventures, Marissa Mayer, Ali Pincus, Jim Lanzone, Tony Robbins, CrunchFund, RPM Ventures and XG Ventures.

Madbits, a stealthy computer vision startup, has been acquired by Twitter. Terms of the deal weren’t disclosed. GigaOm has much more here.

Poptip, a two-year-old, New York-based startup that helps companies conduct social media surveys and analyze online conversations and other unstructured conversation data, has been acquired by the data analysis company Palantir Technologies, reports TechCrunch. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Poptip had raised $2.4 million from investors, including Lerer Hippeau Ventures, RSE Ventures, Softbank Capital, and BoxGroup. Palantir, meanwhile, has raised nearly $900 million from investors over its 10-year history, including a $107.5 million round last year that valued the company at $9 billion.

SecuSmart, a seven-year-old, Dusseldorf, Germany-based mobile security company known for its anti-eavesdropping software, has been acquired by BlackBerry. Terms of the deal weren’t disclosed. ZDNet has more here.

—–

People

Facebook board members Marc Andreessen and Peter Thiel converted class-B shares in Facebook to class-A shares, among other detailed transactions, show Form 4 filings with the SEC on Monday. AllFacebook has the nitty-gritty details if you’re curious.

David Cancel, the chief product officer of pre-IPO Hubspot, the Cambridge, Ma.-based digital marketing startup, is leaving the company in September, along with Elias Torres, an engineering vice president, reports BetaBoston. The two joined HubSpot in 2011 through the $20 million acquisition of their startup, Performable; they plan to work on a new startup together.

Trulia cofounder Sami Inkinen is rowing across the Pacific Ocean with his wife, meaning that he missed most of the negotiations involving the sale of his company to Zillow (though he stayed informed via satellite phone and email). Dealbook has the story here.

—–

Job Listings

Prosper, the San Francisco-based peer-to-peer lending marketplace company, is looking for a senior business development manager.

—–

Data

Tech.eu took a deep dive into all the available data on European tech company exits announced during the second quarter of this year. You can have a look here.

Bitcoin investment hit a new high in the second quarter, says CB Insights.

The news sharing service Nuzzel has built a new custom news page that shows the top news stories being shared by 1,000 investors on AngelList.

—–

Essential Reads

Just one day after Flipkart’s big funding announcement, Amazon has made an announcement of its own: it plans to invest $2 billion in its Indian marketplace, with Amazon founder Jeff Bezos saying that “India is on track to be our fastest country ever to a billion dollars in gross sales.”

Android has a fake ID problem.

Facebook wants to help other businesses sell things, so it’s done selling its own. (Also, erm, no one used Facebook Gifts.)

—–

Detours

Eleven things you should stop worrying about when traveling.

In search of the NBA’s next star.

Paying tribute to the strobe flash.

—–

Retail Therapy

The 1964 Ferrari 275 GTB/C Speciale by Scaglietti. One of three built, it goes on sale next month. (Bring your stock certificates. It’s going to cost a fortune.)

Fish-shaped ice cubes.

Hi, everyone, hope you had a terrific weekend.

Two quick things. First, it looks like up to a third of you didn’t receive Friday’s email, featuring Roy Bahat of Bloomberg Beta. You can check it out here if you like.

Also, StrictlyVC is going to be taking two weeks off beginning next Monday. Investor, operator, and longtime TechCrunch columnist Semil Shah will be publishing an abbreviated version of the newsletter in our absence (thank you, Semil!); he has some great interviews lined up for you, so stay tuned.

—–

Top News in the A.M.

Concept.io, the two-year-old, Mountain View, Ca.-based company behind Swell, a Pandora for talk radio, is on the cusp of being acquired by Apple for $30 million, Recode is reporting this morning. The company had raised $7.2 million altogether, including from DFJ, Google Ventures, and InterWest Partners. The company’s founder and CEO, Ram Ramkumar, sold his last company, SnapTell, to Amazon in 2009.

On the heels of reports last week, Zillow and Trulia have made it official; Zillow is acquiring Trulia for $3.5 billion in a stock-for-stock transaction, the company announced this morning. The deal is expected to close next year.

—–

The PhD VC

Some VCs scout out the best mobile apps. Shahin Farshchi tends to contemplate, well, harder stuff.

“I stay away from the rent-your couch or parking space [startups],” says Farshchi, who joined Lux Capital as a principal in 2006 and was made a partner last month. “I have a semiconductor background, so I spend time looking at technology in the hardware space, from materials that enable higher-performance electronics, to devices like transistors and memories, to systems and software to run on those systems.”

Given his education – including a PhD in electrical engineering from UCLA – it’s no wonder. I recently caught up with Farshchi over an egg-white brunch at the Creamery in Palo Alto, Ca. There, we talked more about his new job and how he plans to put his stamp on the industry.

First, let’s get readers up to speed on Lux Capital. Give us the broad brushstrokes.

Sure, we’ve been around for 14 years, and we’ve invested in more than 35 companies over three funds, including a $250 million fund we closed last year. Until recently, we focused on cutting checks in the millions [of dollars] as the Series A or B lead; over the last 12 months, we’ve also been experimenting with a seed-stage strategy to monitor companies closely and bring value to them [as a front-seat passenger], with the goal of converting those seed positions into Series A positions.

Our biggest check would be in the higher single digits, but we set aside $10 million to $15 million per company; we want to maintain double digital ownership of [any] billion dollar outcome.

You focus largely on chips, which aren’t really being built in the U.S. anymore. So what’s happening here that’s interesting to you?

It’s true that a lot of core technology is moving to Asia. A lot of fabless semiconductor companies, Qualcomm, Broadcom – all their manufacturing is taking place in Asia, and a lot of bleeding edge technology companies in semiconductors are Asian companies.

But there’s still a lot of innovation that needs to be done, and you’d be surprised by how much is happening here. One of my companies, Molecular Imprints, [an Austin, Tx.-based company] which makes a next-generation semiconductor manufacturing technology [called nanoimprint lithography], sold to Canon earlier this year.

How do these next-generation technologies get around or reduce the considerable expense — which is something like $100 million, right? — involved in designing a new chip?

I just invested in a stealth company that’s playing into this challenge — the $100 million upfront cost associated with building a new chip. If you’re a semiconductor company making a chip, it has to go into every single one of these smartphones [that we all use]. Otherwise, you aren’t going to make money. But not all products have the same requirements, so you wind up making a chip that’s okay for most of the devices out there but not optimized for anything [specific].

This stealth company is introducing software programmable silicon, where you can configure that portion that you need, so the chips become far less like Sunday papers of yore, where you threw out a lot of sections, and more like iPads, where you’re actually viewing and getting what you want.

This technology doesn’t already exist today?

It does, with field programmable data arrays. But they come at a huge expense in terms of area and power and make no sense unless you’re making a $10,000 chip that will go into a Cisco switch. But this [startup’s] technology is making it accessible for [a broader array of technologies].

It’s also much cheaper. Right now, it costs orders of magnitude more in terms of price and power and performance to make something programmable instead of hard-baking it, so it makes better sense to make things redundant versus having things programmable. But this technology makes things programmable without the huge cost and performance penalties.

Lux was founded in New York and only opened an office here a year or so ago, but it seems like the firm is succeeding in raising its profile on the West Coast. What’s that process been like?

For years, I was working out of my car and basically borrowing office space. We had a $100 million fund, so the economics didn’t support [a second office]. I basically spent all my time walking up and down the halls of Stanford, Caltech, UC Berkeley, UCLA. My first deals were all university spin-outs. Now, we have an office and we’ve become more broadly founder focused. That’s maybe why you’re hearing more about us.

—–

New Fundings

Birdi, a year-old, Brooklyn, Ny.-based company that makes a smart smoke detector that also gauges air quality, has raised $700,000 in new seed funding, including from Jason Calacanis and his AngelList syndicate; Kapor Capital; Eric Ries; and John Galbraith. Venture Capital Dispatch has the story.

CrowdCurity, a year-old, San Mateo, Ca.-based crowdsourced marketplace that pairs site owners with security testers who can scrutinize the sites’ vulnerabilities, has raised $1 million in new funding led by earlier investors Tim Draper and Kima Ventures. Strategic investors, including Gerhard Eschelbeck, chief technology officer and senior vice president of Sophos; Fengmin Gong, co-founder of Cyphort; and 500 Startups, also participated. The company has now raised $1.5 million altogether, shows Crunchbase.

Emulate, a new, Cambridge, Ma.-based company that aims to prove that pharmaceutical companies and biotechs can use its thumbnail-sized microchips in preclinical drug tests (versus testing their drugs on animals or in petri dishes), has raised $12 million in Series A funding led by NanoDimension. Cedars-Sinai Medical Center and Swiss billionaire Hansjorg Wyss, the founder of the Wyss Institute, are also participating in the round. Xconomy has much more here.

Epis, a 17-year-old, Portland, Or.-based company that makes an electricity market forecasting tool, has raised $2.7 million in equity and debt, according to an SEC filing that shows a $3.3 million target.

FanMode, a two-year-old, London-based social application for sports fans, who can communicate during matches and whose sentiments can then be broadcasted online and shown on stadium screens, has raised $2.4 million in seed funding from undisclosed angel investors.

Hobby, a new, still-stealth company by Tapulous founder Bart Decrem, has raised roughly $920,000 in funding for a new company called Hobby, shows an SEC filing first flagged by TechCrunch.

Home Chef, a year-old, Chicago-based ingredient and recipe delivery service, has raised an undisclosed amount of seed funding led by Guild Capital.

Intelomed, a nine-year-old, Wexley, Pa.-based medical device company that focuses on real-time, non-invasive cardiovascular system monitoring, has raised $3.85 million in funding from unnamed angel investors. The company has now raised $10.7 million to date, shows Crunchbase.

Marinanow, a two-year-old, Sardinia, Italy-based company that helps people book berths in marinas around Europe, has raised roughly $630,000 in seed funding from the European venture firm United Ventures. TechCrunch has more here.

NewsCastic, a year-old, Albuquerque, N.M.-based company that invites businesses to sponsor local news stories that are then made available to journalists as paying assignments, is in the process of raising a $500,000 round, shows an SEC filing.

SportsManias, a two-year-old, Miami-based mobile sports startup, has raised $3.5 million in Series A funding led by earlier investor Jorge Mas of Mas Equity Partners. The company has raised $4.5 million to date, says Forbes, which has more here.

Tracksmith, a year-old, Wellesley, Mass.-based “premium performance” running apparel company, has raised $1.6 million from Lerer Hippeau Ventures, Index Ventures, and numerous angel investors.

VidAngel, a year-old, Salt Lake City, Ut.-based company that’s creating a platform that combines tech and crowdsourcing to tag potentially offensive content in Web video, has raised $600,000 in seed funding, including from Alta Ventures, Kickstart Seed Fund and Stonewall Capital.

—–

New Funds

Bam Ventures, a five-month-old, L.A.-based seed-stage venture firm, is looking to raise $10 million for a debut fund, shows an SEC fiing. The firm was founded by Brian Lee, a co-founder of Legalzoom, Shoedazzle and The Honest Company. A second managing director listed on the filing is Richard Jun, who spent four-and-a-half years as the general counsel of Shoedazzle. The firm says it is focused on early-stage opportunities across a variety of sectors, with a particular focus on L.A.- and Southern California-based companies.

—–

IPOs

Ocular Therapeutix, an eight-year-old, Bedford, Ma.-based biopharmaceutical company that’s developing therapies for diseases and conditions of the eye, including a gel to treat glaucoma, saw its shares rise 1.5 percent on Friday, its first day of trading on the Nasdaq. The company sold 5 million shares at $13 per share.

This week, 22 U.S. IPOs are planned. Here’s a look at what’s coming.

—–

Exits

BookLamp, a seven-year-old, Boise, Id.-based book recommendation service, has been acquired by Apple for between $10 million and $15 million, reports TechCrunch.

—–

People

Y Combinator president Sam Altman talks to EconTalk host Russ Roberts about Y Combinator’s strategy for discovering, funding, and coaching startups and Silicon Valley’s attitude toward entrenched firms.

You might think so from the daily headlines, but Silicon Valley’s highest paid female executive is not Marissa Mayer, Meg Whitman, or Sheryl Sandberg.

Lyft president John Zimmer on the the company’s New York debut, regulation, and the taxi industry: “The Department of Financial Services reached out a few weeks ago. We met with them, and we thought the meeting went very well. But then, when we tried to reach back out, we weren’t hearing anything.”

—–

Job Listings

Dropbox is looking to add someone who is well-versed in mobile partnerships to its strategic partner development team. The job is in San Francisco.

—–

Data

Half of iOS developers and 64 percent of Android developers earn less than $500 in revenue per app per month, with just 1.6 percent of developers generating most of the app store revenue.

European startups raised more than $2.8 billion in the second quarter, the highest quarterly total since 2001, according to data from Dow Jones VentureSource.

—–

Essential Reads

Amazon is launching a Web store for 3D customizable products.

Psst, illicit drugs are part of Silicon Valley work culture.

SpaceX‘s lawsuit against the Air Force is gaining steam.

Bitcoin mining can be a giant pain in the arse. Here’s one would-be miner’s firsthand account.

—–

Detours

Twenty-five of the most beautiful doors around the world.

This is what people look like shooting out of a water slide. (It’s a summer thing.)

“Rise and shine”: They’re going to force you to play baseball today.

—–

Retail Therapy

When drinking a glass of whisky is just too easy.

Tesla’s Model 3.

Related articles

• No Housewarming Party for Zillow and Trulia

It’s Thursday! Whoo-hah! Hope you have a great one, everyone. Here’s an email version of today’s newsletter in case you missed it in your inbox.

—–

Top News in the A.M.

HP will reportedly announce a strategic partnership today under which it will invest $50 million in Hortonworks, the Hadoop startup that spun out of Yahoo in 2011. Recode has the story here.

—–

A Nifty Product Launch, with Poor Disclosure

James Proud, a former Thiel Fellow who sold his first company, is back with a new company and sleep-tracking product called Sense that’s “part-Nest thermostat, part-Fitbit,” as Forbes describes it.

In a story about Sense’s launch yesterday, Forbes portrays the company as bootstrapped, too, writing that Proud “seeded the company with earnings from selling his first startup,” and that the company’s “unmanufactured product” is now “subject to the whims of backers on Kickstarter,” where it launched a campaign yesterday morning. Forbes added that Sense “will be available later this winter contingent on” the success of that effort.

Turns out Proud needn’t worry. He set a fundraising goal of $100,000 for his new product on Kickstarter and has effortlessly blown past it, raising nearly $400,000 as of this morning, with 28 days left to raise more.

Forbes’s characterizations struck me as odd for a separate reason, though: Earlier this year, Hello, the parent company of Sense, had raised at least $10.5 million as part of an $18 million round. So shows an SEC filing I’d stumbled across in May.

Forbes wasn’t the only outlet that didn’t report on Hello’s backing. The Verge, Buzzfeed, The Next Web, Ubergizmo and others to write about its Kickstarter campaign didn’t mention anything about it, either. Meanwhile, TechCrunch reported that Proud “didn’t disclose external venture funding, but you could assume there’s probably some significant round given that they’ve been working secretly on the product for about a year.”

Proud didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment about why Hello’s funding hadn’t come up in reports about the company. But last night, on Twitter, Proud wrote me that “[A]lways when asked about funding, [we] simply said we’re not talking about it right now, but acknowledged we had raised money.” He added, “[T]oo many companies launch with a focus that isn’t product. I did not want that to be the case for us.”

I see Proud’s point, but it’s hard to think of any truly great products that have been overshadowed by their backers, no matter who they are or how much money is involved. Disclosing its funding might also have undermined the organic appeal that has made Kickstarter such a success with consumers. (In the end, I sent a link of Hello’s fund filing to Forbes, which updated its story, including to add that “Proud did not discuss Hello’s previous fundraising and was only willing to talk about Kickstarter.” TechCrunch also updated its piece to reflect the details of the fundraising round.)

For what it’s worth, I think it’s smart for venture-backed startups to test out their products on Kickstarter and other crowd-funding platforms. For Sense, which enters new territory with its sleek sleep management device, it seems like an especially canny approach. But companies that turn to the public for support should be up front about their financial picture, both with reporters and with the people who might contribute to their campaigns.

Kickstarter may not care much whether companies on its platform are venture-backed or publicly traded or what they choose to share with the public. (The company tells me it doesn’t require either to tell potential donors anything about their financials.)

I, on the other hand, do care. Maybe it isn’t sporting of me, but if a company is going to go to such great lengths to tell me its creation story, why leave out something so significant?

—–

New Fundings

Activehours, a two-year-old, Palo Alto, Ca.-based company that looks to pay hourly workers in as little as one day’s time, has raised $4.1 million in seed funding from Ribbit Capital and Felicis Ventures.

Augmenix, a six-year-old, Waltham, Ma.-based company that’s developing minimally invasive hydrogel products to improve outcomes following cancer radiotherapy, has raised $10.8 million in Series D funding. Participants in the round included new investor Excelestar Ventures and unnamed individuals. Existing investors CHV II, Catalyst Health Ventures and Sparta Group also joined the round.

Intelomed, a nine-year-old, Pittsburgh, Pa.-based developer of noninvasive medical devices and technology for monitoring cardiovascular stability, has raised $3.8 million in new funding, shows an SEC filing. The company has now raised around $10.6 million altogether, shows Crunchbase

Kumo, a year-old New York-based startup that reportedly hopes to provide a la carte television content to users, is raising a $50 million round of funding, reports TechCrunch. Kumo’s founder and CEO, Neil Davis, previously spent a year as the head of strategic development at Rhapsody International, and another five years as the head of corporate and digital development at DISH Digital.

LifeNexus, a San Francisco-based consumer health company whose iChip product puts personalized health information on a card, has raised $12.7 million in new funding, according to a new SEC filing. The company’s investors include Camden Partners, Frazier Healthcare,Cambia Health Solutions, and Mosaic Health Solutions.

Quandoo, a 1.5-year-old, Berlin-based online reservation platform, has raised $25 million in Series C funding led by Pilton Capital. Earlier investors DN Capital, Holtzbrinck Ventures and the Sixt family, along with new investor Texas Atlantic Capital, also participated in the round, which brings the company’s funding to roughly $40 million.

QuarterSpot, a 2.5-year-old, Wayne, N.J.-based online lending platform that offers small businesses working capital, has been trying to stockpile some fresh capital, judging by recent SEC filings. As of May, the company had raised $21.3 million in debt; a filing shows it was targeting $100 million. Yesterday, another filing processed by the SEC shows that the company has separately raised $3.8 million in equity.

PumpUp, a two-year-old, San Francisco-based company whose popular social network app combines photo sharing, fitness tracking, and community for members focused on healthy and active lifestyle, has raised $2.4 million in seed funding led by General Catalyst Partners. Azure Capital Partners, Relay Ventures, Freycinet Investments, and numerous other angel investors also participated in the round. The company had previously raised roughly $230,000 in seed funding, shows Crunchbase.

Synapsify, a two-year-old, Bethesda, Md.-based company that produces text analytics software, has raised $850,000 in seed funding, including $145,000 from the Maryland Venture Fund. Also participating in the round were ICG Ventures, Middleland Capital, Standup Capital and unnamed angel investors. The company previously raised $600,000 in seed funding,reports the Washington Business Journal.

Trello, a new, New York-based project management tools company whose digital representation of a whiteboard aims to make it easier for groups to work together, has raised $10.3 million in Series A funding led by Index Ventures and Spark Capital. The company is the second spin-out of 14-year-old Fog Creek Software. Venture Capital Dispatch has much more here.

VenueBook, a four-year-old, New York-based event management and booking platform, has raised more than $2 million in seed funding, including from earlier investor Joanne Wilson and new investors Cayuga Venture Fund, I2BF Global Ventures, Kindler Capital, MI Ventures and Victoria Grace.

—–

New Funds

Palo Alto Venture Science, a new firm trying to raise a $200 million “quantitative” venture capital fund, is using SecondMarket for its general solicitation effort, says managing director Matt Oguz. If you’re an accredited investor, you can ask for more information here. (You can also learn more about Oguz from this Forbes piece published last month.)

New venture firm PointGuard Ventures of Menlo Park, Ca., has closed on $50 million of what it expects to be a $150 million debut fund, reports VentureWire. PointGuard, founded by ATA Ventures co-founder Pete Thomas, reportedly began its fundraising back in January. According to VentureWire, it’s looking to fund startups that have been recapped, along with companies seeking Series B funding. Among its three portfolio companies so far is Movius Interactive, a 15-year-old, Duluth, Ga.-based mobile software firm focused on converged communications like voicemail, video mail, visual voicemail, and unified messaging. Movius closed its newest round of funding last month.

Sofinnova Ventures has raised $500 million for its latest biotechnology fund, pool, Sofinnova Venture Partners IX LP, says the firm. Venture Capital Dispatch notes that the new pool is one of the largest health-care funds raised of late. Others include a $735 million fund that OrbiMed Advisors closed last year and a $516 million fund closed recently by Third Rock Ventures.

—–

Exits

Admeta, a two-year-old, Gothenburg, Sweden -based digital programmatic sell-side platform, has been acquired by the advertising management software company WideOrbit. The deal marks WideOrbit’s third acquisition in recent months. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Admeta had raised at least $5 million in funding, shows Crunchbase, which doesn’t list Admeta’s backers. WideOrbit has meanwhile raised at least $35 million in its 15-year history. Its investors include Khosla Ventures, Mayfield Fund, Greycroft Partners, and Hearst Ventures.

Fullscreen, a YouTube network, is about to sell a majority stake to Otter Media, a joint venture between AT&T and The Chernin Group, reports Recode. The deal that will reportedly value Fullscreen at between $200 million and $300 million. The Chernin Group knows Fullscreen fairly well; a year ago, it was part of a syndicate that, along with WPP Digital and Comcast Ventures, invested $30 million investment in the company.

Together Games, a year-old, Orlando, Fla.-based company that provides developers with tools to simplify cross-platform game development, has been acquired by seven-year-old, San Francisco-based GameSalad, which also makes game development tools. Together Games doesn’t appear to have raised funding; GameSalad has raised at least $7 million, including from Greycroft Partners and Steamboat Ventures, shows Crunchbase.

—–

People

Yves Béhar, founder and CEO of design firm fuseproject, is closing a deal to sell up to 75 percent ownership of the business to China’s fastest-growing marketing group, BlueFocus Communication Group. Fast Company has much more here.

Benchmark has brought on a new general partner, Eric Vishria, the firm announced yesterday. Vishria is a “smartypants” who graduated from Stanford at age 19, notes Recode. He then joined enterprise software company Loudcloud (later renamed Opsware) as its VP of Marketing and more recently cofounded the social media Web browser Rockmelt, acquired by Yahoo last August for $70 million. Given Vishria’s ties to Ben Horowitz and Marc Andreessen, who co-founded Loudcloud and bet heavily on Rockmelt, you might think Vishria would eventually land instead at their venture firm, Andreessen Horowitz. But he tells Fortune of the kind of services model that Andreessen Horowitz and Google Ventures operate: “When I spoke to entrepreneurs about what they wanted from a VC, not a single on of them said services. That doesn’t mean that it doesn’t work for others, but building a company is super hard. The highs are high and the lows are low. What entrepreneurs want most is to be able to tap into the partners, the decision-makers.”

—–

Job Listings

Electronic Arts is looking for a director of corporate development and strategy. The job is in Redwood City, Ca.

San Francisco-based Zynga is also in the market for a corporate development manager.

—–

Essential Reads

Apple executives have discussed launching a mobile “wallet” as soon as this fall for people to use their iPhones to pay for goods in physical stores, reports The Information.

Facebook reported its second-quarter earnings, trouncing expectations. Much more here.

In news you already knew deep down, Twitter is mostly white (72 percent) and mostly male (79 percent). Venturebeat has more here.

—–

Detours

The New Yorker profiles Vice President Joe Biden, whose “smile has been rejuvenated to such a gleam that it inspired a popular tweet during the last campaign: ‘Biden’s teeth are so white they’re voting for Romney.’”

It’s finally summer in the office!

—–

Retail Therapy

Plan ahead for your next off-site.

The Chillsner, for people who drink beer very s-l-o-w-l-y.

 

Good morning, everyone! We ran out of time to write a column today, but we’ll see you back here tomorrow. (Email version is here. Sign up is here.)

——

Top News in the A.M.

Apple is now growing faster in China than anywhere else in the world.

Deaf advocacy groups to Verizon: Stop invoking us to kill net neutrality.

Flipkart will announce “possibly as early as next week” that it has raised more than $1 billion in new funding — the biggest round ever raised by an Indian e-commerce company, says the Economic Times. (As Quartz is noting this morning, the round would be second biggest round ever, after Uber’s recent $1.2 billion round of funding.) According to the Economic Times report, half the funding is coming from the company’s earlier backers, including Tiger Global, DST Global and Accel Partners; the rest is flooding in from new investors. As Quartz observes,  the Economic Times has been “overenthusiastic” in its reporting of Flipkart fundings in the past, so stay tuned.

——

New Fundings

Airware, a three-year-old, San Francisco-based maker of a hardware, software, and cloud services platform for commercial drone development and operation, has raised $25 million in Series B funding led by Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. Earlier investors Andreessen Horowitz and First Round Capital also participated in the round, which brings Airware’s total funding to $40 million.

Anomo, a two-year-old, Bellevue, Wa.-based location-based social discovery app, has raised $800,000 in seed funding in a round led by Maveron and Orca Bay Capital. The company has raised $1.4 million to date.

AvantCredit, a two-year-old, Chicago-based company offering personal loans and lines of credit products online, has raised $75 million in Series C funding led by Tiger Global Management. The company also secured $200 million credit facility led by Victory Park Capital. To date, AvantCredit has raised $129 million in equity funding, including from August Capital and QED Investors, shows Crunchbase. VentureWire has much more here.

Beanstalk, a months-old, Salt Lake City, Ut.-based online tax platform for small-to-medium sized businesses and their advisors, has raised $2 million in seed funding led by New Enterprise Associates. EPIC Ventures, Deep Fork Capital, and former Wall Street executive Jim Engebretsen also participated in the round.

BEW Global, a 12-year-old, Denver-based company that provides managed security services to protect business-critical information, has raised $14 million from Frontier Capital.

bitFlyer, an eight-month-old, Tokyo-based site that allows anyone with a Japanese bank account to buy and sell bitcoin, has raised $1.6 million from an unnamed Japanese venture firm. The outfit, founded by former Goldman Sachs trader Yuzo Kano, is currently looking to raise more cash from overseas investors so it can expand the service beyond Japan, Kano tells Bloomberg.

Crowdcube, a four-year-old Exeter, England-based crowdfunding platform, says it just used its own platform to raise roughly $2 million from 141 investors in a record 16 minutes. The company announced last week that it raised $6.5 million from Balderton Capital, adding that it planned to turn to its community of users for the rest of the round. Growth Business has more here.

Daoxila, a four-year-old, Shanghai-based Chinese wedding e-commerce platform, has raised “tens of millions” of dollars in Series B funding led bySequoia Capital and earlier investor Fidelity Asia Ventures, according to China Money Network. The company received “tens of millions” of dollars in Series A funding from Fidelity and New Access Capital in 2012, says the outlet.

EdgeWave, a 19-year-old, San Diego-based cybersecurity firm, has raised $6 million in Series A funding from TVC Capital, a San Diego-based growth equity firm.

FreshBooks, an 11-year-old, Toronto-based maker of cloud-based accounting software for small businesses, has raised $30 million in its first outside funding. Oak Investment Partners led the round. Atlas Venture and Georgian Partners also participated.

iCix, an 11-year-old, San Francisco-based startup that makes software to automate food safety, has raised $25 million in new funding from Vertical Venture Partners, previous investors DFJ and Starfish Ventures, and Wesfarmers, a diversified holding company in Australia. iCix has raised $59.2 million to date, shows Crunchbase.

NextImmune, a 2.5-year-old, Gaithersburg, Md.-based developer of immuno-therapeutics for a variety of cancers and other diseases, has raised $3 million in venture funding from New Enterprise Associates, Pfizer Venture Investments, and Amgen Ventures. The company had previously raised $300,000 in seed and debt financing.

Privacy Analytics, a seven-year-old, Ottawa-based company that sells software that protects the privacy of personal data used for analysis and research, has raised $3.5 million in seed funding led by Vanedge Capital, with earlier investor BDC Capital and the Ontario Institute for Cancer Research participating. The company has raised $4.9 million to date, shows Crunchbase.

Social Point, a seven-year-old, Barcelona-based mobile games developer, has raised $30 million in Series C funding led by Highland Capital Partners Europe, with earlier backer Idinvest participating. The company has now raised $44.7 million altogether, shows Crunchbase.

SimpleReach, a 3.5-year-old, New York-based content marketing platform, has raised $9 million in Series A funding led by MK Capital. Atlas Venture, along with earlier investors Village Ventures and High Peaks Venture Capital, also participated in the round, which brings the company’s total funding to $10.6 million.

SmartZip, a five-year-old, Pleasanton, Ca.-based company behind a predictive marketing platform, has raised $12 million in Series B funding led by Crest Capital Ventures of Houston, with participation from existing investors Claremont Creek Ventures and Intel Capital. The company has raised $18.6 million to date, shows Crunchbase.

Synlogic, a 10-month-old, Cambridge, Ma.-based biotechnology company focused on the development of therapeutic microbes, has raised $29.4 million in Series A funding led by Atlas Venture and New Enterprise Associates.

Sunrise, a 1.5-year-old company that makes a free calendar app, is raising $6 million in Series A funding from Balderton Capital and earlier investors, reports TechCrunch. When the round is closed, the company will have raised $8.2 million altogether.

Supersonic, a five-year-old, San Bruno, Ca.-based mobile advertising platform technology company, has raised $15 million in Series B funding led by the China-based venture firm SAIF Partners in order to expand its business into China, Japan and India. Earlier investor Greylock Partners also participated in the round, which brings Supersonic’s total funding to roughly $23 million. The Globes has more here.

Timehop, a 3.5-year-old, New York-based app that aggregates updates, statuses and photos of from social networks and sends them to users’ email, has raised $10 million in new fund led by Shasta Ventures. Earlier investors, including Spark Capital, O’Reilly Alpha Tech Ventures and numerous angel investors, also participated in the round, which brings the company’s total funding to $14.1 million.

VisiQuate, a five-year-old, Santa Rosa, Ca.-based enterprise software company, has raised $6 million in Series C funding led by First Analysis. The company has raised $10.1 million to date, shows Crunchbase.

WHILL, a two-year-old, San Carlos, Ca.-based company that creates personal mobility products that look an awful lot like modern wheelchairs but are meant to be used by anybody, has raised $6 million as part of an $11 million round, shows a new SEC filing. The company had earlier raised $1.9 million in seed funding, including from Bridge Global Ventures, 500 Startups, Itochu Technology Ventures, KAMIA, MUFJ Capital, and VegasTechFund. It also ran a small, successful campaign on Kickstarter, which you can still see here.

Yuantiku, a two-year-old, Beijing-based question-and-answer education site designed to help students pass various tests, has raised $15 million in Series C financing from existing investors Matrix Partners China and IDG, at a valuation of roughly $125 million, says TechNode. The company had previous raised roughly $10 million.

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New Funds

Australian investor Mark Carnegie has teamed up with fixed income dealerFIIG to create Alternate Debt Services, which will link privately held high-growth companies with debt from investors ­chasing yield. More here.

Leading Edge Ventures, a new, Newark, De.-based early-stage venture fund, has announced that it will begin making investments in young startups in Delaware and the Mid-Atlantic region. Leading Edge is backed by First State Innovation, an organization whose mission is to accelerate entrepreneurial activity in Delaware and the surrounding region.

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Exits

Bizo, a six-year-old, San Francisco-based market platform that helps B2B marketers identify and reach their target audiences online, has been acquired by LinkedIn for $175 million in cash and stock (90 percent cash; 10 percent stock). The company had raised $28.5 million from investors, including Venrock, Crosslink Capital, Bessemer Venture Partners,Vulcan Capital, and Ascent Venture Partners.

DrawElements, a six-year-old, Helsinki-based computer graphics company, has been acquired by Google for undisclosed terms. More here.

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People

Prince Harry is down on Twitter, as in, “I really quite hate Twitter.”

LinkedIn cofounder Reid Hoffman sits down with Charlie Rose to talk about his new book and answer a host of questions, including how he’d characterize the maturation of social networking. “I’d say it’s still in the first three innings,” says Hoffman.

Chris LaRosa, YouTube’s product manager in charge of music, is leaving Google at week’s end to join a startup, reports the WSJ. It’s a “huge loss,” a colleague of LaRosa tells the outlet. More here.

David Rubin, who spent the last 13 years at Unilever, has left his VP job with the consumer goods giant to head up global brand marketing forPinterest. It’s a newly created post, reports AdAge.

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Job Listings

CalPERS, the pension fund giant, is still looking to fill a whole bunch of openings, including several investment officer roles.

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Essential Reads

Engadget reviews the Amazon Fire and concludes that you’re “better off waiting for the sequel.”

Apple delivered a snooze of an earnings report yesterday. Here’s what you might have missed.

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Detours

We meant to tell you sooner: The tendency to procrastinate may be genetic.

A new study shows that people are “perceived as selfish when they advocate for someone who looks like them, unless they’re a white man.”

Eek. June was the hottest month on record, says the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. (May was the hottest on record, too.)

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Retail Therapy

You can now spend $1,260 for a pair of sunglasses. Who says you have to  wear Glass to look like a glasshole? (Kidding!) H/T: InsideHook.

Fuut hammocks.