Good Tuesday morning, dear readers!

So, wow. Some of you did not like yesterday’s column. Here is some reader feedback if you’re interested, including from Google’s 25th employee, David desJardins.

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Top News in the A.M.

A potato salad has so far raised $38,000 on Kickstarter. Here’s how.

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Mitch Kapor on Dropcam and Data Collection

Lotus Software founder Mitch Kapor is well-known for his philanthropy, including through the Kapor Center for Social Impact, which funds startups as one prong of a strategy to strengthen underrepresented communities.

But Kapor has also made many bets on companies based purely on their technology and teams. Among them is the home surveillance startup Dropcam, acquired last month by Google’s Nest Labs for $555 million. In fact, Kapor was its first investor.

Late last week, we talked about how that deal came together, and how Kapor feels about the outcome.

How did you find Dropcam five or so years ago?

I came across it through a third founder who left very early, Anson Tsai, who went on to found Cardpool, a market for buying and selling gift cards. Cardpool was acquired by [the payments network] Blackhawk early and very successfully. I’d met Anson socially through [entrepreneur and popular blogger] Andrew Chen.

I don’t think people realize there was a third founder.

Yes, with Greg [Duffy] and Aamir [Virani], who’d worked together at [the email startup] Xobni, which was just shut down by Yahoo, ironically [roughly a year after it was acquired for undisclosed amount]. I think the chemistry wasn’t right, so Anson left to start his own company, but I liked Greg and Aamir and what they were doing and thought they were riding some good themes so invested.

Were you privy to any of Dropcam’s conversations with Google? I always wonder which investors know what and when.

Our relationship as seed investors is heavily concentrated from the time we first make an investment up through a Series A. In Dropcam’s case, the Series A came pretty early, because, to his credit, Sameer [Gandhi] of Accel saw something in the company [and led the company’s Series A round in 2011]. Once Dropcam had a board, our relationship changed. I was involved, but more on demand, when Greg or Aamir wanted coaching or advice or introductions. In fact, I found out about the sale by reading about it in my Twitter stream and getting congratulated, and that’s typical if you don’t have a board seat. Seed investors often find out about big events as they’re happening or sometimes just before.

What kind of return did you see on your investment? More than 100x?

Definitely more than 100x. It was a big return.

As a big believer in the company, do you think selling to Google was the best outcome for Dropcam?

The right outcome has to do with the founders who are in place and deciding the right thing to do. Sometimes, they think it’s the right time to sell because being part of something bigger helps in achieving strategic objectives and getting [a financial] outcome. There are tradeoffs, too, if you stay on your own. You enjoy your independence and you can maybe build something larger, but it comes with a lot of headaches.

I’m surprised people aren’t more concerned by certain companies’ moves to dominate the connected home, given their growing reach into other aspects of our lives. Do you have any thoughts about why that is?

I think ultimately there will be some kind of new social contract backed up by laws that will put some restrictions on what companies that collect a lot of data on people can do with that information, and that would include Google, Apple, and Facebook. I believe it will be a long and messy road to get there, but if we look at what’s going on today, we see the outlines of how it will happen. For a number of years, for example, Silicon Valley companies resisted releasing their employment data. Google gets credit for its willingness to put it out there, though. It was difficult, because its diversity numbers are terrible. But the time had come for the company to take a step forward and it has.

When do you think we’ll see these protective regulations?

Probably 5 or 10 years from now, and I think it will come from unhappiness among consumers and other forces that convince Google that its long-term interests are better served by agreeing to do something that previously it found difficult or impossible to do.

People will have to get more upset about the whole subject of large amounts of personal information being collected. But change happens. Consider gender issues. There’s been one embarrassing scandal after another, with Tinder, Github, and others. I don’t think there’s more of that going on now than before, but people are more aware that it’s going on now, it’s covered more, and there’s more of a climate that this isn’t right. It’s an issue that’s no longer ignored.

We’re not there yet on data collection, but I think we’ll get there. It will happen.

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New Fundings

Adtile, a nearly four-year-old, San Diego, Ca.-based mobile ad tech company that develops more interactive ads, has raised $4.5 million in Series A funding from undisclosed investors. The company had previous raised $2.7 million, reports TechCrunch.

Box, the nine-year-old, Los Altos, Ca.-based online-storage startup, has raised $150 million in funding from private-equity firm TPG and hedge fund Coatue Management, according to the WSJ, which says the financing values Box at about $2.4 billion. Box has now raised around $565 million altogether from investors, including General Atlantic, DFJ, New Enterprise Associates, Bessemer Venture Partners, The Social+Capital Partnership, SAP Ventures, and Scale Venture Partners.

Cloudian, a 2.5-year-old, Foster City, Ca.-based cloud storage company that features a two-tiered pricing system, has raised $29 million in Series C funding from Innovation Corporate Network of Japan, Fidelity Growth Partners Japan, and earlier investors, including Intel Capital and Goldman Sachs.

Curse, an eight-year-old, Huntsville, Al.-based gaming services company that offers in-game voice communications platforms, among other things, has raised $10 million in Series B financing led by new investor GGV Capital. The company says it has now raised $22 million to date, including from Ventech, SoftTech VC, and IDInvest Parters.

FishBrain, a four-year-old, Gothenburg, Sweden-based social network for anglers, has raised $2.4 million in funding led by Northzone and Active Venture Partners. Other participants in the round included new investors GP Bullhound and Edastra Venture Capital, along with earlier backers.The company has raised $3.9 million to date, says TechCrunch. (Readers might recall that Fishidy, another social startup that provides fishing information to anglers, just raised $1.5 million in Series A funding last month.)

Fuisz Media, a three-year-old, Santa Monica, Ca.-based company behind a new commerce-enabled interactive video technology, has raised $2.1 million in seed funding led by Metamorphic Ventures and Lerer Hippeau Ventures. Other investors include Science Inc., WGI Group, United Talent Agency, Mesa+, and numerous individual investors.

mBlox, a 14-year-old, Sunnyvale, Ca.-based mobile marketing company, has just raised $43.5 million in new funding, including from Comerica, Horizon Technology Finance, Norwest Venture Partners, Scale Ventures, Avanti, Trident, Stratem and Saints Capital. The company, which has now raised at least $120 million over the years, tells VentureWire that it’s using the money to rebrand its service by adding many new features.

Mint Solutions, a four-year-old, Iceland-based hardware startup whose scanning device aims to ensure that healthcare workers provide each patient with the right medicine and dosage levels, has raised $6 million in Series A funding led by the European investment firm Life Sciences Partners and Seventure Partners. TechCrunch has more here.

OpenDoor, a new, San Francisco-based company that aims to to make buying homes as simple as clicking a few buttons, has just closed $9.95 million in an ” insane party round,” as TechCrunch puts it, one that was led by Khosla Ventures. The company, which has yet to launch, was cofounded by Eric Wu, the former head of geo and social products at real estate listings platform Trulia, and Keith Rabois, the former Square COO turned venture capitalist. More on OpenDoor’s long list of investors here.

Racemi, a 13-year-old, Atlanta-based company whose cloud migration software helps automate the process of migrating workloads to public, private and hybrid clouds, has raised $10 million in Series C funding led by Milestone Venture Partners. Earlier investors Harbert Venture Partners and Paladin Capital Group also participated in the round. The company has now raised roughly $25 million altogether, shows Crunchbase.

Regent Education, an eight-year-old, Frederick, Md.-based company that makes financial aid management and enrollment optimization software for higher ed institutions, has raised $9 million in venture and debt funding. The company closed a $4 million Series C round from new investor New Markets Venture Partners, which joined by earlier investor Chrysalis Ventures. Meanwhile, Ares Capital provided $5 million in debt financing. Regent has now raised roughly $23 million to date, shows Crunchbase.

Robin, a months-old, Boston-based company that’s developing a service for presence sensing and automation in the office, has raised $1.4 million in seed funding led by Atlas Venture. Other participants in the round included Deep Fork Capital, Boldstart Ventures and Space Pirates, a seed venture group. BostInno has more here.

Spark Labs, a 2.5-year-old, Minneapolis, Mn.-based company that sells a Wi-Fi development kit to engineers and designers who develop connected hardware products, has raised $4.9 million in Series A funding led by Lion Wells Capital and O’Reilly AlphaTech Ventures. Other participants in the round included Collaborative Fund, and SOSventures. The company has raised $4.9 million to date, it tells the WSJ.

TranServ, a four-year-old, Mumbai, India-based prepaid payments company, has raised an undisclosed amount in Series B round led by Faering Capital, with earlier investor Nirvana Venture Advisors also participating. The Economic Times has more here.

WordStream, a seven-year-old, Boston-based search-marketing software company, has raised $9 million in Series C funding led by Baird Capital of Chicago, with earlier investor Sigma Partners participating. The company also raised an addition $3 million in venture debt from City National Bank. According to Crunchbase, WordStream has raised $28.4 million to date.

Xapo, a two-year-old, Palo Alto, Ca.-base “bank” for bitcoin, has raise $20 million from Greylock Partners and Index Ventures, which were joined by Emergence Capital Partners, Max Levchin, Yuri Milner, and Jerry Yang. The company has raised $40 million to date. TechCrunch has more here.

YouChe.com, an eight-month-old, Beijing, China-based online retailing platform for second-hand cars, has raised $10 million in Series A funding led by IDG Capital, according to China Money Network, which says the company previously raised “several million RMB” in seed funding from Zhen Fund last December when the company was founded.

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New Funds

DST Global, the nine-year-old investment firm cofounded and controlled by Russian billionaire Yuri Milner, is raising its fourth fund, DST Global IV, according to an SEC filing that doesn’t list a target. Milner, whose bets through DST have included Facebook, Twitter, and Spotify, among others, talked with Forbes late last year about some of those past investments and where DST planned to spend some of its time in 2014. VentureBeat has more here.

HomeAway, the nine-year-old, Austin-based vacation rental marketplace, is thinking about ways to formalize its startup investing, reports TechCrunch. The company’s cofounder and CEO Brian Sharples tells the outlet: “There are lots of entrepreneurs in the travel space — and now in particular around the vacation rental space . . .We’re very actively looking at [investing]. Historically we have either bought companies outright or bought a joint position.” The company has already made roughly 20 acquisitions since its founding.

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IPOs

TubeMogul, a nearly seven-year-old, Emeryville, Ca.-based video ad platform that filed its S-1 in March, looks to be proceeding with its plans to go public, despite a choppy market for ad tech companies. The company has raised more than $50 million in funding. Its biggest shareholders include Trinity Ventures (which owns 26.5 percent of the company prior to the IPO), Foundation Capital (22.7 percent), and Northgate Capital (8 percent). TechCrunch has more here.

Yodle, a nine-year-old, New York-based online marketing platform for small businesses, has filed to go public. The company has raised at least $40 million from investors, shows Crunchbase. Its biggest shareholders are Bessemer Venture Partners, which owns 29.7 percent of the company; DFJ, which owns 24.4 percent; JAFCO Technology Partners, which owns 8.7 percent; and David Rubin, formerly the CEO of ProfitFuel, which Yodle had acquired. Rubin owns 5 percent.

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Exits

Newport Media, a nine-year-old, Lake Forest, Ca.-based fabless semiconductor company, has been acquired for $140 million by the publicly traded semiconductor company Atmel as Atmel shifts more of its focus toward smart connected devices. Newport had raised $66 million over the years, shows Crunchbase, including from Oak Investment Partners, Global Catalyst Partners, Venrock, Pinnacle Ventures, DAG Ventures, and Benchmark. VentureBeat has more here.

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People

Fortune profiles John Arrillaga, the billionaire real estate developer (and father-in-law to Marc Andreessen), who “grew up one of five children in a lower-middle-class home in Inglewood, Calif.” and whose mother “kept the kids full with pieces of bread stuffed with lettuce. When Saturday ‘steak night’ rolled around, the seven of them shared one flank.”

Apple CEO Tim Cook is reportedly looking for some fresh faces to add to Apple’s board. According to a WSJ story, “Mr. Cook is actively seeking new directors to add to Apple’s eight-person board, known for its loyalty to Mr. Jobs. Six of the seven outside directors are aged 63 or older. Four of them have served for more than a decade, including two who have been on the board since the late 1990s: former Intuit Corp Chief Executive Bill Campbell and J. Crew Group Chief Executive Millard S. “Mickey” Drexler.”As 9to5mac notes, most of the Apple’s current board members were hand-picked by Steve Jobs, with Cook adding only Disney CEO Bob Iger and promoting Art Levinson to non-executive Chairman of the Board.

Katie Stanton, previously VP of international market development at Twitter, is stepping into the role of the company’s media chief, weeks after the departure of her predecessor, Chloe Sladden. Stanton, reports Variety, was already running the company’s international media division; in her new role, she be overseeing the U.S. division, too.

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Job Listings

Frost Data Capital is looking for a summer associate (this is an unpaid eight-week internship). The firm is in San Juan Capistrano, Ca.

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Essential Reads

Meet the ex-Google hacker who’s taking on the world’s spy agencies.

Young Israelis are suddenly flocking to Germany to start their businesses, says Newsweek.

Reminder: The SEC is due to review the definition of accredited investor this summer.

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Detours

Yada, yada, yada: Larry David looks back at 25 years of “Seinfeld” in aQ&A with Rolling Stone.

Spectators jumping into the road to snap selfies are becoming a giant pain in the arse, say Tour de France riders.

Are you smart enough to get into a private New York City kindergarten?

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Retail Therapy

An iPhone charger that looks like an umbilical cord. (It’s horrifying, but you kind of have to see it.)

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To sign up for StrictlyVC, click here. To advertise, click here.

Happy Wednesday morning!

We are officially outtie 5000 for the long weekend. Hoping you have a very happy, restful July 4th.

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Top News in the A.M.

Amazon is defending its stance against Hachette.

The Russian government has moved one step closer towards a “China-like” approach towards Internet services, reports TechCrunch. Last night, the Russian State Duma passed the first bill requiring that the personal data of all Russians be stored inside the country.

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For Razor’s Edge, Ties to Intelligence Community are Key

To do business with the government, you could do worse than partner with Razor’s Edge Ventures, a no-frills, Herndon, Va.-based venture firm that’s investing a $55 million fund and whose managing directors include several executives from the defense contractor Blackbird Technologies; a former director of technology assessment at the C.I.A.-backed venture firm In-Q-Tel; and a longtime Cooley attorney who used to focus on M&A.

The firm has especially close ties to the classified community, says the former attorney, Mark Spoto, who happens to be the only managing director that Razor’s Edge lists by name at its site. (The others prefer operating below the radar owing to their “other business interests,” he says.)

That kind of — yes — intel, is a big advantage, Spoto says. National security officials “don’t just let people knock on the door and show off their stuff. You have to have clearances and longer relationships and to show people that you’ve vetted the technologies. Otherwise, they’d be buried in business plans.”

So far, Razor’s Edge has made seven investments, writing initial checks of between $2 million and $5 million. Its most recent bet is CounterTack, a three-year-old, Waltham, Ma.-based firm that makes threat detection and response software. The company held a final close on its Series B financing last month.

Razor’s Edge doesn’t focus on security startups alone, though. While a company “has to have some kind of innovative technology that has important national security applications,” says Spoto, “we’re looking for companies that have the ability to take their technologies out to other markets as well,” such as the oil and gas, financial services, and healthcare industries.

The firm’s ties to the government also inform what it won’t invest in. For example, while Razor’s Edge is interested in autonomous vehicles, including drones, its partners think it’s too soon to make a bet. “The marketplace is being driven by an FAA regulatory scheme that’s still being developed,” says Spoto. “Investors who think the market will break free of that process in 2015 are being optimistic.” (Indeed, a new audit report notes that the FAA is “significantly behind schedule” in its attempt to meet Congress’ September 2015 deadline for integrating commercial drones into U.S. airspace.)

Razor’s Edge doesn’t have any exits to show for its efforts just yet, but Spoto says its portfolio companies are healthy and growing. He points to two-year-old 908 Devices, a Boston-based company that manufactures battery-operated, hand-held chemical detection tools. “When we invested, it was pre-revenue. We helped them finish their product development and now the company is doing amazingly well.” (Razor’s Edge first backed the company in a Series A round in the fall of 2012. It went on to raise Series B funding last summer.)

In fact, Spoto talks enthusiastically about all of the firm’s startups, as well as his transition from attorney to venture capitalist, a move he made after being approached by his current partners, who were previously his clients.

“I had some sense of what it was going to be like before I came in,” he says. But he likes it even more than he imagined he would. “I learn new stuff every day, I see different ideas, I get to interact with people and solve problems. I wouldn’t go back to the practice of law if you paid me all the money in the world.”

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New Fundings

Akosha, a four-year-old, Delhi, India-based online consumer complaint forum, has raised $5.2 million in Series A funding from Sequoia Capital, which had provided the company with $200,000 in seed funding in 2011. Deal Curry has more here.

BlaBlaCar, a 10-year-old, Paris-based ride-sharing that matches people needing a ride with people traveling in the same direction and willing to share their car, has raised $100 million in Series C funding led by Index Ventures. Accel Partners, ISAI and Lead Edge Capital also participated in the round, which is four times what the company was initially seeking, its CEO tells Re/code. It has now raised $110 million altogether.

CTERA Networks, a six-year-old, Tel Aviv, Israel-based company whose in-cloud storage technology makes it possible for its corporate customers to provide their own employees and customers with cloud-based storage (versus rely on the products of Dropbox and other big-name storage providers), has raised $25 million. Bessemer Venture Partners led the round, joined by earlier investors Cisco, Benchmark, and Venrock. The company has raised $45 million altogether.

DC Devices, a five-year-old, Andover, Ma.-based company that’s developing a transcatheter device for diastolic heart failure, has raised $34 million in Series D funding led by Accelmed. A new, undisclosed strategic investor also joined the round, along with earlier investors Third Rock Ventures, General Catalyst Partners, and Lumira Capital. To date, the company has raised $44.7 million, shows Crunchbase.

ElectroCore, a nine-year-old, Morris Plains, N.J.-based company that develops non-invasive and non-pharmacologic therapies that treat or prevent symptoms of serious headache conditions among other things, has closed a multi-tranched Series A round of $50 million. The company’s investors include Merck Global Healthcare Innovation Fund, Easton Capital and Core Ventures Group.

EnergySavvy, a 4.5-year-old, Seattle-based company whose online tools help utilities operate energy-efficiency programs, has added two new investors that are bringing its most recent round, closed in early May, to $8.25 million, up from $7 million. Its new investors are EnerTech Capital and El Dorado Investment Company. Earlier investors in the round included Prelude Ventures and Pivotal Investments. The company has now raised $14.2 million altogether.

Hinge, a three-year-old, New York-based mobile app that helps people meet dates through friends on Facebook, has raised $4.5 million in funding from Founders Fund, Lowercase Capital, CAA Ventures, Lumia Capital, Middleland Capital, and Great Oaks Venture Capital. The round brings the company’s total funding to $8.6 million.

HzO, a three-year-old, Draper, Ut.-based company that manufactures a thin-film nano-coating to protect electronic devices from water, humidity and other liquid damages, has raised $20 million in Series B funding led by Iron Gate Capital, which was joined by Translink Capital and Delta Electronics. Earlier investors Harris & Harris Group, Prudence Holdings and VY Capital also participated in the round, which brings the company’s total funding to $33.6 million, shows Crunchbase.

InSightec, a 15-year-old, Tirat Carmel, Israel-based maker of an ultrasound therapy for the non-invasive treatment of tumors, is raising a $50 million Series D round led by York Capital Management. According to the company, there’s still time for “other investors to invest in the current round either by taking part of the $50 million or expanding the investment to $62.5 million.” In 2012, InSightec raised roughly $30 million led by GE Healthcare, shows Crunchbase.

Involta, a seven-year-old, Cedar Rapids, Ia.-based data center operator, has raised $50 million in funding led by M/C Partners, with participation from Morgan Stanley Alternative Investment Partners. The company has raised at least $59.4 million to date, shows Crunchbase.

Keen IO, a 2.5-year-old, San Francisco-based company that helps developers build their own analytics products, has raised $11.3 million in Series A funding led by Sequoia Capital. Earlier investors Pelion Venture Partners, Amplify Partners, and Rincon Venture Partners, Cloud Power Capital, and Morris Wheeler also participated in the new funding, which brings the company’s total funding to $14.5 million, shows Crunchbase.

Lattice Power, an eight-year-old, Nanchang, China-based company that produces what it says is a cheaper light-emitting diode technology, has raised $80 million in new funding, the company tells VentureWire. The company had previously raised at least $115 million, shows Crunchbase. Its backers include AsiaVest Partners, GSR Ventures, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Keytone Ventures, and Mayfield Fund.

Liquid Environmental Solutions, a 12-year-old, Irving, Tx.-based company that contracts with restaurants, laundromats, car washes and other businesses to clean up their wastewater, has raised $31.6 million in Series C funding led by ABS Capital Partners. Several non-employee members of the company’s board of directors also participated in the round. The company has raised at least $51.6 million to date, shows Crunchbase.

Meitu, a six-year-old, Xiamen, China-based mobile app maker that enables its users to create customized images, typically for uploading to social media networks, has raised $10 million in Series C funding led by earlier investor Qiming Ventures. Other participants in the round were not identified. China Money Network has more here.

Moven, a three-year-old, New York-based startup whose mobile banking app provides users with money management tools and real-time updates on their purchases, has raised $8 million in Series A funding, led by SBT Venture Capital. Anthemis Group, Route 66 Ventures, Standard Bank, New York Angels and other angel investors also participated in the round. The company has raised $12.4 million altogether, shows Crunchbase.

OOTU, a new, San Francisco-based semantic discovery company, has raised $325,000 in seed funding, including from the company’s CEO and cofounder, Michael Knapp, individual investors Robert Nelsen and Clinton Bybee, and McKenna Ventures.

Partnered, a two-year-old, San Francisco-based company that aims to help brands and agencies needing the help of startups (and vice versa) find each other, has raised $850,000 in new seed funding from Rothenberg Ventures, Structure Capital, Kima Ventures, Slow Ventures, Sherpa Ventures, and Gary Vaynerchuk. The company, a Y Combinator alum, has raised $1.6 million altogether.

Rotation Medical, a five-year-old, Plymouth, Mn.-based medical device company whose implant, which helps heal the shoulder’s rotator cuff, recently received FDA clearance, has raised $27.2 million in Series B funding co-led by new investor Life Science Partners and earlier investor New Enterprise Associates. Pappas Ventures and other undisclosed investors also participated. The company had previously raised $19.4 million in equity and debt.

Seal Innovation, a four-year-old, Raleigh, N.C.-based wearable technology startup that’s commercializing a swim safety monitor, has raised $2 million in Series B funding from undisclosed investors. More on the company here.

Simply Hired, a 10-year-old, Sunnyvale, Ca.-based company that operates job search engines in dozens of countries, has raised a new round of $12 million in equity and debt from previous investors Foundation Capital and IDG Ventures, along with City National Bank. The company has now raised at least $34.3 million to date, shows Crunchbase.

Streetline, a nine-year-old, San Francisco-based company that’s building a network of sensors to detect and collect data on parked cars, has raised $10 million from Citibank, Fontinalis Partners, RockPort Capital Partners, Sutter Hill Ventures, True Ventures and Qualcomm Ventures, all of which had previously invested in the company. Streetline has now raised $50 million altogether, shows Crunchbase.

Tuul, a new, Santa Cruz, Ca.-based still-stealth company that’s promising to simplify the interaction between businesses and consumers via their mobile devices, has $1.7 million in seed funding led by Greycroft Partners. Raine Group, Streamlined Ventures and other, unnamed individual investors, also participated in the round. Tuul was founded by Toby Corey and Wayne Tsuchitani, who previously cofounded the Internet marketing company USWeb.

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IPOs

The NYSE said it plans to hold a test run of Alibaba Group‘s eagerly awaited market debut, reflecting the securities industry’s intense interest in avoiding another debacle as happened the morning of Facebook’s May 2012 IPO.

Four days into life as a public company, and GoPro is killing it, in the parlance of the extreme sports lovers who use its cameras. Shares in the company gained 20 percent yesterday to close at $48.80, double their IPO price.

Europe’s largest online fashion retailer, Zalando, is considering reducing the size of its stock market listing, sources tell Reuters. More here.

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Exits

Predictive Edge, a 3.5-year-old, Mountain View, Ca.-based startup that offered e-commerce personalization as a service to marketers, has been acquired by Dropbox for an undisclosed amount. The company, the 17th that Dropbox has acquired, says Techcrunch, will be shut down and the founders put to work on a yet-undisclosed part of Dropbox’s business.

Songza, a 6.5-year-old, Long Island City, N.Y.-based music curation and streaming service with a reported 5.5 million active users, has officially been acquired by Google, roughly one month after rumors of an acquisition began to surface in the media. Terms of the deal aren’t being disclosed, but a source tells the New York Times it paid more than $39 million. Songza had raised at least $6.7 million from investors, shows Crunchbase. They include Gary Vaynerchuk, Scooter Braun, Troy Carter, Metamorphic Ventures, Nicole Junkermann, Geoff Judge,Deep Fork Capital, Lerer Ventures, Amazon, William Morris Endeavor, and AFSquare.

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People

Bessemer Venture Partners has two new vice presidents: Amit Karp and Sunil James. Karp joined the firm as a senior associate in 2012; he was previously a senior associate at McKinsey & Company. James comes directly from Google, where he spent the greater part of the last three years as a product manager. James was previously a senior product manager at Amazon.

Venture capitalist Tim Draper was the winning bidder of all 30,000 bitcoins auctioned off by the U.S. Marshals Service following its seizure from an underground online marketplace called Silk Road. He plans to sell all or most of the bitcoin through Vaurum, a startup he has backed and which is launching trading platforms in emerging markets. More here.

Derek Gottfrid, characterized by Business Insider as “Tumblr’s Sheryl Sandberg,” is out of the microblogging platform, pushed through the door, seemingly, by Tumblr founder David Karp, who’d hired Gottfrid away from the New York Times in 2010. More here.

Things might not be so bad for Mike Gupta, who was replaced yesterday as Twitter‘s CFO by former Goldman Sachs banker Anthony Noto. As the WSJ smartly notes, buried under all the chatter about shifts at the top of Twitter was the fact Gupta is now leading a new strategic investments group at the company. Read: Twitter now has a corporate venture arm.

Google Ventures is opening an office in London soon. Here is the team that will reportedly be running it.

Lux Capital has promoted three of its investing pros: Zack Schildhorn and Shahin Farshchi are now partners, and Adam Goulburn is a principal. Schildhorn had joined the firm in 2007 as an associate; the firm says he “pioneered Lux’s landscaping of the 3D printing market and sourced the firm’s investment in [the 3D printing marketplace] Shapeways,” among other things. Farshchi, who has a PhD in electrical engineering and who joined the firm as a principal in 2006, has sourced many of Lux’s investments in hardware and devices. Goulburn joined Lux as an intern in 2011. A postdoctoral fellow of neuroscience at Weill Cornell Medical College at the time, Goulburn was promoted to associate later the same year.

Zoltan Szabadi, a former Amazon Web Services manager, is being sued by the e-commerce giant, which says Szabadi’s new job at Google Cloud Platform violates the terms of a noncompete agreement he’d signed when joining Amazon.

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Job Listings

Bloomberg Ventures, the venture arm of Bloomberg L.P., is looking for either an analyst or an associate. The job is in New York.

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Essential Reads

Don’t worry. Facebook still has no idea how you feel.

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Detours

Rafa Nadal may have been eliminated at Wimbledon yesterday, but he can still juggle a ball 400 times on the side of his racket.

Cracks in facade visible as teen enters third day vacationing with friend’s family.

Notes to thieving a__holes.

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Retail Therapy

Tents for misanthropes.

Rubiks Cube coasters.

Handsome black Filson bags.

Related articles

• Security startup CounterTack takes $5M more to meet demand for attack-detection systems
• The Itinerant Investor: Boris Wertz
• Are we in a tech bubble? VCs say yes and no
• VC firm Bessemer names Karp, James to VP roles

Hi, good Thursday morning, everyone, and go U.S.A.! (The game starts at 9 a.m. PST.)

——

Top News in the A.M.

Everything you need to know about Google’s I/O keynote yesterday. (And here is what didn’t come up, to the surprise of many attendees.)

Tell the holdouts in your life: Costco is now offering iPads and iPhones online on the cheap.

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The Promise, and Challenges, of Synthetic Biology

Synthetic biology, a discipline that combines chemistry, engineering, and molecular biology to manipulate particular molecules for specific ends, is a little too complex for most Bay Area cocktail parties, where talk of Snapchat usually predominates. “It’s a quagmire of discussion,” says Hemai Parthasarathy, a neuroscientist who is today the scientific director at Peter Thiel’s Breakout Labs in San Francisco.

It could also be one of the most lucrative fields in science. By using gene-sequence information and synthetic DNA, a growing number of established companies and startups are attempting to reconfigure the metabolic pathways of cells to perform new functions that could benefit everything from the agricultural to cosmetic industries.

One such company is Pareto Biotechnologies, which has already raised seed funding from Breakout Labs and other, undisclosed investors. Soon, Pareto will be seeking Series A funding, too.

The company, though young, is farther along than most. Ten year’s worth of lab work has already gone into its platform by founders who include a chemical biology and proteomics professor at the Salk Institute in San Diego, and a serial entrepreneur who has previously founded three other molecular biology companies.

“I don’t want to call other companies we’ve seen naïve,” says Parthasarathy. “But there isn’t necessarily depth to their underlying technology. A lot [of teams] will submit proposals to us that are theoretically sound, but execution is where synthetic biology lives and dies, and it always ends up being harder than you think.”

Pareto is also going after not just one molecule or organism but a system for designing whole classes of molecules, and the company has already developed enzymatic pathways that can, it hopes, lead more quickly to end products.

Right now, for example, the company is working with a cosmetics company that “has a molecule that’s worth hundreds of millions of dollars to them,” says Pareto’s CEO and cofounder Jamie Bacher. “The chemical falls perfectly in the class that we can work with,” and it wants Pareto to modify it in a way that improves its interaction with skin.

Pareto has designed a simple, two-week experiment to see if it can produce the desired outcome. If it succeeds, scaling comes next. Pareto wants to be able to generate enough molecules – maybe a few milligrams’ worth — to prove to the cosmetics company that it’s a viable commercial process. Cosmetics happens to be a $200 billion a year industry, but it’s just one of the sectors Pareto is targeting. “We can cross up and down industries,” says Bacher.

Pareto isn’t without its challenges. While it may have a jump on some of the competition thanks to its knowledge around certain metabolic pathways, it’s still in the process of proving out its technology.

The broader industry, while potentially quite lucrative, is also often dogged by concerns over the cultural implications of altering nature. Consumers might not care what was involved in the making of their anti-aging creams, but flavors and fragrances that are being genetically modified by micro-organisms in vats — rather than extracted from plants — are getting pushback from critics who say the technologies threaten farmers in third world countries.

There’s also debate over what’s “natural.” Explains Parthasarathy, “You can chemically synthesize some of these molecules of interest using organic chemistry processes, and people call that artificial flavoring. Or you can grow it in a forest and purify it and then it’s ‘natural’ flavor. People claim synthetic biology products are natural because they’re being grown in an organism, and there’s some question whether that’s a valid designation.”

Ultimately, it comes down to consumer buy-in, notes Parthasarathy. For her part, she thinks it’s all much ado about nothing. “I think it’s irrelevant how a particular chemical is produced, whether it’s natural or artificial. If it’s a purified chemical, it’s irrelevant to one’s health how it came to be purified.”

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New Fundings

Akvolution, a 1.5-year-old, Berlin, Germany-based water treatment technology company, has raised a “six-digit” seed funding round from High-Tech-Gründerfonds, it says.

BlockScore, a 1.5-year-old, Menlo Park, Ca.-based maker of identity-verification and anti-fraud technology for online businesses, has raised $2 million in seed financing from a group that includes Battery Ventures, Khosla Ventures, Lightspeed Venture Partners, New Atlantic Ventures, Boost VC, Y Combinator and several angels.

The Bouqs, a 1.5-year-old, Venice, Ca.-based cut-to-order online flower delivery service, has raised $6 million in Series A financing led by Azure Capital Partners, which was joined by KEC Ventures. The company had previously raised $1.1 million in seed funding from numerous individual investors and firms, including Mich Mathews, Dennis Phelps, Andy Dunn, Brian Spaly, Telegraph Hill Capital, Quest Venture Partners, and Siemer Ventures.

Coherent Path, a two-year-old, Arlington Heights, Ma.-based retail analytics startup, has raised $6.3 million in Series A funding led by Sigma Prime Ventures and GrandBanks Capital. The company has raised roughly $7 million altogether, including from dunnhumby Ventures, CommonAngels, and BOLDstart Ventures.

CoPatient, a two-year-old, Portland, Or.-based medical-billing company that helps patients spot mistakes in their medical bills, has raised $3.6 million in Series A funding led by .406 Ventures. Earlier investors Cambia Health Solutions and Athenahealth executive Jonathan Bush also participated in the round. CoPatient had previously raised $1.1 million in seed funding.

Couchbase, a five-year-old, Mountain View, Ca.-based NoSQL database company, has raised $60 million in Series E funding led by WestSummit Capital and Accel Growth Fund, as well as earlier investors. The company has now raised $116 million, shows Crunchbase. The WSJ has much more here.

Curiyo, a 2.5-year-old, Jerusalem-based company whose browser app enables users to look up names, places, and other terms in a pop-up window without leaving a Web page, has raised $1.9 million in seed funding from OurCrowd, Cedar Fund, Morton Meyerson, Kima Ventures, Tom Glocer, Gigi Levy, JumpSpeed Ventures, and other private investors. Curiyo was founded by Bob Rosenschein, founder and former CEO of Answers.com. The company has raised $3.3 million to date, shows Crunchbase data.

Deliveroo, a two-year-old, London-based restaurant take-out platform, has raised $4.6 million in Series A funding led by Index Ventures, with participation from Hoxton Ventures. TechCrunch has more here.

Fingerprint, a four-year-old, San Francisco-based developer of mobile game apps for children, has raised $10.9 million in new funding led byDreamWorks Animation SKG, which was joined by Reed Elsevier and Corus Entertainment. The company has raised roughly $20 million to date.

mCube, a five-year-old, San Jose, Ca.-based company that makes semiconductor chips that are reportedly comparable to the size of a grain of sand, has raised $37 million in new funding led by previous investors Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, MediaTek, iD Ventures America, and DAG Ventures. New investors Keytone Ventures, SK Telecom Ventures, and Korea Investment Partners also participated in the round, which brings the company’s total funding to $70 million.

MobileRQ, a two-year-old, Portland, Or.-based company whose software aims to help travel and hospitality marketers deliver targeted content to travelers’ mobile devices, has raised $1.3 million in new funding from earlier investor Verizon Ventures and new investors Coremix Capital, Rogue Ventures and TiE Oregon. The company has now raised $8 million altogether.

Nutmeg, a four-year-old, London-based online investment management company that builds and oversees investment portfolios for companies, has raised $32 million from investors, including Balderton Capital, Schroders, and individual investors Tim Draper and Daniel Aegerter. The company has raised $37.3 million altogether, shows Crunchbase.

RedOwl Analytics, a 2.5-year-old, Baltimore, Md.-based company whose software helps organizations analyze their internal corporate data streams, has raised $4.6 million from investors, including Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff; Igor Sill of Geneva Venture Group; Christian Lawless of Conversion Capital; Attractor Ventures; Propel Baltimore; and Tedco’s new Veterans’ Opportunity Fund. The company has raised $7.5 million altogether, shows Crunchbase.

Sapho, a months-old, San Francisco-based mobile app that uses software APIs to pull from a company’s various enterprise applications and provide relevant updates for each user, has raised $3 million in funding from a group of investors that includes Raymond Tonsing of Caffeinated Capital, Bloomberg Beta, Redpoint Ventures founder Brad Jones, and Andy Rankin. TechCrunch has more on the company, cofounded by serial entrepreneur Peter Yared, here.

TapZen, a two-year-old, L.A.-based mobile gaming startup, has raised $8 million in new funding from Tencent Holdings. The company had previously raised $10 million in “seed” funding from social games giant Zynga, reports the WSJ. More here.

Truveris, a five-year-old, New York-based health information technology company that provides pricing and analysis tools to sponsors of prescription benefit plans, has raised $12.75 million in Series C funding led by Canaan Partners. Earlier investors New Leaf Venture Partners, Tribeca Venture Partners, New Atlantic Ventures and First Round Capital also participated in the round, which brings the company’s funding to roughly $26.5 million.

Whoop, a 2.5-year-old, Boston-based wearable health tech startup, has raised $6 million, according to an SEC filing first flagged by Xconomy. Jeff Fagnan of Atlas Venture is listed as a director.

WISErg, a 2.5-year-old, Issaquah, Wa.-based biotech company that converts food scraps into organic fertilizer, has raised $5 million in Series B funding from undisclosed investors. The company has raised $7.75 million to date.

—–

IPOs

GoPro is going public today, and the San Jose Mercury News has anexcellent overview of its history, what customers love about the company, and why it needs a solid content strategy to stay in the good graces of public market investors. The San Mateo, Ca., company priced its shares last night at $24 apiece, with some early investors selling 17.8 million shares.

Taking a step back, Renaissance Capital reports that 18 IPOs are set to price this week (five had priced as of yesterday morning), which could make it the most active week for IPOs in a decade.

—–

Exits

Appurify, a two-year-old, San Francisco-based startup that makes it possible for developers to automate the testing and optimization of their mobile apps and websites, has been acquired by Google, the search giant announced yesterday. Terms of the deal aren’t being disclosed, butTechCrunch says it will “stay open as freemium cross-platform service.” Appurify had raised $6.3 million from investors, shows Crunchbase, including Google Ventures, Foundation Capital, Radar Partners, Felicis Ventures, Webb Investment Network, Data Collective, Inspovation Ventures and individual investors.

—–

People

Facebook released diversity-related stats about its workforce yesterday, and they look an awful lot like those of Google’s and LinkedIn’s, which is to say, not good.

Venture capitalist Ben Horowitz received a special birthday tribute this week by rapper Divine.

The Supreme Court ruled yesterday that Aereo, a TV streaming service, had violated copyright laws by capturing broadcast signals and delivering them to subscribers for a fee. Calling the ruling a “massive setback,” the company’s founder, Chet Kanojia, went on to say in a published statement that, “We are disappointed in the outcome, but our work is not done. We will continue to fight for our consumers and fight to create innovative technologies that have a meaningful and positive impact on our world.”

Hey, L.A.: Serial entrepreneur Sean Parker is “having a serious sniff around a super-luxe, nearly three acre, compound-like estate in Brentwood owned by a billionaire financier (and hardcore real estate baller) who’s shopping the posh property on the QT with a $30-ish million price tag,”reports Real Estalker.

FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler was in Silicon Valley yesterday and Tuesday to hear what the tech community thinks of net neutrality proposal. (We can imagine how that went.)

—–

Job Listings

Lerer Hippeau Ventures will be adding “one or two” new associates to its team, managing director Eric Hippeau told StrictlyVC on Tuesday. We’re not sure how soon the firm plans to bring anyone new on board, but you might want to start working your connections. The firm is based in New York.

Visa is looking for a director of portfolio management in Foster City, Ca., just south of San Francisco.

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Happenings

Tomorrow in San Francisco, 500 Startups hosts PreMoney, a one-day conference for accredited investors about the future of venture capital. You can check out the speaker line-up here; registration is over here. (We’ll be there for the first half of the day; hope to see some of you.)

—–

Data

Trying to keep tabs on who has what? You might check out this comprehensive database of venture funds that have raised $200 million or less since the beginning of 2011, care of Silk.

—–

Essential Reads

Google is about to make it easier for other Internet applications to use information in your email.

Amazon is rolling out a food takeout service, “a direct competitor to GrubHub, Seamless and DeliveryHero,” says someone who worked on the service to TechCrunch.

—–

Detours

The same family, in front of the same backdrop, every year for 21 years.

Dramatic wedding photos.

Do not let your doctor operate on you on a Friday.

Can I still eat it? Your guide to real expiration dates.

—–

Retail Therapy

Good people of San Diego, this one is for you.

And the purpose of your visit?

—–

To sign up for StrictlyVC, click here. To advertise, click here.

Hi, all, hope your Wednesday is off to a great start.

—–

Top News in the A.M.

A source tells TechCrunch that Facebook is building an enterprise product.

The FAA has released guidelines that explain when hobbyists can fly drones legally. Amazon says they won’t ground its drone delivery fleet.

—–

Eric Hippeau on His Firm’s New Fund and Where It’s Shopping Now

Lerer Hippeau Ventures announced yesterday that it has closed its fourth seed-stage fund with $62 million, up meaningfully from the $36 million it raised for its third fund. According to Eric Hippeau, one of the firm’s four managing directors, the firm plans to hire more support staff and its first checks to startups will likely grow from between $300,000 and $600,000 to between $400,000 and $800,000. Little is changing structurally, though.

What is shifting a bit is what interests the four-year-old, New York-based firm, whose bets include Warby Parker, Buzzfeed, and LiveIntent, among many others. Hippeau, a longtime venture capitalist and the former CEO of Huffington Post, told me more yesterday. Our chat has been edited for length.

You’ve been out fundraising numerous times in your career. What’s it like out there right now?

By design, we fundraise every 16 to 18 months, so it can’t be a long fundraising cycle; it’s about a three-month-plus period. We’re very fortunate in that we have very supportive existing [investors] who tend to reinvest with us. We do attract new LPs every time we raise a fund, so there’s a due diligence process with new LPs.

What was most important to the new LPs?

Every fund has to have a point of view and a differentiated position to succeed; that’s what new LPs are looking for. In our case, a number of things differentiate us. We’re seed-first investors . . and 70 percent our investments are in New York, with the rest tending to be in Silicon Valley.

I do think venture is increasingly intriguing to LPs; I think there’s recognition that something important is going on that’s more than just building technology for technology’s sake – that technology is, in fact, disrupting a huge number of sectors and touching people’s lives in a much broader way today than ever before and . . . creating new wealth. So if you have a unique proposition, it’s a good time to be talking with LPs.

You’ve said that just two partners need to agree to move forward on a deal, partly because it would be more time-consuming otherwise. Is the firm having to make quick decisions right now? How would you characterize the pace of deal-making?

Deal flow is the strongest I’ve seen since we started in 2010, both in terms of quantity and quality. In New York, things tend to slow down in the summer, which is fine; it give us a chance to catch up on other things. But we’ve been seeing super-high-quality companies coming through.

As seed investors, how much “there” should be there when you’re looking at a startup?

It doesn’t have to have a finished product but we do need to see a product. There are always exceptions. If it’s a repeat entrepreneur, and someone we know well, [or] if it’s [a] [business-to-business] enterprise startup, the product doesn’t have to be as far along.

Looking out six to 12 months, what might you be investing in that you’re less focused on today?

I think we’ll look more at [financial tech startups], because New York has a lot of relevant experience and because, for the most part, to this day, fin tech is built on proprietary technology, and our sense is that it will use the same consumer tech we use every day in our pockets.

You have a lot of media investments as a firm. Can you share some general thoughts about the future of the news business? Do you think, like Marc Andreessen, that it will grow 10x or more from where it is today?

We invested in content way before people on the West Coast did and [remain] very bullish on it. We believe, for example, that there’s a ton of new platforms that need native content. If you look at Instagram or Snapchat or WhatsApp or social mobile, all of these platforms are opportunities for people to consume more content, and those opportunities allow for new brands.

We also start content companies ourselves, [among them the animal-themed site] TheDoDo and NowThis News, which are short-form videos on Instagram.

Is content the dominant theme of your portfolio?

People think it is because of the Huffington Post and investments like Buzzfeed. It actually represents less than 20 percent of our portfolio.

—–

New Fundings

Aerospike, a five-year-old, Mountain View, Ca.-based flash optimized, in-memory and NoSQL startup, has $20 million in Series C funding led by New Enterprise Associates. Columbus Nova Technology Partners, Alsop Louie Partners and Regis McKenna also participated in the round, which brings the company’s total known funding to $22 million. (It raised an undisclosed amount of Series B funding in 2012.) GigaOm has more here.

eCurv, a 2.5-year-old, Cambridge, Ma.-based company that’s rolling out a patented way to reduce electricity charges for commercial customers, has raised $2.5 million in Series A funding led by Constellation Technology Ventures. Other investors include Vodia Ventures and Massachusetts Clean Energy Center.

Epoxy, a two-year-old, Venice, Ca.-based company that builds tools to help YouTube startups and other video creators deepen their relationship with audiences, has raised $6.5 million in Series A funding led by Upfront Ventures and Time Warner Investments. Earlier investors, including Advancit Capital, Bertelsmann Digital Media Investments, Greycroft Partners and Robert Downey Jr.’s Downey Ventures, also participated in the round, which brings the company’s total funding to $14 million.

Helpshift, a young, San Francisco-based company that provides customer support for mobile apps, raised $10 million in Series A funding led by Intel Capital. Visionnaire Ventures and earlier investors True Ventures and Nexus Venture Partners also participated in the round. The company has now raised $13.2 million altogether.

Kreditech, a two-year-old, Hamburg, Germany-based company that applies big data to score the creditworthiness of customers, has raised $40 million in Series B funding led by the private equity firm Värde Partners. Earlier investors Blumberg Capital and Point Nine Capital also participated in the funding, which brings the total capital raised by the company to $63 million. TechCrunch has more here.

MyOptique Group, a nine-year-old London-based online optical retailer, has raised roughly $27.2 million in Series C funding from Korys, Beringea, Cipio Partners, Silicon Valley Bank, Acton Capital Partners,Highland Capital Partners, and Index Ventures. The company has raised $55.4 million to date, shows Crunchbase.

Next Step Living, a six-year-old, Boston-based company whose energy diagnostics services aim to help individuals and organizations to be more energy-efficient, has raised $25 million in Series D funding led by Braemar Energy Ventures, with earlier investors VantagePoint Capital Partners and Black Coral Capital. The company has now raised $61.7 million to date, shows Crunchbase.

Numerate, a seven-year-old, San Bruno, Ca.-based company that streamlines pharmaceutical production pipelines and intellectual property protections, has raised $8 million in new funding led by Atlas Venture and Lilly Ventures, with participation from existing investors. The company has raised at least $13.7 million to date, shows Crunchbase. Others of its investors include Foundation Capital and Lanza TechVentures.

OMsignal, a 2.5-year-old, Montreal-based “smart” clothing maker, has raised $10 million in Series A funding led by Bessemer Venture Partners. Earlier investors, including Real Ventures, Mistral Venture Partners,Golden Venture Partners, Techstars managing director David Cohen, Flextronics, and Primera Capital also participated in the round. The company had previously raised $1 million in seed funding.

One Month, a year-old, New York-based online education company that offers one month’s worth of tutorials on front-end Web development, growth hacking, Web security, and more (the idea is to teach users just enough to get a Web app up and running), has raised $770,000 in seed funding from Winklevoss Capital, Innovation Works, Andreessen Horowitz, General Catalyst, Start Fund, Oliver Jung, Lew Moorman, Y Combinator,FundersClub, and the crowdfunding platform WeFunder. The company is a Y Combinator alum; it passed through the program last year.

Schoology, a five-year-old, New York-based learning management system that helps educators use apps and other tech more effectively to teach and manage their classwork, has raised $15 million in Series C funding led by Intel Capital. Great Oaks Venture Capital and Great Road Holdings also participated in the round, alongside earlier investors FirstMark Capital and Meakem Becker Venture Capital. The company has now raised at least $23 million altogether, shows Crunchbase.

SmashFly Technologies, a 6.5-year-old, Stow, Ma.-based maker of recruiting software, has raised $9 million in Series A funding led by OpenView Venture Partners.

Tasktop Technologies, a seven-year-old, Vancouver-based maker of so-called software lifestyle integration software, has raised $11 million in Series A funding led by Austin Ventures. Yaletown Venture Partners also participated in the round.

Vessel, a new startup founded by former Hulu CEO Jason Kilar, has raised $75 million from Benchmark, Bezos Expeditions and Greylock Partners, sources tell Re/code, which says the still-stealth venture will “focus on content, and particularly on video.” More here, though it sounds like Kilar won’t be revealing much until year end.

WebPT, an eight-year-old, Phoenix, Az.-based company that says its Web-based medical records software is now used by more than 35,000 rehabilitation therapists in the U.S. and Canada, has raised an undisclosed amount of funding from Battery Ventures.

ZocDoc, a nearly seven-year-old, New York-based online medical care scheduling service, is raising a new round of funding worth $152 million, valuing the company at $1.6 billion, according to a Delaware Certificate of Corporation filing pulled by VC Experts and flagged by Fortune. ZocDoc had previously raised $97.9 million in funding, including from Goldman Sachs, DST Global, Founders Fund, Khosla Ventures, SV Angel and prominent individuals that include Jeff Bezos and Marc Benioff.

——

New Funds

General Electric and the four-year-old, San Juan Capistrano, Ca.-based venture firm Frost Data Capital are setting up a new incubator for industrial technologies. Called Frost I3, it expects to help advance ten companies per year over the next three years. VentureWire has the story here (subscription required). A two-week-old SEC filing shows that Frost Data has raised at least $38.4 million for its Frost VP Early Stage Fund II LP. Frost typically partners with major corporations to identify gaps in their big data analytics arsenals, has spun out a number of companies, including Predixion Software, Cirro, and OspreyData. The firm was founded by Stuart Frost, the founder of DatAllegro, a maker of data warehouse appliances that Microsoft acquired in 2008 for $275 million.

—–

IPOs

Cyber-Ark Software, a 15-year-old, Petach Tikva, Israel-based cybersecurity software company, has publicly filed for an IPO. According to an earlier Dow Jones report, Goldman Sachs Group led an investment round of $40 million in Cyber-Ark in 2011, buying out many of the previous investors. J.P. Morgan invested in the company in earlier rounds. The company’s prospectus shows that its largest shareholders today are Jerusalem Venture Partners, which owns 46.6 percent of the company; Goldman, which owns 24.2 percent; Vertex Venture Capital, which owns 11.6 percent; and Cabaret Security, which owns 7.7 percent.

—–

Exits

Carbon Design Group, a 19-year-old, Seattle-based industrial design and product engineering company, has been acquired by OculusVR, the virtual reality company now owned by Facebook. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Carbon Design Group is known for designing the XBox 360 controller, among other things.

Youbibi, a four-year-old, Shenzhen, China-based travel search startup that compares flights, hotels, and holiday packages for the China market, has been acquired by 11-year-old Skyscanner, itself a global travel search company that’s headquartered in Edinburgh, Scotland but has offices throughout the world, including in Beijing and Miami. Youbibi, with 20 employees, doesn’t appear to have raised venture backing. Skyscanner, a 500-person company, had raised $5.2 million from Scottish Equity Partners back in 2007. Last year, it went on to raise an undisclosed amount of funding from Sequoia Capital.

—–

People

TechCrunch founder-turned-venture capitalist Michael Arrington says he has dropped his defamation lawsuit against a former inamorata who made explosive, public accusations against him in early 2013. Arrington says she has “retracted her statements and apologized, which is the very relief I sought before filing this action.”

Steven Burrill, the high-profile healthcare investor accused of fraud and wrongful termination by a former employee in a civil lawsuit, has canceled his annual speech at the biotech industry’s biggest convention, being held in San Diego this week. A spokeswoman for Burrill, who is lying low for now, said his lawyers should file a response to the lawsuit by July’s end.

James Conlon has been promoted to partner at the seed-stage firm Bullpen Capital in the Menlo Park, Ca. Conlon, who joined Bullpen as a principal in 2012, has one of the more interesting backgrounds we’ve seen. In addition to cofounding the venture-backed company Venture Scanner, Conlon has worked as a legal analyst at RPX Corp., spent a year implementing robotics education programs in Philadelphia schools as a member of AmeriCorps, and made a living for more than two years as a professional poker player. (He also has a law degree from American University.)

French billionaire and active tech investor Xavier Niel tells BusinessWeek that France’s economy isn’t a hopeless case, despite appearances in recent years. “You can say it’s worse in France than it is in other countries . . . We have too much debt, of course, and we had very bad management of the country. But we created a company with a market valuation of $19 billion. That’s not so bad, right? It is possible here.”

Businessweek calls Sundar Pichai, the new chief of Google’s Android division, “the most powerful man in a mobile.” He’s also eminently likable, say colleagues. “I would challenge you to find anyone at Google who doesn’t like Sundar or who thinks Sundar is a jerk,” says Caesar Sengupta, a vice president who has worked with Pichai for eight years.

Mike Randall, the global director of Facebook’s preferred marketing developer program, has been lured away by Snapchat, which has made him the company’s new VP of business and marketing partnerships. TechCrunch has much more here.

Oof. Kevin Rose of Google Ventures has abandoned his plans to demolish a century-old, Portland, Or., home he purchased earlier this year, after facing increasing pressure from his new neighbors to leave it intact. After much drama yesterday, with demolition trucks sitting outside the house, a cash offer from a neighbor who is a developer, and a general contractor who reportedly said he was told to proceed with the demolition despite the neighbor’s offer, Rose agreed by day’s end to sell the home and look elsewhere in Portland.

Full footage of that Kanye West, Steve Stoute and Ben Horowitz talk at Cannes Lions 2014 has been posted online; you can watch it here.

—–

Job Listings

Orbimed, the healthcare investment firm, is looking for a senior associate in New York.

Teknos Associates, a San Francisco-based valuation firm that works with technology companies and their VCs, is looking for an associate.

—–

Happenings

The Google I/O two-day conference kicks off today in San Francisco. Here’s what to expect.

—–

Data

The researchers at Datafox were intrigued by this week when Andreessen Horowitz handed over $90 million to Tanium, a 6.5-year-old, Berkeley, Ca.-based enterprise management startup that helps companies manage and secure the devices on their network via a Web browser. It decided to use DataFox to research Tanium and its competitive space; here’s a step­-by­-step walkthrough of what it uncovered.

—–

Essential Reads

It isn’t your imagination. BuzzFeed is watching you.

Venture-backed Bitcoin miner manufacturer CoinTerra is facing legal action for not fulfilling an order when it originally promised to. It’s the third Bitcoin-related startup to face litigation for breach of contract and/or fraud in recent months, reports Ars Technica.

—–

Detours

Balloon rides in Turkey.

Soccer organizations in the U.S. suggest that coaches start teaching children to head the ball only after those players turn 10.

The sociology of sorry.

—–

Retail Therapy

Flags, just in time for the big day.

We also like this amphibious camper, though we feared someone was going to be ghoulishly dispatched in its promotional video.

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