Hi, everyone, happy August!:)

Before we jump into things, we’re excited to announce one more guest speaker who is joining us for our last event of the year, on Wednesday, September 27, in downtown San Francisco. Marco Santori, a New York-based attorney who now leads Cooley’s fintech practice, has generously agreed to join L.A.-based cryptocurrency banker Stan Miroshnik for our fireside chat about ICOs.

Both are fully immersed in the business of structuring new products; together, they’ll tell you all the ins and outs of ICOS (and how best to invest in them). Catch them while they’re in town. Seats for the evening are available here.

Top News in the A.M.

Blood testing startup Theranos just reached a settlement agreement with former customer Walgreens. As part of the confidential deal, Walgreens will dismiss its lawsuit against Theranos “with no finding of implication of liability.” Walgreens filed a lawsuit against the company last November, seeking up to $140 million in damages. More here.

SoftBank Vision Fund is now in talks to invest directly in India’s Flipkart, says Bloomberg, after talks to fold SoftBank-backed Snapdeal into Flipkart fell apart. More here.

Sponsored By . . .

eero changed the world of home WiFi with a powerful idea: that a system of wireless access points placed throughout the home could deliver WiFi so good, you’d never think about it again. Now, the 2nd generation of eero is available — providing hyper-fast, super-stable WiFi in all corners of all types of homes. For StrictlyVC readers: use code StrictlyVC at checkout and select overnight shipping for free!

This Startup Wants Every Camp, Swim School, and After-School Program Using Its Software

Sawyer, a two-year-old, Brooklyn-based startup that aims to become the OpenTable of children’s activities, has raised $6 million in new funding led by Advance Venture Partners. Others who contributed to the round include Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, 3311 Ventures, Female Founders Fund, and earlier backer Collaborative Fund,  as well as unnamed investors from the company’s $1.5 million seed round, which closed in April of last year.

Sawyer sees itself as capitalizing on the more customized ways that parents are trying to educate their children, in an age where they also expect the online tools they use to be simple. It has a two-pronged approach toward that end, too.

First and foremost, it’s been at work on a subscription-based software suite called Sawyer Tools that it says “hundreds” of outfits across the U.S. — from camps to after-school programs to early-development classes — are now using to schedule classes, communicate with parents, and process payments.

Sawyer CEO and cofounder Marissa Evans Alden suggests it’s a big opportunity that’s just waiting to be exploited. “None of these vendors run on any type of [sophisticated] software,” she says. She likens what Sawyer is building to the cloud-based business management software made by publicly traded MindBody, which caters to the wellness industry and went public in 2015. “Where MindBody was able to power yoga facilities, there isn’t this layer in that space,” says Alden.

More here.

New Fundings

Bitrise, a two-year-old, Hungary-based startup that helps app developers automate their daily development tasks, from building through testing to deployment, has raised $3.2 million in funding. OpenOcean led the round, with participation from Y Combinator (whose program Bitrise passed through recently), Fiedler Capital, and other angel investors. TechCrunch has more here.

Carspring, a two-year-old, London- and Berlin-based used car buying platform that was founded by Rocket Internet, has raised £5 million ($6.6 million) in Series B funding from Rocket Internet itself, Channel 4’s Commercial Growth Fund (which trades TV advertising for equity) and other, unnamed investors. TechCrunch has more here.

CommonSense Robotics, a two-year-old, Tel Aviv, Israel-based startup that’s trying to create micro-fulfillment centers that can be built inside existing retail spaces, has raised $6 million in seed funding. Aleph VC and Innovation Endeavors co-led the round. TechCrunch has more here.

Helpling, a three-year-old, Berlin-based platform for on-demand home services that was incubated by Rocket Internet, has raised an undisclosed amount of funding from Unilever Ventures. TechCrunch has more here.

Juvo, a 3.5-year-old, San Francisco-based startup looking to provide micro-loans to underbanked mobile users in emerging markets, has raised $40 million in funding led by New Enterprise Associates and Wing Venture Capital. Juvo had previously raised $14 million from investors. TechCrunch has more here.

Kin, a year-old, Chicago-based home insurance startup that promises to save users time and aggravation, has raised $4 million from investors, including Commerce Ventures, Omidyar Network, 500 Startups, Chicago Venturesand Portag3 Ventures, as well as numerous unnamed angel investors. TechCrunch has more here.

Taxify, a four-year-old, Estonia-based, Uber-like service that operates in Europe and Africa and plans to launch in London later this year, has raised an undisclosed amount of funding from Didi Chuxing. As you likely recall, Didi had forced Uber out of China; now it’s finding ways to expand its geographic footprint. TechCrunch has more here.

UnifyID, a two-year-old, San Francisco-based authentication platform that relies on factors that are unique to individuals but don’t require any user action (like users’ locations, their habits, and various signals from the devices they carry), has raised $20 million in Series A funding. New Enterprise Associatesled the round, with participation from earlier backers Andreessen Horowitz, Stanford-StartX and Accomplice Ventures. (We liked this company when we saw it live. It was the runner-up at TechCrunch’s Disrupt show in San Francisco last year.) More here.

Volocopter, a five-year-old, Germany-based flying air taxi developer, has raised $30 million in funding from Daimler. More here.

Wonderbly, a five-year-old, London-based platform for creating and publishing personalized story books (it was formerly called Lost My Name), has raised $8.5 million in Series B funding. Ravensburger, a leading European publisher, led the round, with participation from earlier backers GV, Project A Ventures, Greycroft Partners, The Chernin Group, Allen & Co., and Silicon Valley Bank (which provided an undisclosed amount of debt funding). More here.

Exits

Following sexual harassment allegations that led to the resignation of 500 Startups co-founder Dave McClure, the troubled venture firm has reportedly abandoned its Canada fund. The outfit had reportedly already received $15 million in commitments and was targeting $30 million, but concerned LPs have asked it to stop making new or follow-on investments. According to reports, 500 Startups had already invested in 38 Canadian startups. More here.

Facebook has acquired the conversational AI startup Ozlo, a 3.5-year-old outfit founded by Charles Jolley, who was formerly head of platform for Android at Facebook. The companies aren’t disclosing terms of the deal, but Jolly isn’t heading back to the mothership, reports TechCrunch. Ozlo had raised $14 million from investors, including AME Cloud Ventures and Greylock Partners. More here.

LogMeIn, a 14-year-old, Boston-based company that sells authentication and other connectivity software and services to companies whose users connect remotely, is paying up to $50 million for an Israeli company called Nanorepthat developed chatbots and other AI-based tools that help people navigate self-service apps. Nanorep had raised just less than $7 million from investors, including Titanium, Oryzn Capital and OurCrowd. TechCrunch has more here.

Wyndham Worldwide, the giant hotel chain, has acquired Love Home Swap, a six-year-old, London-based startup that enables users to book time to stay in other people’s homes while renting out their own homes. According to Crunchbase, Love Home Swap had raised roughly $16 million in funding, including from MMC Ventures. Wyndam is buying it for just north of $50 million, says TechCrunch. More here.

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People

Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers is a smaller firm today. Yesterday, general partner Mike Abott announced that he’s leaving the firm to jump back into the world of startups. Separately, the firm is shutting down its early-stage “Edge” initiative — it was a way for the firm to market its seed-stage investments — with three young investors who’d joined to be lead that effort now parting ways with the firm, reports TechCrunch. (As we mentioned last week, Arielle Zuckerberg also left recently, apparently to travel in a camper van.)

Roughly 100 current or former Snap employees have profited on paper from their stock gains, according to new analysis in The Information. Shares for remaining employees are currently under water.

Essential Reads

Facebook is reportedly working on a video chat device for the home — the first major hardware product from its experimental Building 8 lab.

Uber is less valuable without Travis Kalanick as CEO than it was with him at the helm, according to some of the ride-hailing company’s biggest investors.

Less than a week after the SEC said that it may regulate certain crypto token sales, better known as ICOs, Singapore has followed suit, saying it will also regulate offerings that are deemed to be securities. As TechCrunch notes, Singapore has developed into a destination of sorts for ICOs.

Detours

You may now toke with the bride (evidently).

Do you love with your phone? We mean, romantically.

Retail Therapy

David Rockefeller’s 14.5-acre estate on Mount Desert Island in Maine is on the market. Price tag: $19 million.

Happy Monday, everyone! We’re in beautiful, balmy Washington, D.C. at the moment, at the start of a workation with the family. Our friend Semil Shah of the seed-stage firm Haystack nicely offered to help us out for a few weeks, so we can spend more time away from our laptop, and he can delve deeper into the psyche of some of his fellow investors and the many founders who interest him.

Toward that end, over the next few weeks, we’ll be running a series of “how I started” type interviews that Semil is conducting, chats we hope are instructive for those of you who could use an inside look at how things come together in startup world.

We also have great news to announce about our upcoming event on September 27, Wednesday night, at the Autodesk Gallery in downtown San Francisco. Our latest addition to the agenda: 21-year-old founder Alex Rogrigues, whose recently-out-of-stealth self-driving truck company, Embark, is not only taking on Uber and Alphabet as they duke it out with each other, but just two weeks ago it signed a deal with Peterbilt to develop a new group of test trucks. To hear more about how Rodrigues plans to compete with some of the richest companies in the world, grab a seat (before we run out).

With much thanks to our partners Bolt, Ballou PR, and Rosebud Communications, for their support in the evening. More soon . . .

Top News in the A.M.

Discovery Communications is acquiring Scripps Networks Interactive for $14.6 billion in cash and stock. The deal represents a 34 percent premium over the price where Scripps’s shares were trading on Friday. The deal combines two of cable TV’s bigger brands in an era where cord cutting has hit impacted all the major players across the board. TechCrunch has more here.

Charter Communications is saying it has “no interest” in merging with Sprint, following a Friday WSJ report that Sprint had proposed a deal. That’s apparently not stopping SoftBank, which currently controls a majority stake in Sprint. According to Bloomberg, its billionaire chairman, Masayoshi Son, is now mustering an offer from SoftBank to buy Charter outright. More here.

That was fast. Just days after Flipkart’s much-rumored acquisition of Snapdeal appeared to be complete, the deal has officially died, says TechCrunch.

Sponsored By . . .

eero changed the world of home WiFi with a powerful idea: that a system of wireless access points placed throughout the home could deliver WiFi so good, you’d never think about it again. Now, the 2nd generation of eero is available — providing hyper-fast, super-stable WiFi in all corners of all types of homes. For StrictlyVC readers: use code StrictlyVC at checkout and select overnight shipping for free!

Pillow CEO Sean Conway: How I Raised My Series A

By Semil Shah

Sean Conway is co-founder and CEO of Pillow, a startup that provides a suite of management services to both residents and building owners who are looking to earn extra income through the short-term rental economy. Before co-founding Pillow, Conway launched Notehall, a study materials marketplace acquired by Chegg in 2011.

As a founder, how do you define what a Series A means?

For me personally, Series A is an incredible milestone because it’s validation that your vision for should exist, and it gives you confidence by having the means to get there.

From a business standpoint, Series A provides the capital to find and surround yourself with a team that can focus on critical pieces of the business model – to execute and excellerate the vision at hand.  Prior, each team member pulled the weight of two to four jobs, which spread us thin.

Additionally, Series A provides social capital. Your VC becomes a partner for public and industry validation if you choose to publicize your raise. Your new board member is unlike any advisor you’ve likely had because they have skin in the game to accelerate you forward.

What are your thoughts on when to announce a Series A, once you’ve closed it?

I highly recommend founders delay their funding announcement three to six months until they put the capital to work to build the team and product. The positives include more invitations to speak at conferences, with press and introductions that you don’t want to pass on.

How many months did it take to raise the round?

It took six months in total. In those first couple of months, we collected data, created a deck, and created a list of prospective investors who we’d like to work with.  Over months three and four, we pitched six to 12 VCs each week. We lined these meetings up back to back and we had a term sheet by the end of the four month. We were ecstatic for about 48 hours, then [the realization hits that your] bank account balance is giving you anxiety because it’s lower than ever and you need to get funds wired — pronto. We went through due diligence in months five and six, which involved a lot of speaking with emailing lawyers. At the end of the sixth month, the round was closed. It was a europhic moment for us, and overall, it’s an incredible process that I would advise other founders to cherish, because a very limited number of entrepreneurs have the opportunity to experience it.

How many VC meetings did it take to get the round raised?

We pitched 25 different firms; that led to five partner meetings.  The most pitch meetings I scheduled in one day was six, and that was two too many.  I’d recommend beginning with two pitches a day in the first week and increasing to three or four meetings maximum in the second and third weeks.

What was the round size? What was your initial target?

We modeled out various amount of capital but targeted $8 million initially and wound up with $13 million. I recommend modeling out three different capital raises with three different scenarios; below target, at target, and above target.  From here you can better understand all scenarios and which milestones you’ll hit depending on performance.

Looking back now, what were the biggest mistakes you made in raising Series A and why? 

I think there was a large opportunity to include strategics in our Series A, and we only pitched VCs.  I also

Whisper, one of the few anonymous social sharing apps left standing, just laid off 20 percent of its staff. More here.

Jobs

Felix Capital is right now looking to hire an associate. The job is in London.

Essential Reads

Recode has a lot of detail about why Meg Whitman is no longer in the running to be Uber‘s new CEO. The New York Times also has a deep dive about backstabbing on Uber’s board, and why ousted CEO (and continuing board member) Travis Kalanick may be hoping a new Softbank investment will enable him to regain control of the company.

Elon Musk says it’s going to be “hell,” making Tesla‘s Model 3 quickly enough to satisfy to demand. According to Musk, reservations for the car now exceed 500,000. (Here’s everything you’d want to know about the car, by the way.)

Giphy, the four-year-old search engine for GIFs, is about to start testingsponsored GIFs.

Snap‘s lock-up period ended today for some insiders, and they are selling.

Detours

Men, stop eating sugar. (Women, you’re fine.)

RIP, Sam Shepard.

Retail Therapy

Death Wish cold brew coffee. If it doesn’t kill you, something else will.

Friday! Hope you have a first-rate weekend, everyone. If you need a laugh, there’s always this to read and re-read.

Also, thanks to those of you who flagged a mistake yesterday. We called Stripe a publicly traded company, which it is not. We had Square on the brain.

See you soon.:)

Top News in the A.M.

Amazon said yesterday that quarterly profit fell fully 77 percent in the second quarter even as sales jumped — a sign of the high cost of its increasing dominance of retail.

SoftBank is reportedly in talks to lead a new $1 billion financing for Ofo, the three-year-old Chinese bike-sharing company that already has raised roughly $1.3 billion to date, including from Alibaba, DST Global, Didi Chuxing and Atomico. The deal could value the young company at close to $3 bilion.

Stitch Fix, the mail-order clothing service backed by Benchmark, Baseline Ventures, Lightspeed Venture Partners and WTI, has filed confidentially for an initial public offering, sources tell TechCrunch.

The first 30 Tesla Model 3s are officially being delivered to their owners later today. Tesla expects to be producing 20,000 models a month by December.

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The Race to Repair our Hearing — With Medicine

On any bustling city street, in the middle of the afternoon, it’s probably the case that half or more people are wearing earbuds, while the rest are abiding the noise pollution all around them. No one thinks twice about it, either.

The reality is that from a very young age, our hearing is now under assault. Little wonder that one in eight people in the United States aged 12 years or older has hearing loss in both ears, based on standard hearing examinations. By age 65, one in three people has hearing loss.

The problem will only grow as more people flock to city centers. According to recent United Nations data, roughly 54 percent of the world’s population lives in urban areas right now, and that number is expected to hit 66 percent by 2050, meaning cities could take in another 2.5 billion people, accounting for population growth.

With any luck, in our lifetimes, potentially soon, even, some of this hearing loss will be fixable — not with hearing aids or cochlear implants, which aren’t available to everyone and don’t work for a high percentage of people anyway. Scientists think instead that the combination of human genetics and single cell expression profiling has brought us to the point where medicine can help fix hearing. In fact, there are right now a small number of outfits quietly racing to develop the first approved drug for hearing loss, and if, like us, you live with a playlist unspooling in your ears part of each day, you should be rooting for them to succeed.

Some are further along than others, as a recent Xconomy piece observed. San Diego-based Otonomy has a drug for swimmer’s ear that could be approved this year. Meanwhile, Auris Medical, a Swiss biotech whose tinnitus candidate last year failed to beat a so-called dummy therapy in a Phase 3 trial, is currently working on other hearing loss conditions.

Both Otonomy and Auris Medical are publicly traded, but they have peers (and rivals) in the still-private world. Two young startups to watch — they have strong founders and top venture backing on their side — are Frequency Therapeutics and Decibel Therapeutics, both based in Boston.

Decibel Therapeutics was incubated by the powerhouse investment firm and incubator Third Rock Ventures. Along with SROne (a venture fund that counts GlaxoSmithKline as its sole investor), Third Rock provided the company with $52 million to get started in 2015, and it more recently raised an undisclosed amount of funding from GV.

Anthony Philippakis, a venture partner at GV who led the deal, says one aspect of Decibel that excited him is its portfolio approach, with some of its focus on single cell genomics, some on human genetics, some on direct-to-patient clinical trials and some on generating phenotypic data about the hearing system. (Philippakis seems to have embraced a portfolio approach to his own work. In addition to working with GV, he’s a cardiologist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and the chief data officer at Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT.)

More here.

New Fundings

AutocloudPro, a year-old, Shanghai-based startup that’s developing smart cloud platforms for the sales and distribution of auto parts, has raised around $17 million in funding from Qingsong Fund, Shoutai Investment Group, Langsheng Investment, Matrix Partners China and Fenghou Capital. China Money Network has more here.

Haimawan, a four-year-old, Shenzhen-based developer of cloud-based mobile operating systems, has raised $58 million in Series C funding, including from the Shenzhen Stock Exchange-listed Elefirst Science & Technology Co. China Money Network has more here.

SpaceX, the 14-year-old, Hawthorne, Ca.-based space company, has raised $351 million in funding, as disclosed in public filings that were obtained by Equidate, a marketplace for private company stock. Equidate says SpaceX is now valued at around $21 billion. That puts it in the rare company of six other venture-backed companies currently valued at $20 billion or more. The New York Times has more here.

Traveloka, a five-year-old, Indonesia-based online travel portal that serves Southeast Asia’s six primary markets, has raised $350 million in funding from Expedia at a valuation of more than $1 billion, says TechCrunch. Earlier backers include East Ventures, Hillhouse Capital Group, JD.com and Sequoia Capital. More here.

Also Sponsored By . . .

Draper University, a residential entrepreneurship bootcamp founded by Tim Draper, is accepting applications for its Fall Hero Training Class, a seven-week residential program located in downtown San Mateo that allows students to develop a product and pitch to 80+ investors. Our next class kicks off September 11th; two blockchain companies, Qtum.org and Bitclave.com, have pledged to give crypto tokens to those who apply, as well as those who attend the program.

The program looks for entrepreneurially minded founders who run pre-seed companies who are between the ages of 18 and 28. Draper University has launched 280+ startups that have raised $50M+, and a number of them have since been acquired. Apply by August 11th at draperuniversity.com/application.

IPOs

Dropbox, the San Francisco-based cloud-storage and file-sharing company, is reportedly in talks with Goldman Sachs as it prepares for a possible IPO.

Redfin, the Seattle-based real estate brokerage company, last night priced 9.23 million shares at $15 per share — slightly above its original target range of $12 to $14. The shares have since surged more than 30 percent today and are currently trading at above $21.

Purple, a two-year-old, Alpine, Utah-based direct-to-consumer mattress startup, is going public via a $1.1 billion reverse merger with Global Partner Acquisition Corp. TechCrunch has more here.

Exits

AltspaceVR, a Redwood City, Ca.-based social platform for virtual reality, said it’s shutting down after running out of cash. The company had raised more than $15 million in funding, including from GV, Raine Ventures, Rothenberg Ventures, Formation 8, and Lux Capital.

Mesh Wi-Fi router company Eero has acqu-hired the team behind two-year-old, San Francisco-based Thington, maker of a smart home management app. Thington had raised two rounds of seed funding (of undisclosed amounts), including from investors Stewart Butterfield and Saul Klein. Eero has raised $90 million from investors so far, including Shasta Ventures, Index Ventures, Menlo Ventures, and Homebrew. More here.

i.am+, a Hollywood-based technology company owned by Black Eyed Peas singer will.i.am, has added struggling smart home platform Wink to its roster of products. Fortune has more here.

People

Easy come, easy go. Jeff Bezos, who became the richest person in the world yesterday, lost that title with Amazon’s second-quarter whiff.

Jessica Lessin, founder of the news outlet The Information, is launching an accelerator to help budding subscription-based news startups.

Another day, another billionaire who is buying a renowned media property. This time, it’s Laurene Powell Jobs taking an majority stake in The Atlantic magazine (with full ownership possible in the coming years, says the New York Times).

Meg Whitman says Uber’s next CEO will not be Meg Whitman.

Jobs

CSC Generation, a venture firm started by founder, investor, and high-school dropout Justin Yoshimura, is looking to hire an associate. The job is in San Francisco.

And One Final Sponsor Note . . .

Personalized wine matches, delivered to your door. Bright Cellars is the monthly wine subscription that helps you discover new wines you’ll ove. Take a short quiz and their Bright Points algorithm will recommend your top four wine matches. Don’t love a bottle? They’ll send a free replacement in your next shipment. See your matches and receive 50 percent off as a StrictlyVC reader by using this link.

Essential Reads

Snap‘s lockup period ends on Monday, potentially allowing early investors in the March IPO to unload hundreds of millions of shares on an already wary market.

Amazon just launched another private label brand, The Fix. It’s aimed at women and features shoes and handbags inspired by designer trends but at discounted prices.

Don’t worry, your Roomba isn’t spying on you, says iRobot‘s CEO.

Detours

Someone just destroyed his $288,000 Ferrari one hour after buying it.

How to build resilience in midlife.

Finland’s hard pivot into the land of bizarre sporting competitions.

Retail Therapy

Ugg sneakers. Because you can’t wear sheepskin boots in summer.

Thursday!

Thanks so much to those of you who picked up tickets earlier this week to our next StrictlyVC event, coming up Wednesday evening, September 27, at the always gorgeous Autodesk Gallery in downtown San Francisco.

We have more great news about the night: Megan Quinn and Jules Maltz, general partners at Spark Capital and IVP, respectively, have joined the program to dish on what metrics a company needs to land growth-stage funding right now, as well has how their work has changed. (With a changing cast of “tourist” investors and longer paths to exit, the landscape is shifting, and so are the term sheets.)

They join cryptocurrency banker Stan Miroshnik, who’ll be talking ICOs, how they impact VCs, and whether or not they’re here to stay (in light of increased SEC interest), and LPs Michael Kim and Beezer Clarkson, both of whom write checks to some of the best-known venture firms in the world and who have plenty of thoughts about the current ecosystem.

We’re not done quite yet(!). If want to a great overview of what’s happening in the startup world, do come. Seats are available here.

Top News in the A.M.

Slack is raising about $250 million in a funding round co-led by SoftBank Group. According to TechCrunch, early investor Accel Partners and other earlier investors are also participating in the round.

WeWork is making a big move to win the co-working market in China after it announced the creation of a standalone WeWork China business, backed by $500 million from earlier backers SoftBank and Hony Capital. The capital follows two other ginormous rounds this year: a $760 million round and an earlier $300 million round. More here.

For good measure, here’s a running list of every company that has so far been the beneficiary of Softbank‘s largess, courtesy of its $93 billion Vision Fund.

Twitter just reported a lower-than-expected number of monthly active users in its second-quarter earnings release; its shares have fallen roughly 13 percent since.

Sponsored By . . .

Betts Recruiting is the top recruitment firm for high growth B2B and B2C companies specializing in revenue-generating roles, from entry level positions to VP. With more than 100 recruiters and six offices worldwide, in San Francisco, Palo Alto, Los Angeles, Austin, New York and London, we have an expansive network of top talent. We take a consultative approach to your hiring process and provide guidance to scale your team or find your strategic hire. Are you or one of your portfolio companies looking to scale your organization? Check out our 2017 Salary Trends Report, or connect with our Global Head of Partnerships, Allison Andrade.

In the Murky World of ICOs, This Young Founder Aims to Lead the Way

When it comes to initial coin offerings, or ICOs, there’s plainly a lot that investors still don’t understand. Though start-ups and founders have raised more than $1 billion so far 2017 by selling customized virtual currencies to anyone willing to buy them, it’s been unclear whether and which tokens might eventually be categorized as securities; how ICOs impact startups’ valuations; and who, if anyone, might regulate such offerings.

Yesterday, the SEC finally spoke up, saying it has concluded that at least some virtual currencies should be considered securities and made subject to federal securities laws. It suggested that not every token should or will be defined as a security but rather that determinations will be made on a case-by-case basis, depending on “facts and circumstances . . .”

Still, the world of ICOs could use a bit more structure, according to Juan Benet, the founder of Protocol Labs, a venture-backed company that’s building a decentralized storage marketplace called Filecoin and that also worked with AngelList this year to create CoinList, a platform that’s promising a more structured way for founders to raise money for their token-based networks. The (sizable) catch: the investors buying into the projects on CoinList must be accredited.

Benet has reason to think that bar won’t slow down ICO sales too drastically. To wit, Filecoin will become the first project launched on CoinList, and demand is such that Benet has already pushed the date of the ICO back twice to ensure that all goes smoothly. (Unlike with many ICOs, Filecoin, whose offering goes live on August 7, is also capping the sale, though it isn’t letting investors know where that cap is until after the sale is completed.)

We talked with Benet earlier today to better understand what he’s up to, and why he thinks Filecoin’s ICO could serve as a model for future founders. Our chat has been edited for length.

The SEC basically put everyone on watch this week. Do you see that as good or bad news?

I think more clarity is great, and we did expect it. I think a lot of people misunderstood what [the agency] said to mean that all tokens will be regulated, when what it said is that some tokens could be securities. Every token has different properties, and whether they’re securities depend on those properties. If a token acts like equity, for example, it’s probably something like a security. Other tokens, like Ethereum and Bitcoin, are more like commodities, so the SEC hasn’t gone after those.

More here.

New Fundings

ActionStreamer, a two-year-old, Cincinnati, Oh.-based startup whose wearable “hatcams” and “helmetcams” generate video footage for sale to leagues and media companies, has raised $1.88 million in seed funding led by CincyTech, with participation from Vine Street Ventures. More here.

Big Switch Networks, a seven-year-old, Santa Clara, Ca.-based data center networking technologies company, has raised $30.7 million in new funding. Investors include Dell Technologies Capital, Silverlake Waterman, Index Ventures, Morgenthaler Ventures, MSD Capital, Redpoint Ventures, Khosla Ventures, and Intel Capital. CRN has more here.

BrandTotal, a year-old, Tel Aviv, Israel-based platform that helps its clients reverse-engineer their competitors’ so-called dark marketing  efforts, has raised $2 million in seed funding led by Gilot Capital Partners, with participation from KDC Media Fund. More here.

Brolly, a year-old, U.K.-based AI-driven insurance advisory application, has raised £1 million ($1.3 million) in seed funding co-led by Valar Ventures and Pi Labs, with participation from Entrepreneur First. TechCrunch has more here.

Callsign, a six-year-old, London-based AI-based authentication platform that powers adaptive access control for enterprises (verifying that people are who they say based on a touchscreen swipe), has raised $35 million in Series A funding co-led by Accel Partners and PTB Ventures. Other participants in the round include Allegis Capital and NightDragon Security. TechCrunch has more here.

Cleo, a two-year-old, London-based digital assistant that helps manage finances, has raised £2 million ($2.6 million) in funding. LocalGlobe led the round, with participation from Niklas Zennström, Entrepreneur First, and Jason Goodman, the founder of advertising agency Albion. TechCrunch has more here.

Complexa, a nine-year-old, Pittsburgh, Pa.-based clinical stage biopharmaceutical company at work on treatments for inflammatory and fibrosis related diseases, has raised $62 million in Series C funding. New Enterprise Associates and Pfizer Venture Investments led the round; other participants include Edmond de Rothschild Investment Partners and HBM Healthcare Investments.

Cool Cousin, a two-year-old, London-based social networking-driven travel app, has raised $2 million in seed funding led by the Elevator Fund. TechCrunch has more here.

Cyrus Biotechnology, a three-year-old, Seattle-based company that sells easy-to-use computational protein engineering software, raised $8 million in Series A funding led by Trinity Ventures, with participation from OrbiMed Advisors, SpringRock Ventures, and W Fund. GeekWire has more here.

FabHotels.com, a three-year-old, Gurgaon, India-based aggregator for hotel rooms, has raised $25 million in Series B funding led by Goldman Sachs, with participation from Accel Partners. The Economic Times has more here.

FilterEasy, a five-year-old, Raleigh, N.C.-based startup that delivers air filters to homes on a subscription basis, has raised $6.9 million in Series B funding led by Arsenal Venture Partners. Other investors in the round include the NC State Endowment Fund, Bonaventure Capital, Cofounders Capital, IDEA Fund Partners, John Replogle, and Triangle Angel Partners. More here.

GearLaunch, a three-year-old, San Francisco-based ecommerce platform that promises to help its retailer customers with everything they need to sell products, from manufacturing to customer service, has raised $4.8 million in Series A funding led by Hunt Technology Ventures. More here.

Inceptus Medical, a six-year-old, Aliso Viejo, Ca.-based medical device incubator, has raised $4.5 million in Series B funding for one of its spin-outs, Okami Medical, a developer of heart disease devices. Investors include Inceptus’s board of directors and U.S. Venture Partners. The Orange County Register has more here.

Kezar Life Sciences, a two-year-old, South San Francisco-based biopharmaceutical company that’s developing small molecule therapeutics, has raised $50 million in Series B funding. Cormorant Asset Management and Morningside Venture led the round, with participation from Cowen Healthcare Investments, Pappas Ventures, Qiming Venture Partners, Bay City Capital, EcoR1 Capital, Omega Funds and Aju IB Investment. FierceBiotech has more here.

Liulishuo, a five-year-old, Shanghai, China-based language learning company, has raised roughly $100 million in Series C funding co-led by China Media Capital and Wu Capital. Other participants in the round include Trustbridge Partners, IDG Capital, GGV Capital, Cherubic Ventures, and Hearst Ventures. China Money Network has more here.

Loftsmart, a two-year-old, New York-based marketplace for student rental properties, has raised $2.75 million in funding led by Tribeca Venture Partners. The company has now raised $5 million altogether. Bloomberg has more here.

Marqeta, a seven-year-old, Oakland, Ca.-based debit and credit card processing startup, has raised $25 million in Series D funding led by Visa, with participation from CreditEase and previous investors Commerce Ventures, 83 North, Granite Ventures, IA Capital, and CommerzVentures. TechCrunch has more here.

Megacool, a two-year-old, San Francisco-based mobile game tech startup, has raised $1.5 million in seed funding led by Alliance Venture. More here.

Peer5, a five-year-old, Palo Alto, Ca.-based startup that helps publishers stream video to large audiences, has raised $2.5 million in seed funding. The Y Combinator alum raised the funding from FundersClub, Oriza Ventures, Tank Hill Ventures, Leorsa Group, and several individual investors. TechCrunch has more here.

PreciThera, a year-old, Montreal-based precision medicine company that’s designing biological therapeutics for the treatment of orphan bone diseases, has raised $29 million in Series A financing. Investors in the round include Sanderling Ventures, Arix Bioscience, Fonds de solidarité FTQ, CTI Life Sciences and Emerillon Capital. More here.

Rodeo Therapeutics, a Seattle-based developer of small-molecule therapies to promote regeneration and repair of multiple tissue types, has raised $5.9 million in Series A funding from a long list of investors. They include AbbVie Ventures, Alexandria Venture Investments, ARCH Venture Partners, Eli Lilly and Company, Johnson & Johnson Innovation, Watson Fund, WRF Capital and WuXi AppTec. GeekWire has more here.

Sebacia, a seven-year-old, Duluth, Ga.-based dermatology and aesthetics company whose acne treatment is already available in Europe and is currently in trials in the U.S., has raised $20 million in Series D funding. Versant Ventures, Domain Associates, Accuitive Medical Ventures and Partners Healthcare Innovation Fund led the round, with participation from Salem Partners. The company also secured $16 million in debt from Hercules Capital. FierceBiotech has more here.

Toast, a four-year-old, Boston-based restaurant technology platform whose software enables restaurants to take meal orders and payments electronically, has raised a stunning $101 million in funding led by Lead Edge Capital and Generation Investment Management (a firm chaired by Al Gore). Earlier investors also joined the round, including Bessemer Venture Partners. Xconomy has more here.

Within, a three-year-old, Venice, Ca.-based virtual reality film company founded by renowned music video director Chris Milk, has raised $40 million in Series B funding co-led by Temasek and Emerson Collective, with participation from WPP, MACRO Ventures, Andreessen Horowitz, 21st Century Fox and Raine Ventures. Variety has more here.

Also Sponsored By . . .

Draper University, a residential entrepreneurship bootcamp founded by Tim Draper, is accepting applications for its Fall Hero Training Class, a seven-week residential program located in downtown San Mateo that allows students to develop a product and pitch to 80+ investors. Our next class kicks off September 11th; two blockchain companies, Qtum.org and Bitclave.com, have pledged to give crypto tokens to those who apply, as well as those who attend the program.

The program looks for entrepreneurially minded founders who run pre-seed companies who are between the ages of 18 and 28. Draper University has launched 280+ startups that have raised $50M+, and a number of them have since been acquired. Apply by August 11th at draperuniversity.com/application.

New Funds

Gigafund, a new fund created by Founders Fund cofounder Luke Nosek and venture partner Stephen Oskoui, is looking to raise up to $100 million for debut fund, reports Axios. More here.

LiveOak Venture Partners, a five-year-old, Austin, Tex.-based venture capital firm, is looking to raise up to $110 million for its second fund, shows an SEC filing. The firm closed its debut fund with $109 million in 2014.

Northern Light Venture Capital, a 12-year-old venture firm with numerous offices through China, is looking to raise $390 million for its fifth fund, shows an SEC filing. The firm focuses on tech and consumer service companies.

TenOneTen Ventures, a six-year-old, L.A.-based seed-stage venture firm, is raising up to $50 million for its second fund, shows an SEC filing. The firm had closed its debut fund with $18 million in 2015.

IPOs

Redfin, the Seattle-based real estate brokerage company, has finalized the terms for its IPO, revealing plans to sell 9.2 million share at between $12 and $14 a share. More here.

Sienna Biopharmaceuticals, a Westlake Village, Ca.-based clinical-stage biotech company that’s developing medical dermatology products, raised $65 million by offering 4.3 million units at $15 a share last night. The company’s shares began trading on Nasdaq today are are currently priced around $20.

Exits

Snapdeal, the India-based shopping site giant, has accepted Flipkart‘s revised takeover offer of up to $950 million. More here.

Nasdaq is acquiring Sybenetix, a six-year-old, London-based company that makes market surveillance and compliance monitoring software. Financial terms weren’t disclosed. More here.

Publicly traded telecommunications company Mitel is acquiring publicly traded rival ShoreTel for $430 million. Combining the two companies catapults Mitel to number two in the Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS) market, according to the company. Mitel’s shares are already up slightly on the news. TechCrunch has more here.

RealtyShares, a four-year-old, San Francisco-based online marketplace for real estate investing, has acquired rival Acquire Real Estate, a three-year-old, Boston-based company that had raised $6 million from investors, shows Crunchbase. Terms were not disclosed. RealtyShares has raised at least $35 million from investors, including Union Square Ventures, General Catalyst Partners, and Menlo Ventures. CrowdFund Insider has more here.

Stripe has acquired Payable, a San Francisco-based tax and contractor payments service provider. Financial terms weren’t disclosed. According to TechCrunch, Payable had raised $2.1 million from investors, including General Catalyst Partners, Lerer Hippeau Ventures, Sherpa Capital, Haystack, and Freestyle Capital. TechCrunch has more here.

People

Jeff Bezos is now the richest man in the world.

On the eve of its IPO, Redfin says its co-founder, David Eraker, is threatening litigation against the company over one of its pending patent applications.

Per Axios, VC Ben Nasarin has left Canvas Ventures less than two years after joining as a general partner. Nasarin was an active seed investor before joining the firm and Canvas says he left to “pursue a platform where seed is a more significant part of the investment mix.”

Michael Sippey, who’d spent two years as vice president of product at Twitter, then launched a now defunct texting app, has joined Medium as its head of product.

Yancey Strickler, cofounder and CEO of Kickstarter, says he’s stepping downfrom the crowdfunding giant later this year and that a search for his replacement is in motion.

Jobs

Oath is looking to add a senior analyst to its corporate development team. The job is in New York. Email Jonathan Lee: joslee@oath.com.

Essential Reads

The first known attempt at creating genetically modified human embryos in the United States has been carried out by a team of researchers in Portland, Oregon. Technology Review has the story here.

Detours

How to read your alumni magazine.

Simple grilling recipes from top chefs.

Retail Therapy

Battle Ball Arena. (Battle balls sold separately.)

Hello and happy Wednesday! No column today — we just wrapped up an interesting interview but don’t want to publish too ridiculously late in the day so look for it tomorrow. More soon.:)

Top News in the A.M.

The SEC finally weighed in on ICOs publicly yesterday, determining that a specific token sale in May of last year constituted the sale of unregistered securities. The decision highlights that the SEC is paying attention to what’s happening in the market; still, every token has different properties and the development doesn’t mean that all tokens will be considered securities going forward. Reuters has more here.

Twitter heads into its quarterly earnings report tomorrow with a stock that has risen more than 40 percent since April, when much of Wall Street was ready to write off the tech company. Reuters has more here.

Sponsored By . . .

Betts Recruiting is the top recruitment firm for high growth B2B and B2C companies specializing in revenue-generating roles, from entry level positions to VP. With more than 100 recruiters and six offices worldwide, in San Francisco, Palo Alto, Los Angeles, Austin, New York and London, we have an expansive network of top talent. We take a consultative approach to your hiring process and provide guidance to scale your team or find your strategic hire. Are you or one of your portfolio companies looking to scale your organization? Check out our 2017 Salary Trends Report, or connect with our Global Head of Partnerships, Allison Andrade.

New Fundings

6 River Systems, a two-year-old, Boston-based company whose mobile robot and cloud-based enterprise software aim to improve warehouse staff productivity and simplify training, has raised $15 million in fresh funding led by Norwest Venture Partners, with participation from Eclipse Ventures, among others. More here.

Aiqudo, a months-old, San Jose, Ca.-based startup that uses voice assistants like Amazon’s Alexa to control smartphone apps with pre-made or customizable voice commands, has raised $5.2 million in funding from Atlantic Bridge Capital. VentureBeat has more here.

August Home, a five-year-old, San Francisco-based smart home product company whose flagship product was its smart lock home access system, has raised $25 million in Series C funding. Earlier backers Bessemer Venture Partners, Comcast Ventures, Maveron, and Qualcomm Ventures teamed up with new investors, including Liberty Mutual, private equity firm SPDG, and Australian utility company AGL, to provide the funding. TechCrunch has more here.

Circulation, a year-old, Boston-based on-demand non-emergency healthcare transportation startup, has raised $10.5 million in Series A funding. The capital comes from Flare Capital Partners, The Providence Service Corporation,Boston Children’s Hospital, Echo Health Ventures, Intermountain Healthcare Innovation Fund, Humana, NextGen Venture Partners and an unnamed healthcare diagnostics company. More here.

IonQ, an 11-month-old, College Park, Md.-based company wanting to bring general-purpose quantum computers to market by late next year, has raised $20 million in Series B funding led by New Enterprise Associates and GV, with participation from new strategic investors. More here.

LifeFuels, a three-year-old, Reston, Va.-based startup at work on creating personalized functional beverages (with different dietary supplements that users can mix together), has raised $5 million in seed funding in a round led by healthcare entrepreneur Trenor Williams. BevNET has more here.

Momenta, a 10-month-old, Beijing-based startup that’s developing high-resolution digital maps and machine vision technology for autonomous driving, has raised $46 million in Series B funding led by NIO Capital, Sequoia Capital China and Hillhouse Capital. Other participants in the round include Shunwei Capital, Sinovation Ventures, Unity Ventures and Daimler. TechCrunch has more here.

Rebagg, a three-year-old, New York-based luxury goods reseller, has raised $15.5 million in Series B funding led by General Catalyst Partners and Novator. Other participants in the round include FJ Labs, Crosslink Capital, Big Sur Ventures-Necotium, Kloof Capital and U-Start. The company has now raised $28 million altogether. More here.

Shelf, a two-year-old, Stamford, Ct.-based startup whose software centralizes a company’s content onto one platform, has raised $2.2 million in seed funding from SeedInvest, CT Innovations, and NY Angels. VentureBeat has more here.

Signal Vine, a four-year-old, Alexandria, Va.-based enterprise text messaging platform used by higher education institutions to improve student retention, has raised $2 million in Series A funding led by New Markets Venture Partners. More here.

Vicarious, a 6.5-year-old, Union City, Ca.-based artificial intelligence startup that competes with Google’s DeepMind, has raised $50 million in a round led by Khosla Ventures. The capital brings the company’s total funding to date to $120 million. VentureBeat has more here.

WalkMe, a five-year-old, San Francisco-based company whose cloud-based platform for businesses make their web and mobile interfaces easier to navigate with on-screen guidance and prompts, has raised $75 million led by Insight Venture Partners, with participation from other, undisclosed investors. The company has now raised nearly $168 million altogether. TechCrunch has more here.<

Also Sponsored By . . .

Draper University, a residential entrepreneurship bootcamp founded by Tim Draper, is accepting applications for its Fall Hero Training Class, a seven-week residential program located in downtown San Mateo that allows students to develop a product and pitch to 80+ investors. Our next class kicks off September 11th; two blockchain companies, Qtum.org and Bitclave.com, have pledged to give crypto tokens to those who apply, as well as those who attend the program.

The program looks for entrepreneurially minded founders who run pre-seed companies who are between the ages of 18 and 28. Draper University has launched 280-plus startups that have raised more than $50 million, and a number of them have since been acquired. Apply by August 11th (just two weeks away) at draperuniversity.com/application.

New Funds

Andreessen Horowitz and Union Square Ventures are backing yet another hedge fund focused on cryptocurrencies (in addition to Polychain Capital). According to Fortune, AH, USV, and others have backed MetaStable Capital, a three-year-old, San Francisco-based hedge fund that invests only in cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum. (We think Polychain invests in a broader array of digital assets.) Fortune has much more here.

A new investment vehicle aimed specifically at mobility startups just closed its debut fund with $42 million in commitments, including from the crowdfunding platform OurCrowd, the automotive supplies giant Valeo, and inMotion Ventures, an investing unit created last year by Jaguar Land Rover. The fund, called Maniv Mobility, aims to back seed-stage and Series A stage companies in Israel and the U.S. The fund announcement comes hot on the heels of another, transportation-focused fund — Autotech Ventures — that announced its debut fund last week. We’d written about Autotech Ventures here. You can learn more about Maniv Mobility here.

Exits

Consumer robot maker iRobot, maker of the Roomba robot vacuum cleaner, is acquiring its largest European distributor, Robopolis, in a cash deal worth $141 million. TechCrunch has more here.

OpenText, a content management company based in Waterloo, Ontario, announced today that it’s buying Guidance Software, a publicly traded forensic security and eDiscovery vendor. The deal is for $222 million in cash. TechCrunch has more here.

The British enterprise software company Sage Group has agreed to purchase Intacct, a 19-year-old accounting software company, for $850 million, in a cash-and-stock deal meant to help build out Sage’s cloud financial management offerings. According to Crunchbase, Intacct had raised at least $130 million from investors over the years, including Battery Ventures, Bessemer Venture Partners, Emergence Capital Partners, and Split Rock Capital. TechCrunch has more here.

People

In the latest hearing to define the scope of the upcoming trial between self-driving technology rivals Waymo and Uber, District Judge William Alsup said Anthony Levandowski, the star engineer at the center of the affair, could be called to testify in court. TechCrunch has more here.

In related news, former Uber CEO Travis Kalanick has hired former San Francisco U.S. Attorney Melinda Haag and one of her colleagues at Orrick to represent him when he heads to trial in Waymo’s trade-secrets lawsuit over driverless technology. Bloomberg has more here.

Blue Apron announced several changes at the executive level yesterday, including co-founder Matthew Wadiak stepping down from the COO role to become a senior advisor. The move follows Blue Apron’s widely reported IPO and subsequent performance, which has been kind of abysmal. TechCrunch has more here.

According to Recode, HP Enterprise CEO Meg Whitman is on the short list for Uber’s open CEO role. She also just stepped off HP’s board today, which certainly seems like interesting timing. According to Bloomberg, Uber’s head of human resources, Liane Hornsey, has told employees she believes the company could hire a new CEO within six weeks.

In a set of tweets this morning, Donald Trump announced that he is banning transgender individuals from serving in any capacity in the U.S., reverse an Obama-era ruling. Tech leaders, including Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, quickly chimed in, noting that people who are willing and able to serve their country should be allowed to do so.

Essential Reads

LedgerX just became the first regulated bitcoin options exchange.

Apple could be building factories in the U.S.— or maybe not.

Facebook‘s first TV episodes are reportedly coming next month.

Detours

How tattoos might affect your workout.

Why being a woman puts you at greater risk of having anxiety.

A dating app for journalists (basically).

Retail Therapy

Now your deck, too, can look like scenery from “The Bachelor.”

Hi, happy Tuesday, everyone!

As some of you know, we’ve begun quietly planning our next StrictlyVC event, coming up Wednesday evening, September 27, at the beautiful Autodesk Gallery in downtown San Francisco.

We’re already very excited to be hearing from institutional investors Michael Kim and Beezer Clarkson on a range of topical issues, including the role that limited partners do and perhaps should be playing in determining whether bad actors get bounced from the venture industry sooner.

In response to popular demand for an ICO discussion, we’re also very happy to announce one of our newest guest speakers: banker Stan Miroshnik, who after a decade with Morgan Stanley is focusing exclusively on cryptocurrency- and token-based capital markets at his L.A.-based bank, Element Group. (You may have seen Miroshnik’s name popping up increasingly in Forbes and CNBC and in other reporting about ICOs.) He managed the crowdsale of the Blockchain Capital Fund and the ICO of distributed storage company Storj, and has six other things in the pipeline. Miroshnik, a UC Berkeley and MIT grad, has been ahead of this wave for some time, he speaks plain English (which we appreciate), and we’re going to be talking about a whole range of issues facing VCs in particular; you won’t want to miss this.

More announcements to come. As always, we’ll also have great food, delicious drinks, and plenty of networking.:)

Seats are available here. About a third of them vanished the previous time we mentioned this event, so don’t wait too long to get yours.

Endless thanks to our partners in the evening: Europe-based Ballou PR, which has long helped firms and funds navigate the European media landscape; Rosebud Communications, an L.A.-based firm helping tech startups up and down the California coast; and Bolt, a hardware-focused venture firm that counts longtime Sequoia investor Greg McAdoo among its newest partners.

Top News in the A.M.

SoftBank is already a big investor in Asian ride-hailing companies Grab, Ola and Didi Chuxing. Now the WSJ confirms an earlier report that SoftBank wants to buy a huge stake in Uber, too.

Slack is in talks to raise a large, new round co-led by SoftBank and its longtime backer Accel Partners, says Axios. Seemingly, this new round has been in the works since June.

Sponsored By . . .

Betts Recruiting is the top recruitment firm for high growth B2B and B2C companies specializing in revenue-generating roles, from entry level positions to VP. With more than 100 recruiters and six offices worldwide, in San Francisco, Palo Alto, Los Angeles, Austin, New York and London, we have an expansive network of top talent. We take a consultative approach to your hiring process and provide guidance to scale your team or find your strategic hire. Are you or one of your portfolio companies looking to scale your organization? Check out our 2017 Salary Trends Report, or connect with our Global Head of Partnerships, Allison Andrade.

This Modular Construction Company Just Assembled a $4.2 Million Round of Funding

Building blocks are a fascination that most people eventually outgrow. Not Noel Maxam, an Emmy-award-winning producer, director and writer who more recently leapt into the world of modular construction with Emagispace, a company that’s looking to give stick-frame construction the brush.

Because the LA outfit just raised $4.2 million in Series A funding led by Alpha Edison — with participation from Circle Ventures, United Talent Agency CEO Jeremy Zimmer, 54 Madison and others — we thought we should talk with Maxam about his interesting career arc, and what he’s planning to build with Emagispace. Our conversation has been edited for length.

You’d gone to film school and were producing daytime soap operas when the idea of Emagispace came to you. What happened?

One of the things I was doing in my job was looking at line items: how much it takes to build and install and store sets, which is an incredibly difficult process. You’re moving around irregular sizes and weights. At some point, I decided to apply for a patent. After that, things just snowballed. I partnered with an MIT engineer to create this building product with a life cycle. I wanted it to be sustainable and regular-sized. I wanted to be able to configure a wall that could be taken down by one person and that would never need to be “broken” or thrown out entirely. I wanted to be able to apply a different “skin” or wall covering that was separate from the blocks themselves.

Basically, I wanted something that was sustainable, reusable, could be repurposed and that could be recycled, once someone is done with it.

What are these modules made of?

The product is medium-density fiberboard panels that are made of sawdust, wood chips and recycled newspaper, and we use lightweight ABS plastic interlocking blocks to connect them.

I understand that Sony and Maker Studios are using them for their movie and show sets. What are some of the other ways that customers are using them?

They’re being used in office build-outs, commercial retail, trade shows, rock concerts, college theaters, convention halls, in living spaces, for disaster relief by NGOs that are using them for shelter. There’s really no difference between our product and a standard wall, and because you can build it up and take it down and re-use it, the cost savings multiply over time.

More here.

New Fundings

B-Secur, a 14-year-old, Northern Ireland-base company whose biometric authentication technology uses an individual’s unique heartbeat pattern, has raised roughly $4.5 million in seed funding from Accelerated Digital Ventures, Kernel Capital, Woodford Investment Management, and British Business Bank. More here.

Convoy, a two-year-old, Seattle-based tech-enabled trucking network, has raised $62 million in Series B funding led by the YC Continuity Fund (the fund’s first investment not involving a YC alum). Other participants in the round include Cascade Investments (Bill Gates’s private vehicle), Mosaic Ventures, and Barry Diller, along with earlier backers Reid Hoffman; Simon Rothmanof Greylock Partners; Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff; Bezos Expeditions; investor-twins Hadi and Ali Partovi; former Starbucks president Howard Behar; and others. We have more on this round here.

Duolingo, a six-year-old, Pittsburgh, Pa.-based popular language learning service, has raised a $25 million in Series E funding led by Drive Capital. The round assigns the company a post-money valuation of $700 million, it says. TechCrunch has more here.

Grabr, a two-year-old, San Francisco-based marketplace enabling consumers to buy unique or hard-to-find international goods, has raised $2.7 million in funding led by SignalFire, with participation from Founders Fund, NFX Guild, Global Founders Capital and numerous angel investors. TechCrunch has more here.

Leesa, a three-year-old, Virginia Beach, Va.-based direct-to-consumer online luxury mattress retailer,  has raised $23 million in Series B funding led by One Better Ventures, an investment company led by Seventh Generation CEO John Replogle. More here.

Maven, a three-year-old, New York-based digital clinic for women, has raised $10.8 million in Series A funding led by Spring Mountain Capital, with participation from 14W, DGNL, and Colle Capital. Earlier backers 8VC, Great Oaks Venture Capital, The Box Group, and F3 also joined the round. Fortune has more here.

Node, a 2.5-year-old, San Francisco-based platform that uses artificial intelligence to help its customers find sales leads, has raised $10.8 million in funding led by Avalon Ventures, with participation from Mark Cuban, New Enterprise Associates, and Canaan Partners. The company has now raised $15.8 million altogether. TechCrunch has more here.

PerimeterX, a 2.5-year-old, San Mateo, Ca.-based provider of behavior-based threat protection technology, has raised $23 million in Series B funding led by Canaan Partners, with participation from earlier backers Vertex Venturesand Data Collective. More here.

Iguazio, a three-year-old, Herzliya, Israel-based company that has built an “edge data” analytics platform targeting IoT, finance and other services that require real-time processing, just raised $33 million in Series B funding. Pitango Venture Capital led the round, with participation from Verizon Ventures, Robert Bosch Venture Capital, CME Ventures and Dell Technologies Capital, along with earlier backers Magma Venture Partnersand Jerusalem Venture Partners. The company has now raised $48 million altogether. More here.

Prospera, a three-year-old, Tel Aviv-based startup that uses computer vision and artificial intelligence to help farmers analyze data gathered from their fields, has raised $15 million in Series B funding. The round was led by Qualcomm Ventures, with participation from Cisco Investments, ICV, and returning investor Bessemer Venture Partners. The company has now raised $22 million altogether. TechCrunch has more here.

SimilarWeb, a 10-year-old, Tel Aviv-based company that sells analytics and insights about the performance of websites and apps, as well as competitive intelligence about how other apps and sites are doing, has raised $47 million in new funding. Viola Growth led the round, with participation from Saban Ventures, CE Ventures, and other unnamed investors. The company has now raised $112 million altogether. TechCrunch has more here.

Urbanbase, a three-year-old, Seoul-based startup that makes virtual reality tools for interior planning and design, has raised $1.8 million in Series A funding from CKD Venture Capital, Magellan Technology and Capstone Partners. TechCrunch has more here.

Also Sponsored By . . .

Draper University, a residential entrepreneurship bootcamp founded by Tim Draper, is accepting applications for its Fall Hero Training Class, a seven-week residential program located in downtown San Mateo that allows students to develop a product and pitch to 80+ investors. Our next class kicks off September 11th; two blockchain companies, Qtum.org and Bitclave.com, have pledged to give crypto tokens to those who apply, as well as those who attend the program.

The program looks for entrepreneurially minded founders who run pre-seed companies who are between the ages of 18 and 28. Draper University has launched 280+ startups that have raised $50M+, and a number of them have since been acquired. Apply by August 11th at draperuniversity.com/application.

New Funds

The venture firm Canaan Partners just closed its eleventh fund with $800 million in commitments — the largest in its 30-year-history. Rich Boyle, a formerly operating partner at Khosla Ventures who joined Canaan last year, becomes a general partner with this newest fund. More here.

Exits

Facebook has acquired three-year-old, New York-based based content rights management startup Source3, including its team and technology, for undisclosed terms. Source3 had raised more than $4 million in funding, including from Contour Venture Partners. TechCrunch has more here.

Publicly traded HubSpot is announcing that it has acquired Kemvi, a two-person startup applying artificial intelligence and machine learning to help sales teams.The financial terms of the acquisition haven’t been disclosed. Kemvi previously raised $1 million in funding from Seabed VC, Neotribe Ventures, Kepha Partners and others. TechCrunch has more here.

Michael Kors has agreed to buy shoemaker Jimmy Choo for a little more than $1.2 billion in an effort to recover some of its lost cachet. It’s the fifth time that Jimmy Choo has changed hands since it was founded in the East End of London in 1996 by Choo and Tamara Mellon. Fortune has more here.

Synthesio, an 11-year-old, New York-based social intelligence platform company, has acquired Social Karma, a five-year-old, Belgium-based company that uses social data to help marketers understand consumers. Terms of the deal weren’t disclosed. TechCrunch has more here.

People

Julie Bornstein, who spent the last two years as COO of Stitch Fix, an online retailer that’s widely expected to go public, quietly left the company last week. Recode wants to know: why.

Elon Musk just fired back at Mark Zuckerberg over his grasp of the future of AI, claiming that the Facebook CEO’s “understanding of the subject is limited.” The apparent dig comes roughly a week after Rodney Brooks, the founding director of MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab and the cofounder of both iRobot and Rethink Robotics, made very similar comments to us about Musk.

Jobs

Comet Labs, a young venture fund focused on robotics and AI startups, is looking to hire an investment associate. The job is in San Francisco.

Essential Reads

Inside Hampton Creek‘s empty boardroom.

Facebook is reportedly building its own smart speaker.

Lyft‘s business is now growing faster than Uber’s.

Detours

The inventor of Monopoly was trying to warn us.

Justin Bieber is reportedly “just over it.” (We feel you, Biebs.)

Retail Therapy

The Effeffe Berlinetta. Viva l’Italia!

Hi, happy Monday, everyone! No column today — we’ve been on back-to-back calls — but more tomorrow.:)

Top News in the A.M.

Online health publisher WebMD Health said earlier today that it has agreed to be bought by the private equity firm KKR in a deal valued at about $2.8 billion. More here.

Sponsored By . . .

Betts Recruiting is the top recruitment firm for high growth B2B and B2C companies specializing in revenue-generating roles, from entry level positions to VP. With more than 100 recruiters and six offices worldwide, in San Francisco, Palo Alto, Los Angeles, Austin, New York and London, we have an expansive network of top talent. We take a consultative approach to your hiring process and provide guidance to scale your team or find your strategic hire. Are you or one of your portfolio companies looking to scale your organization? Check out our 2017 Salary Trends Report, or connect with our Global Head of Partnerships, Allison Andrade.

New Fundings

Aire, a three-year-old, London-based AI-powered credit scoring startup, has raised $5 million in Series A funding led by Sunstone Capital, with participation from earlier backer White Star Capital. More here.

BentoBox, a four-year-old, New York-based startup that helps restaurant owners quickly build full-featured sites for their businesses, has raised $4.8 million in Series A funding. Bullpen Capital led the round, with participation from Launch Capital, Seamless founders Jason Finger and Paul Appelbaum, RiverPark Ventures, and Invision CEO Carl Valberg. TechCrunch has more here.

Colorescience, a 16-year-old, Carlsbad, Ca.-based aesthetic makeup products line, has raised $15 million in funding from undisclosed investors. More here.

eFFECTOR Therapeutics, a five-year-old, San Diego, Ca.-based company whose technology modifies how proteins are manufactured according to instructions carried in DNA, has raised $38.6 million in Series C financing. The round was led by Pfizer Venture Investments, with participation from Alexandria Venture Investments and earlier backers U.S. Venture Partners, Abingworth, Novartis Venture Fund, SR One, The Column Group, Altitude Life Science Ventures, Sectoral Asset Management, Abbvie Biotech Ventures, BioMed Ventures, and Astellas Ventures. The San Diego Union-Tribune has more here.

Epet, a nine-year-old, e-commerce platform for pet products that’s based in China’s Heilongjiang Province, has raised $53 million in Series B funding led by IDG Capital. China Money Network has more here.

Expert360, a four-year-old, Sydney, Australia-based online marketplace that provides access to freelance consultant talent for enterprises, has raised $10 million in fresh funding, led by AirTree Ventures, Australia’s largest VC fund. The company has now raised $21 million altogether. TechCrunch has more here.

Exporo, a three-year-old, Hamburg, Germany-based real estate crowdfunding startup, raised an €8 million ($9.3 million) in funding, including from e.ventures, Holtzbrinck Ventures, Sunstone Capital and BPO Capital. More here.

Grab, the five-year-old, Singapore-based ride-sharing company competing with Uber for dominance in Southeast Asia, is closing on $2.5 billion in a new funding, including a combined $2 billion from Didi and SoftBank that will reportedly value Grab at more than $6 billion. (As says the New York Times, “In East Asia, Uber’s biggest rivals smell blood.”) More here.

Hinge Health, a two-year-old, San Francisco-based startup that provides health kits to people suffering from musculoskeletal injuries, has raised $8 million in Series A funding led by Atomico. Earlier seed investors Eleven Two Capital, The Vertical Group, and SwiftKey CEO Jon Reynolds, also participated. Business Insider has more here.

Niuniuqiche, a two-year-old, Shanghai-based business-to-business new car transaction platform, has raised $17 million in funding led by Kaitai Capital, with participation from earlier backer Zhongjun Fund. China Money Network has more here.

Nyotron, a five-year-old, Santa Clara, Ca.-and Herzliya, Israel-based cyber-security company, has raised $21 million in fresh funding led by DGB Investments, with participation from numerous individual investors. More here.

Power Survey and Equipment, a 69-year-old, Montreal, Canada-based manufacturer of power factor correction and harmonic filtering products and services, has raised $24 million in Series A2 funding led by EnerTech Capital and Investissement Québec, along with participation from Cycle Capital Management, Fonds de solidarité FTQ and BDC Capital. More here.

Rimilia, a 10-year-old, U.K.-based maker of cash management software for enterprises, has raised $25 million in funding co-led by Kennet Partners and Eight Roads Ventures. TechCrunch has more here.

Tamara Mellon Brand, a four-year-old, New York-based lifestyle brand that sells shoes and handbags, has raised $13 million in fresh capital, shows an SEC filing. The company had previously raised a little more than $15 million from investors, including New Enterprise Associates and Arab Angel Fund.

The Town Kitchen, a two-year-old, Oakland, Ca.-based industrial catering company that services corporate customers and employs urban youth, has raised $1 million in seed funding. Urban Innovation Fund led the round and was joined by Better Ventures, Rose Culinary Ventures, Slow Money, and SheEO. More here.

Vixiar Medical, a three-year-old, Annapolis, Md.-based company that’s developing non-invasive devices and systems for monitoring cardiopulmonary diseases, has raised roughly $1.5 million in seed funding, including from the Abell Foundation, and the Maryland Technology Development Corp. More here.

New Funds

Venktesh Shukla, a former TiE chairman and the founder of the three-year-old, early-stage venture firm Monta Vista Capital, is looking to raise up to $30 million for his second fund, shows an SEC filing.

Also Sponsored By . . .

Draper University, a residential entrepreneurship bootcamp founded by Tim Draper, is accepting applications for its Fall Hero Training Class, a seven-week residential program located in downtown San Mateo that allows students to develop a product and pitch to 80+ investors. Our next class kicks off September 11th; two blockchain companies, Qtum.org and Bitclave.com, have pledged to give crypto tokens to those who apply, as well as those who attend the program.

The program looks for entrepreneurially minded founders who run pre-seed companies who are between the ages of 18 and 28. Draper University has launched 280+ startups that have raised $50M+, and a number of them have since been acquired. Apply by August 11th at draperuniversity.com/application.

People

Ben Horowitz is helping define the modern tech age. His father shaped the ’60s radical left — before taking a hard right turn.

Larsen Jensen has joined Lightspeed Venture Partners as a partner, reports Axios. Jensen was previously a summer associate at both Andreessen Horowitz and (the following summer) Lightspeed. He was also a Navy SEAL officer for four years, which is not a claim that most VCs can make.

Sarah Kunst, a female entrepreneur who is among others who’d accused 500 Startups founder Dave McClure of sexual misconduct, has joined the board of the Michigan State Foundation. The idea is to help it identify both promising venture firms that are also diverse and focused on ethics, she tells Axios.

Google CEO Sundar Pichai is joining parent company Alphabet’s board of directors.

SoFi’s chief revenue officer, Michael Tannenbaum, just became the latest exec to leave the company, following a string of departures in its senior ranks.

While Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg continues his listening tour around the U.S., struggling cafeteria workers at Facebook wonder whether he knows what’s happening in his own backyard.

Essential Reads

Why America’s tech giants should be broken up.

How Venmo breeds pettiness.

VCs wanting to dive into the digital currency market are facing a novel challenge: the hottest tech startups that sell the coins don’t need their money.

Detours

Some of the coolest trailers from Comic-Con 2017.

How St. Andrews became a top American school.

The accent whisperers of Hollywood.

Retail Therapy

Perfect for when you finally sell your company.

Friday!  [Shoots streamers from office confetti cannon.] Hope you have a wonderful weekend, everyone.:)

No column today.

Top News in the A.M.

Y Combinator is reportedly raising up to $1 billion for a new fund.

Sponsored By . . .

Did you know that 31 percent of paid SaaS licenses go entirely unused? We’re talking about BILLIONS of dollars in annual waste, compliance failures, and security problems. Meta SaaS solves these problems with an end-to-end SaaS service management application in the cloud for companies spending at least $1 million annually. Are you a VC? Get a VC discount! Have more than one portfolio company that needs Meta SaaS? Your portfolio companies get a 15 percent discount by mentioning that you heard about Meta SaaS on StrictlyVC.

New Fundings

Arzeda, a nine-year-old, Seattle-based protein design company, has raised $12 million in Series A funding led by OS Fund, with participation from Bioeconomy Capital, Sustainable Conversion Ventures and WRF Capital. Xconomy has more here.

Betterment, a nine-year-old, New York-based online financial advisor, has raised $70 million in funding as an extension of last year’s Series E round. Kinnevik led the round, with participation from Bessemer Venture Partners, Menlo Ventures, and Francisco Partners. The company is reportedly now valued at $800 million. Business Insider has more here.

Entier, a nine-year-old, Westhill, Scotland-based catering company that serves meals to more than 4,500 people on oil and gas rigs and other remote installations around the world, has raised £6.5 million ($8.4 million) in funding from Business Growth Fund. More here.

Fox Rent A Car, a 28-year-old, L.A.-based rental car company, has raised $25 million in funding from NewSpring, Kemper Corp, and Star Mountain Capital. More here.

Genicon, a 19-year-old, Winter Park, Fla.-based medical device maker focused on minimally invasive instruments (it makes a disposable clip to facilitate wound closures, for example), has raised $6.6 million in funding, including from Rand Capital, Advantage Capital and Coastal Enterprises. More here.

Lvl5, a year-old, San Francisco, Ca.-based developer of crowdsourced HD maps and computer vision software for self-driving vehicles, has $2 million in seed funding, including from Max Altman’s 9Point Ventures and Y Combinator partner Paul Buchheit. (The company had passed through YC earlier year.) More here.

Klarna, a 12-year-old, Stockholm-based company that works with e-commerce businesses and retailers to provide financing and other payment services, has sold a 10 percent stake in its business to Permira, the private equity firm whose shopping habits we’d discussed earlier this year. Klarna and Permira are not confirming the size of the investment, but TechCrunch was told that it’s more $225 million. The capital comes on the heels of another cash injection worth at least $225 million from Brightfolk, an investment firm tied to fashion retail magnate Anders Holch Povlsen, which closed in early June. More here.

NeuroVia, a 1.5-year-old, Bay Area-based biopharmaceutical company that’s working on treatments for a range of rare genetic neurological diseases, has raised $14 million in Series A funding co-led by Novartis Venture Fund and Sanofi-Genzyme BioVentures. More here.

Playkey, a three-year-old, Moscow-based game streaming service, has raised a fresh $2.8 million from Russia’s Internet Initiatives Development Fund. TechCrunch has more here.

TickSmith, a five-year-old, Montreal, Canada-based company whose data platform is used by trading and risk groups, regulators, exchanges and data vendors who need to accumulate, transform, analyze and disseminate larger scales of financial data from multiple sources, has secured C$2 million ($1.6 million) in funding. The capital comes from Illuminate Financial Management. More here.

Xiaomai, a three-year-old, Beijing-based automated convenience store operator that lets users scan their face or phone to enter the store, has raised $18.5 million in Series A funding led by Aplus Capital, with participation from Chenshan Capital. It’s the latest in a series of cashier-free convenience store chains to be funded or created recently in the country. China Money Network has more here.

Also Sponsored By . . .

With StrictlyVC in Boston this week for TC Sessions: Robotics, we’re also coming to you courtesy of Boston HQ’d Beantown Media Ventures. When venture-backed AI startups like TellusLabs and publicly traded machine learning companies like Mattersight look to build compelling media narratives and scale content marketing, they turn to BMV.

BMV’s growth approach to PR has helped hundreds of startups with services designed to drive inbound leads and valuations. In fact, it has supported several successful exits to date, including SinglePlatform ($100M), Runkeeper ($85M) and ByteLight. Looking like this ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ when it comes to your own startup’s digital PR & content strategy? Get in touch with BMV today!

IPOs

ADT, the home-security company, is reportedly preparing for an IPO, just 17 months after being taken private by Apollo Global Management. Apollo paid $6.9 billion for the company. The WSJ said the IPO could come at the end of this year and value the company at more than $15 billion, which is kind of amazing. (How has a Nest not made a dent in this company by now?) The WSJ has more here.

Ancestry.com, the 34-year-old, Lehi, Utah-based genealogy website that filed for a confidential IPO in June, is close to hiring banks to lead the deal, says Bloomberg.

PetIQ, a seven-year-old, Eagle, Id.-based pet medication maker that was named True Science until last year, priced 6.3 million shares at $16 last night, the high end of its proposed range; they closed above $23 on their first day of trading today. More here.

Exits

Shyp, the on-demand shipping service launched in 2013, has announced that it’s withdrawing from all but one city and “reducing headcount at headquarters” in an effort to  prove its business model. The company will suspend operations in Chicago, Los Angeles and New York, and only operate in San Francisco. TechCrunch has more here.

Rapid7, a two-year-old, Boston-based startup provides software tools for automating security tasks, has acquired Komand, a 1.5-year-old, Boston-based security orchestration and automation platform company. Financial terms weren’t disclosed. Xconomy has more here.

People

Aditya Agarwal, who joined Dropbox in 2012 and was given the CTO role just nine months ago, is leaving the company.

Bank of America Vice Chairman Anne Finucane has reportedly been approached about the role of Uber CEO.

AngelList cofounder Babak Nivi says he left the outfit recently to work on something new, though TechCrunch’s Josh Constine suggests that there’s more to the story.

Vinod Khosla suggests that he’s dubious when it comes the growing claims of sexual harassment in Silicon Valley: “It’s a reality because it’s perceived as a reality.”

Richard Liu, CEO of Chinese e-commerce leader JD.com, says he expects revenue to soar 1,000 percent of the next ten years; he also thinks headcount will fall from 120,000 employees to 80,000 over the same period, thanks to unmanned warehouses, self-driving trucks, delivery robots and more.

Former Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer says she doesn’t want to become a full-time investor; she wants another CEO role.

Longtime TechCrunch writer Catherine Shu reports that in 2015, she was aggressively groped and propositioned by 500 Startups venture partner Tristan Pollack, who remains with the investment group following an investigation that was led by . . . ousted founder Dave McClure.

Arielle Zuckberberg has left Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, which she had joined as an associate partner in late 2015, reports Axios. Her next move is seemingly TBD.

Jobs

Publicly traded New Relic is looking for a corporate development manager. The job is in San Francisco.

Spotify is looking for a corporate development manager. The job is in New York.

Essential Reads

Verizon says it has been capping traffic as part of a temporary video optimization test. The move is considered by many to be a violation of net neutrality laws that (for now) outlaw throttling.

Lyft has launched a new self-driving division, where it plans to develop its own autonomous ride-hailing technology.

Apple is reportedly working on electric car batteries with China’s biggest battery maker.

Detours

Where the world’s elite get their shirts made.

Adios, Sean Spicer.

Crying.

Retail Therapy

The five best language learning apps.

Hello, and happy Thursday.:)

Top News in the A.M.

The U.S. has now lifted entirely a controversial ban on laptops in hand luggage for passengers flying to the country from the Middle East or via certain Middle Eastern airlines. TechCrunch has more here.

Sponsored By . . .

Did you know that 31 percent of paid SaaS licenses go entirely unused? We’re talking about BILLIONS of dollars in annual waste, compliance failures, and security problems. Meta SaaS solves these problems with an end-to-end SaaS service management application in the cloud for companies spending at least $1 million annually. Are you a VC? Get a VC discount! Have more than one portfolio company that needs Meta SaaS? Your portfolio companies get a 15 percent discount by mentioning that you heard about Meta SaaS on StrictlyVC.

Here’s What Robotics Investors Say They Look for in Founding Teams

Robotics investing has taken off in recent years. Though it still represents a small fraction of overall VC spending, related deals are increasing in both frequency and size, with roughly $520 million invested across 40 deals in the first quarter alone, compared with roughly the same amount invested in 130 companies across all of 2014.

This week, we sat down with top robotics investors Josh Wolfe of Lux Capital, Helen Zelman Boniske of Lemnos and Manish Kothari of SRI Ventures to ask what they’re shopping for right now and what they hope to hear in startup pitches. You can see our sit-down below. In the meantime, some highlights from that conversation:

On why robotics investing has taken off:

Wolfe pointed to the “outpouring of engineers,” many of whom have been trained at “amazing places” like MIT under the tutelage of professors who themselves have started companies. He also cited the ebbs and flows of capital markets, noting that “any time the hype increases, the cost of capital gets low,” meaning more founders are able to raise money right now.

Wolfe further noted that robotics companies are making other robotics companies possible. Specifically, he pointed to the satellite company Planet, which captures photos that are then analyzed by the geospatial analytics company Orbital Insight, which then sells that research to its own customers, including retailers wanting a better idea of how many cars are in their parking lots.

Kothari meanwhile talked a bit about falling component prices and GPUs — or specialized electronic circuits — that are now a “big part of the game” and without which the  uptick in robotics investing “would not be possible.”

Kothari also talked of the importance of software becoming far more sophisticated and thus easier for founders to use as a building block.

On whether there’s enough follow-on funding for the many young robotics startups that have snagged seed and Series A-stage funding:

“At the moment, cash is abundant,” said Wolfe. “There are new angels coming [into the industry]. There are new venture firms forming. There are corporate guys coming in. SoftBank is making a huge impact on this stuff [including with its huge new Vision Fund].” All of it means that the risk of raising early rounds and follow-on funding is “very low,” in his view — as long as founders make products that are also “good businesses.” (The funding picture will invariably change, said Wolfe.)

Boniske said that in terms of later-stage funding, she’s seeing venture firms in Series A and B deals and that for later-stage deals, “strategics” — i.e., corporations with deep pockets and a need for new technologies — are more commonly involved.

Like Wolfe, she, too, stressed that founders better make certain the unit economics of their robots work, given that a slowdown is inevitable.

What the VCs want to see in founding teams:

More here.

New Fundings

Ada Support, a 1.5-year-old, Toronto-based customer support chatbot developer, has raised $2.5 million in funding led by Bessemer Venture Partners, with participation from Version One Ventures. More here.

Cubyn, a three-year-old, London and Paris-based startup that offers on-demand logistics to online businesses (picking up their customers’ orders on-site, packaging them and shipping them to any destination globally for €1 per parcel), has raised $7 million in Series A funding. DN Capital led the round, with a participation from BNP Paribas Developpement and follow-on funding from original backers Partech Ventures and 360 Capital Partners. More here.

Dote, a three-year-old, San Francisco-based mobile shopping app that acts as a virtual mall, featuring the products of a wide range of women’s brands, has raised $7.2 million in funding led by Lightspeed Venture Partners. TechCrunch has more here.

Dynamic Yield, a six-year-old, New York-based company that uses machine learning to help online marketers personalize customer experiences on their site, has added $9 million to its Series C financing, bringing the round to to a total of $31 million. Its new investors are Deutsche Telekom Capital Partners and La Maison; earlier investors in the round include ClalTech, Baidu, Vertex Ventures, and Bessemer Venture Partners. TechCrunch has more here.

Graphcore, a year-old, Bristol, England-based machine learning startup that plans to ship its first AI-focused computer chips later this year, has raised $30 million in new funding led by Atomico, with participation from numerous high-profile individuals, including Google DeepMind cofounder Demis Hassabis. The company has now raised $62 million altogether. Business Insider has more here.

Gravie, a four-year-old, Minneapolis, Mn.-based health benefits marketplace, has raised $14.1 million in Series C funding led by GE Ventures, with participation from earlier backers FirstMark Capital, Aberdare Ventures and Split Rock Partners. More here.

Insight Engines, a two-year-old San Francisco-based company that aims to let anyone ask questions of machine data and get insights in seconds, has raised $15.8 million in Series A funding led by August Capital, with participation from Splunk, Real Ventures, Data Collective, Erik Swan and Simon Crosby. More here.

James, a five-year-old, Lisbon- and New York-based company whose artificial intelligence tool is used by credit risk teams, has raised $2.7 million from BigStart Ventures, along with a group of angels that include Gaël de Boissard, ex-CEO of Credit Suisse, and Henry Ritchotte, ex-COO of Deutsche Bank. More here.

LendKey, a 10-year-old, New York-based white-labeled lending platform for banks and credit unions, has raised $13 million in Series C funding. North Atlantic Capital led the round and was joined by DFJ, Updata Partners, Gotham Ventures, and TTV Capital. More here.

Lever, a five-year-old, San Francisco-based recruiting software company, has raised $30 million in Series C financing led by Adams Street Partners, with participation from earlier investors Matrix Partners and Scale Venture Partners. Business Insider has more here.

Molekule, a three-year-old, Mountain View, Ca.-based, sleekly designed molecular air purifier manufacturer, has raised $10.1 million in Series A funding led by Crosslink Capital, with participation from SoftTech VC, Translink Capital, and Foxconn. More here.

PebblePost, a three-year-old, New York-based startup that uses online data to target consumers with printed mail, has raised $47 million in a combination of equity and debt, including from RRE Ventures, Horizon Technology Finance, and Silicon Valley Bank. TechCrunch has more here.

Protenus, a three-year-old, Baltimore, Md.-based cloud-based analytics platform that helps healthcare organizations monitor and protect patient privacy, has tacked on $3 million to a previously closed Series A financing, money that brings the round to $7 million. Kaiser Permanente Ventures and F-Prime Capital Partners led the round. More here.

Receipt Bank, a seven-year-old, London-based bookkeeping software startup that caters to small businesses, has raised $50 million in Series B funding led by Insight Venture Partners. Business Insider has more here.

SkySafe, a 1.5-year-old, San Diego, Ca.-based company whose technology can disable drones that are flying where they shouldn’t, has raised a $11.5 million Series A round led by Andreessen Horowitz. AH had previously provided the company with $3 million in seed funding. More here.

Slidebean, a three-year-old, New York-based app that wants to take on Prezi and PowerPoint, has raised $850,000 in seed funding from 500 Partners. TechCrunch has more here.

Tomorrow, a year-old, Seattle-based financial and legal planning app for families, has raised $2.6 million in seed funding, including from Maveron, CFSI, Echelon Capital, Clocktower Technology Ventures, Allianz Life, Plug And Play, Flying Fish Partners, and Curious Capital. More here.

Trevi Therapeutics, a six-year-old, New Haven, Cn.-based late-stage clinical development company focused on treating uremic pruritus, has raised $50.5 million in Series C funding. New Enterprise Associates led the round and was joined by Lundbeckfonden Ventures, Omega Funds, Aperture Venture Partners, and TPG Biotech. More here.

Vets First Choice, a seven-year-old, Portland, Me.-based company that provides e-commerce services to veterinary practices, has raised $223 million in funding to grow its business. Investors include Clayton, Dubilier & Rice, Hillhouse Capital Group, Viking Global Investors, Wellington Management Company, Rock Springs Capital, and Sequoia Heritage. The Portland Press Herald has more here.

New Funds

Summit Partners, the Boston-based private equity and venture capital firm, has raised roughly $806 million in commitments for its second Europe Growth Equity fund. The 33-year-old firm says it will look to invest between €20 million and €60 million in “category-leading companies.”

Also Sponsored By . . .

With StrictlyVC in Boston this week for TC Sessions: Robotics, we’re also coming to you courtesy of Boston HQ’d Beantown Media Ventures. When venture-backed AI startups like TellusLabs and publicly traded machine learning companies like Mattersight look to build compelling media narratives and scale content marketing, they turn to BMV.

BMV’s growth approach to PR has helped hundreds of startups with services designed to drive inbound leads and valuations. In fact, it has supported several successful exits to date, including SinglePlatform ($100M), Runkeeper ($85M) and ByteLight. Looking like this ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ when it comes to your own startup’s digital PR & content strategy? Get in touch with BMV today!

IPOs

Kala Pharmaceuticals, an eight-year-old, Waltham, Ma.-based biotech whose lead drug aims to address inflammation and pain following ocular surgery, as well as temporarily relieve the signs and symptoms of dry eye disease, has raised $90 million in an IPO, after pricing shares at $15. The company had attracted roughly $115 million from private investors, including via a $68 million Series C round early last year from Longitude Capital, OrbiMed, Vivo Capital, CAM Capital, RA Capital Management, Wellington Management, Polaris Partners, and Lux Capital. Its shares, which began trading this morning, are up 18 percent as of this writing.

YogaWorks, a 30-year-old, Culver City, Calif-based yoga studio chain that was purchased by the private equity firm Great Hill Partners (which had bought it from venture firm Highland Capital Partners for about $45 million in 2014),  has postponed its IPO. The WSJ cites an apparent lack of investor interest.

Exits

According to the L.A. Times, Amazon quietly shelled at “at least tens of millions of dollars” to acquire Graphiq, an eight-year-old, Santa Barbara, Ca-based data analysis and search engine start-up. The outlet says the deal closed in May. According to Crunchbase, Graphiq had raised at least $32 million from investors, including Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Pritzker Group Venture Capital. More here.

After raising $55 million last year to build its business beyond its existing help desk services, Freshworks (the parent company of Freshdesk) has made an acquisition to help it fill out that strategy, acquiring Joe Hukum, a startup out of India that offers a platform for businesses to build their own chatbots. Terms of the deal aren’t being disclosed. Joe Hukum, formerly called Speedy, had raised an undisclosed amount of seed funding. TechCrunch has more here.

Ten-year-old Lucid Motors, an electric car company that’s been trying to compete with the likes of Tesla and is reportedly low on cash, has talked with Ford about a sale, along with two other, unnamed companies. Recode has more here.

Hi, everyone, happy Wednesday.:)

Top News in the A.M.

The U.S. Supreme Court dealt a setback to Donald Trump’s travel ban earlier today, forcing his administration to accept people with grandparents, cousins and other relatives in the U.S.

Four more smartphone makers have joined Apple‘s battle against Qualcomm, claiming it charges excessive patent licenses and violates antitrust laws.

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This Famous Roboticist Doesn’t Think Elon Musk Understands AI

Earlier this week, at the campus of MIT, we had the chance to sit down with famed roboticist Rodney Brooks, the founding director of MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab, and the cofounder of both iRobot and Rethink Robotics.

Brooks had a lot to say about AI, including his overarching concern that many people — including renowned AI alarmist Elon Musk — get it very wrong, in his view.

Brooks also warned that despite investors’ fascination with robotics right now, many VCs may underestimate how long these companies will take to build —  a potential problem for founders down the road.

Our chat, edited for length, follows.

You started iRobot when there was no venture funding, back in 1990. You started Rethink in 2008, when there was funding but not a lot of interest in robotics. Now, there are both, which seemingly makes it a better time to start a robotics company. Is it?

A lot of Silicon Valley and Boston VCs sort of fall over themselves about how they’re funding robotics [now], so you [as a founder] can get heard.

Despite [investors who say there is plenty of later-stage funding for robotics] , I think it’s hard for VCs to understand how long these far-out robotics systems will really take to get to where they can get a return on their investment, and I think that’ll be crunch time for some founders.

There’s also more competition and more patents that have been awarded, and a handful of companies have most of the world’s data. Does that make them insurmountable?

Someone starting a robotics company today should be thinking that maybe at some point, in order to grow, they’re going to have to get bought by a large company that has the deep pockets to push it further. The ecosystem would still use the VC funding to prune out the good ideas from the bad ideas, but going all the way to an IPO may be hard.

Second thing: On this data, yes, machine learning is fantastic, it can do a lot, but there are a lot of things that need to be solved that are not just purely software; some of the big innovations [right now] have been new sorts of electric motors and controls systems and gear boxes.

You’re writing a book on AI, so I have to ask you: Elon Musk expressed again this past weekend that AI is an existential threat. Agree? Disagree?

There are quite a few people out there who’ve said that AI is an existential threat: Stephen Hawking, astronomer Royal Martin Rees, who has written a book about it, and they share a common thread, in that: they don’t work in AI themselves. For those who do work in AI, we know how hard it is to get anything to actually work through product level.

More here.

New Fundings

Brain Corp., an eight-year-old, San Diego, Ca.-based software company licensing artificial intelligence technology to multiple OEMs to convert their manual equipment into intelligent robots, has raised $114 million in Series C funding. SoftBank Vision Fund led the deal, with participation from Qualcomm Ventures. TechCrunch has more here.

Clara Labs, the three-year-old, San Francisco-based creator of the Clara AI assistant, has raised $7 million in Series A funding led by Basis Set Ventures. Slack Fund also joined in the round, along with earlier investors Sequoia Capital and First Round. TechCrunch has more here.

DataRails, a two-year-old, Tel Aviv, Israel-based company that’s trying to transforming Excel into a more modern organizational tool, has raised $6 million in Series A funding led by Vertex Ventures, with participation from earlier backers Cyrus Angel Fund, Oryzn Capital and Joey Low. More here.

Embark, a two-year-old, Austin, Tex.-based doggie DNA startup offering genetic kits to determine pups’ pedigrees, has raised $4.5 million in funding led by Founder Collective. Other participants in the round include Freestyle Capital, ThirdKind, Bill Maris’s new Section 32 fund, 23andMe founder Anne Wojcicki, and SV Angel. The company has now raised $6.5 million altogether. TechCrunch has more here.

Gravity, a five-month-old, London-based startup at work on an Iron Man-like flight suit, has raised $650,000 in funding from longtime VC Tim Draper and his son Adam Draper. TechCrunch has more here.

Integrate, a seven-year-old, Phoenix, Az.-based enterprise software startup for marketers that was founded by former U.S. Olympian Jeremy Bloom, has raised $8 million in funding from Iron Gate Capital and earlier backers, including Foundry Group, Comcast Ventures and Liberty Global. ExactTarget founder Scott Dorsey and DocuSign CEO Dan Springer also joined the round, which brings the company’s total funding to $35 million. TechCrunch has more here.

Karmic, a three-year-old, San Francisco-based startup at work on payments infrastructure and applications to enable the faster and more secure issuance of card accounts, has raised $17.2 million in Series B funding. Investors include Alsop Louie Partners, Arbor Ventures, Greycroft Partners, Marketplace Funds, Startup Capital Ventures and others. More here.

Leverton, a five-year-old, Berlin, Germany-based intelligent information extraction and document management platform for corporate documents at companies like Deutsche Bank and Goldman Sachs, has raised €10 million ($11 million) in funding from DAH Beteiligungs and Anyon Holding. More here.

LiveStories, a four-year-old, Seattle-based company that works with governments, education institutions and other public entities to structure and visualize civic data, has raised $10 million in Series A funding. The round was led by Ignition Partners, and included participation from True Ventures and Founders Co-Op. TechCrunch has more here.

Nauto, a two-year-old, Palo Alto, Ca.-based autonomous vehicle technology company, just raised $159 million in Series B funding, led by a subsidiary of SoftBank Group and Greylock Partners. Other participants include previous strategic investors BMW iVentures, General Motors Ventures, Toyota AI Ventures, the venture unit of global financial services and insurance provider Allianz Group, Playground Global and Draper Nexus. TechCrunch has more here.

Plenty, a three-year-old, South San Francisco-based indoor farming company that says it has figured out how to efficiently grow crops indoors, has raised $200 million in Series B funding round led by the SoftBank Vision Fund, making it the largest agriculture technology investment in history. Note, this is the second humongous deal that Softbank Vision Fund announced today. (See Brain Corp, above.) Bloomberg has more here.

Rentomojo, a 2.5-year-old, Bengaluru, India-based company that invites consumers to rent appliances furniture, motorbikes and other urban living essentials, has raised $10 million in Series B funding. Bain Capital Venturesled the round, with participation from LendingClub founder Renaud Laplancheand earlier backers Accel Partners and IDG. TechCrunch has more here.

Shift, a four-year-old, San Francisco-based used car marketplace, has raised $38 million in Series C funding led by BMW iVentures, with participation from new investors DCM Ventures and G2VP, as well as continued participation from DFJ, Highland Capital, and Goldman Sachs Investment Partners. More here.

StackRox, a three-year-old, Mountain View, Ca.-based cybersecurity startup that secures the contents of “containers,” or stacks of software that make it more efficient to run multiple applications atop a single operating system, has raised $14 million in funding. The round was led by Sequoia Capital. Reuters has more here.

Zego, a year-old, London-based startup offering pay-as-you-go insurance to on-demand workers, has raised a little more than £1 million in seed funding from investors, including LocalGlobe. TechCrunch has more here.

New Funds

Luxembourg-based Mangrove Capital Partners, one of Europe’s leading early-stage venture capital firms, has raised $170 million for its latest fund. Mangrove V will be used to invest across Europe and Israel. The amount matches that of its previous funds. TechCrunch has more here.

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Exits

Church & Dwight, a household goods manufacturer that owns the Arm & Hammer brand, is acquiring the water flosser maker Water Pik for about $1 billion in cash. The private equity firm MidOcean partners had acquired Water Pik in 2013 for undisclosed terms. USA Today has more here.