• StrictlyVC: April 13, 2016

    Happy Wednesday, everyone!

    Many of you know we’re Cavs fans (still), but we’ll admit to being very excited about tonight. With a win against the Memphis Grizzlies later, the Warriors will own the NBA record for victories in a single season, breaking their tie with the 1995-96 Chicago Bulls. Hot dog. Go Warriors!!

    —–

    Top News in the A.M.

    Here’s everything that was announced at Facebook‘s F8 conference yesterday.

    Turns out the FBI cracked that San Bernardino terrorist’s phone with the help of professional hackers who discovered a previously unknown software flaw and brought to the bureau. The Washington Post has the story here.

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    Chris Dixon on Competing with Internet Giants for AI and VR Talent

    VC Chris Dixon of Andreessen Horowitz thinks it’s a lot harder to predict financial cycles than it is to see a new computing platform coming down the pike. As he noted in a recent post, new cycles tend to begin every 10 to 15 years; assuming the 2007 introduction of the iPhone kicked off the last wave, we’re fast heading toward the Next New Thing.

    Or things, technically, according to Dixon, who we caught up with yesterday. Among the trends that Dixon is watching closely, he says, are virtual reality, augmented reality, IoT, wearables, drones and cars. (Missing from the list: bitcoin, which has long held Dixon’s fascination but that he refers to as a “long-term project.”)

    Not that it’ll be easy to make money off these newer technologies. In fact, Dixon suggests it could be ridiculously challenging, given how quickly Facebook, Google, and Amazon are bringing aboard related talent. Here’s more from yesterday’s interview, edited for length:

    People think of you as the person at Andreessen Horowitz who invests in weird stuff. 

    We obviously invest in a wide range of things. My own area of interest has been in drones and VR and AI and maybe more speculative categories. Some startups, the question is more about ‘Will this startup win versus other solutions,’ where, in speculative categories, the question is whether it’s going to work at all.

    You can kind of jokingly call it weird, but if you look at where Amazon, Facebook, and Google are investing — I think Google’s VR team is significantly bigger than Facebook’s; Microsoft has 1,500 people working on HoloLens; and from what I can tell from its hiring and acquisitions, Apple is [investing a lot of money] — probably the biggest area [of interest and investment] is AI. Large tech companies are investing very heavily in this stuff [whereas] there’s much less investment by VCs.

    Because VCs don’t understand the tech or else the opportunity?

    No, because it’s hard to figure out where the start-up opportunities are and because [some of this tech] requires so much money. With virtual reality, you have to build a complex platform then line up content partners. Or self-driving cars — I’d assume that Google has spent many billions of dollars on it already, including mapping. The venture world isn’t set up for that. It works around the model of seed rounds, A rounds, $20 million B rounds, not for massive projects. It’s kind of a puzzle if you’re in VC how to make those investments.

    You’ve remarked  before how quickly teams are getting snapped up, which must compound the issue.

    Wit.ai [a Y Combinator startup that built voice-activated interfaces] that Facebook bought and now powers its Messenger platform was only [in our portfolio] for a few months when Facebook bought it.  It sounds paradoxical, but our model depends on companies staying independent for a period of time, and because large companies have been so aggressive, it’s harder for us.

    When it comes to machine learning, you’re competing with offers from Facebook and Google and Amazon and [their offers] are considerably higher in terms of cash compensation. They pay a lot for people with that expertise, and startups will never [be able to match it]. So you have to really convince people that what you’re building is important.

    VCs can’t wait out this next computing cycle obviously. So how do they nurture lower-capital models?

    More here.

    —–

    New Fundings

    Affirm, the four-year-old, San Francisco-based online lending company founded by PayPal cofounder Max Levchin, has raised a $100 million in Series D funding led by Founders Fund. Earlier investors also participated, including Lightspeed Venture Partners, Spark Capital, Khosla Ventures, Andreessen Horowitz, and Jefferies. According to Crunchbase, the company has now raised $420 million altogether in a combination of debt and equity funding. TechCrunch has more here.

    EdCast, a nearly three-year-old, Mountain View, Ca-based social learning platform, has raised $16 million led by GE Asset Management, with participation from SoftBank Capital, Cervin Ventures, Stanford-StartX Fund, and Penta Global. More here.

    EnsoData, a year-old, Madison, Wi.-based healthcare data science company sells its machine-learning-enabled software­ as­ a­ service to create clinical insights from wearables, medical devices, and clinicians’s data, has raised $550,000 in seed funding led by HealthX Ventures, a new Madison-­based venture capital fund focused on digital health. More here.

    Impraise, a two-year-old, Los Altos, Ca.-based startup whose software aims to replace the annual performance review with actionable, real-time feedback from colleagues, has raised $1.6 million in seed funding led by the Amsterdam-based venture capital firm HenQ. More here.

    Lucid VR, a two-year-old Sunnyvale, Ca.-based maker of a portable VR camera, has raised $2.1 million in seed funding from Wistron, S2 Capital, Lab360, TEEC Angel Fund, 17 Miles Technology, and unnamed angel investors. More here.

    NAUTO, a year-old, Palo Alto, Ca.-based driverless car technology company that enables older cars to enjoy “true autonomy,” has raised $12 million in funding led by Playground Global, with participation from Draper Nexus. TechCrunch has more here.

    NodeSource, a 1.5-year-old, San Francisco-based startup whose tools and software target the needs of running server-side JavaScript at scale, has raised $10 million in Series A funding led by RRE Ventures, with participation from earlier backers Crosslink Capital and Resolute.vc. More here.

    PicMix, a four-year-old, Indonesia-based photo-sharing app, has raised $3 million in Series A funding, including from Gobi Partners and an undisclosed strategic investor. TechCrunch has more here.

    Poshmark, a five-year-old, Menlo Park, Ca.-based site for buying and selling women’s fashion, has raised $25 million in new funding led by GGV Capital, with participation from earlier investors Menlo Ventures, SoftTech VC andAngelList. The company has now raised more than $70 million altogether. TechCrunch has more here.

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    New Funds

    Forbion Capital Partners, a nine-year-old, Munich and Naarden, the Netherlands-based venture firm that invests in both U.S. and European life sciences companies, has raised $208 million for a third fund. One of its biggest hits in recent years was Dezima Pharma, a developer of a dyslipidemia treatment that was acquired by Amgen last year for $1.55 billion in cash and milestones. More here.

    GREE, the Japanese internet company, has announced a new, $12 miillion fund aimed at backing virtual reality companies. TechCrunch has more here.

    Grishin Robotics has raised $100 million for its second fund, reports Bloomberg. Many more details here.

    Kansas City just launched a $10 million co-investment fund for its startup community. Technical.ly has more here.

    —–

    IPOs

    Business analytics company Domo is working with Morgan Stanley and Credit Suisse to prepare for a potential IPO, according to Bloomberg.

    —–

    Exits

    Logitech is acquiring 10-year-old, Salt Lake City-based Jaybird, which makes Bluetooth headphones and activity trackers, for a reported $50 million in cash and up to another $45 million in additional earn-outs. Jaybird appears to have been bootstrapped. More here.

    OpenGov, which works with government organizations to collate, analyse and publicly present financial and other data, has made its first acquisition. It has purchased Ontodia, a developer of Open Data solutions based on CKAN, an open-source data portal used by governments and other public organizations globally. Terms of the deal aren’t being disclosed. OpenGov has raised just less than $50 million from investors, including Andreessen Horowitz. Ontodia had raised a modest amount of angel funding. TechCrunch has more here.

    —–

    People

    Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff is seeing his (substantial) amount of pay curbed slightly. According to a new proxy statement, the business software giant made “significant” changes to his pay package for the upcoming year, including reducing Benioff’s total compensation by 16 percent from $33.4 million this year and tying more than half to performance-based, restricted stock grants. Fortune has more here.

    Billionaire tech entrepreneur Sean Parker has announced plans to give away $250 million through his foundation to launch the Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy, a collaboration between some of the nation’s top cancer research institutes that aims to accelerate the development of breakthrough immune therapies. TechCrunch has more here.

    Aleph Venture Capital, a three-year-old venture fund that’s largely focused on Israeli entrepreneurs and was founded by Eden Shochat and Michael Eisenberg, has brought aboard a third “equal” partner: 26-year-old Aaron Rosenson. He joins from an associate role at Insight Venture Partners where, according to Aleph, he was responsible for identifying Docker, HelloFresh, Moat, Gainsight, Illuminate Education and the Israeli company WalkMe, among other companies. More here.

    —–

    Data

    Research firm SuperData Research predicts in a new report that global sales of virtual reality hardware and software will reach $2.86 billion this year, down 22 percent from its forecast in early March. A big factor: shipping delays by Oculus over a component shortage. More here.

    —–

    Essential Reads

    Lazada, the Rocket Internet-backed e-commerce firm in Southeast Asia, is breathing a huge sigh of relief. According to TechCrunch, the four-year-old company, which is “far from financially healthy,” nearly ran out of money right before Alibaba swooped in this week with a majority investment. More here.

    BlackRock, Vanguard and other big institutional investors own roughly 70 percent of the public stock market, according to some reports. People are starting to ask whether this allows companies — now having the same owners — to compete less and raise prices. Dealbook has more here.

    —–

    Detours

    The amazing, transformable microflat.

    Step away from the hand dryer.

    How much is a dog worth? (Interesting case.)

    —–

    Retail Therapy

    Neat: a Tesla-like EV motor for boats.

    Connie

  • Chris Dixon on Competing with Internet Giants for AI and VR Talent

    Screen Shot 2016-04-12 at 3.11.50 PMVC Chris Dixon of Andreessen Horowitz thinks it’s a lot harder to predict financial cycles than it is to see a new computing platform coming down the pike. As he noted in a recent post, new cycles tend to begin every 10 to 15 years; assuming the 2007 introduction of the iPhone kicked off the last wave, we’re fast heading toward the Next New Thing.

    Or things, technically, according to Dixon, who we caught up with yesterday. Among the trends that Dixon is watching closely, he says, are virtual reality, augmented reality, IoT, wearables, drones and cars. (Missing from the list: bitcoin, which has long held Dixon’s fascination but that he refers to as a “long-term project.”)

    Not that it’ll be easy to make money off these newer technologies. In fact, Dixon suggests it could be ridiculously challenging, given how quickly Facebook, Google, and Amazon are bringing aboard related talent. Here’s more from yesterday’s interview, edited for length:

    People think of you as the person at Andreessen Horowitz who invests in weird stuff. 

    We obviously invest in a wide range of things. My own area of interest has been in drones and VR and AI and maybe more speculative categories. Some startups, the question is more about ‘Will this startup win versus other solutions,’ where, in speculative categories, the question is whether it’s going to work at all.

    You can kind of jokingly call it weird, but if you look at where Amazon, Facebook, and Google are investing — I think Google’s VR team is significantly bigger than Facebook’s; Microsoft has 1,500 people working on HoloLens; and from what I can tell from its hiring and acquisitions, Apple is [investing a lot of money] — probably the biggest area [of interest and investment] is AI. Large tech companies are investing very heavily in this stuff [whereas] there’s much less investment by VCs.

    Because VCs don’t understand the tech or else the opportunity?

    No, because it’s hard to figure out where the start-up opportunities are and because [some of this tech] requires so much money. With virtual reality, you have to build a complex platform then line up content partners. Or self-driving cars — I’d assume that Google has spent many billions of dollars on it already, including mapping. The venture world isn’t set up for that. It works around the model of seed rounds, A rounds, $20 million B rounds, not for massive projects. It’s kind of a puzzle if you’re in VC how to make those investments.

    You’ve remarked  before how quickly teams are getting snapped up, which must compound the issue.

    Wit.ai [a Y Combinator startup that built voice-activated interfaces] that Facebook bought and now powers its Messenger platform was only [in our portfolio] for a few months when Facebook bought it.  It sounds paradoxical, but our model depends on companies staying independent for a period of time, and because large companies have been so aggressive, it’s harder for us.

    When it comes to machine learning, you’re competing with offers from Facebook and Google and Amazon and [their offers] are considerably higher in terms of cash compensation. They pay a lot for people with that expertise, and startups will never [be able to match it]. So you have to really convince people that what you’re building is important.

    VCs can’t wait out this next computing cycle obviously. So how do they nurture lower-capital models?

    More here.

    Connie

    ,

  • StrictlyVC: April 12, 2016

    Hi, everyone! Hope you have a terrific Tuesday.

    —–

    Top News in the A.M.

    Chatbots, live video, and virtual reality technology are all on the docket for Facebook’s F8 developer conference, and you can watch the livestream here beginning at 9:30 a.m. PST, with CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s keynote starting at 10 a.m.

    —-

    GGV Capital Just Raised $1.2 Billion; Here’s How It Plans to Invest It

    Back in February, we told you GGV Capital was raising a more than a billion dollars from its investors.

    This morning, the 16-year-old, cross-border venture firm is making it official. The final tally, says GGV, is $1.2 billion, including a $675 million main fund; a $225 million “Plus” fund to back its most promising companies as they mature; a $250 million “Discovery” fund that will focus largely on seed-stage opportunities in China; and a side, $50 million “Entrepreneurs” fund that consists largely of company founders as LPs and that will invest pro rata across the funds.

    The firm has a lot of moolah to invest, in other words. To find out out where GGV plans to shop, we talked yesterday with managing directors Glenn Solomon and Jeff Richards, who are based in Menlo Park, but who travel to the firm’s Beijing and Shanghai offices frequently.

    Aside from the amount you’ve raised, it looks like what’s newest here is your first dedicated seed-stage fund, 80 percent of which you intend to invest in China. You’ve always made bets of all sizes in China; why break this part of your business into a separate fund?

    GS: Over the last five years, more than 70 percent of our investments have been Series B or earlier and many of them have been in China. But we thought the opportunity in China to do [seed] deals is really strong for us given our work on the ground and the entrepreneurial community that we’ve built up in China.

    Is it fair to say this is largely a marketing tactic so entrepreneurs will be clearer about your intentions in China? 

    GS: I was having dinner in Beijing with a CEO who we’ve backed in the past and in whose newest company we invested at the Series B, and when I told him about our plans to raise Discovery, he said, “Had I known you guys were doing seed investing, I would have called you first.”

    Don’t underestimate how important [messaging] is. Also, for our limited partners, having a separate vehicle helps them look at our seed investing activity and judge how we’re doing [versus when it’s lumped in with later-stage bets].

    How is competition at the seed level in China?

    More here.

    ——

    New Fundings

    90 Seconds, a six-year-old, Singapore-based startup whose cloud-based platform lets users handle almost every part of the video production process in one place, has raised $7.5 million in Series A funding led by Sequoia India. Other investors in the round include pay television provider SKY TV New Zealand, Airtree Ventures, Beenext and Oleg Tscheltzoff, founder of stock image agency Fotolia.com. TechCrunch has more here.

    Chedai.com,  a three-year-old, Shanghai, China-based car finance lending platform, has raised $34 million in funding led by China Growth Capital, with participation from earlier investor Matrix Partners China. Asian Venture Capital Journal has more here (subscribers only).

    Datera, a nearly three-year-old, Mountain View, Ca.-based storage company for enterprise and service provider clouds that was designed with DevOps-style operations in mind, has raised $40 million in funding from Khosla Ventures, Samsung Ventures and individual investors Andy Bechtolsheim and Pradeep Sindhu. More here.

    Fleet, a two-year-old, San Francisco-based marketplace that lets companies compare quotes from logistics providers, has raised $4 million in seed funding led by Hunt Technology Ventures, with participation from Placid Ventures, David S. Hunt, 1517 Fund, Latam Partners, GrowthX Fund, NFQ, and Telegraph Hill Capital. TechCrunch has more here.

    Lazada, a four-year-old, Singapore-based e-commerce platform known as the Amazon of Southeast Asia, has raised $1 billion in funding from Alibaba in a deal that makes the China-based conglomerate Lazada’s controlling shareholder. The round includes $500 million in newly issued equity capital; it also includes stakes from Lazada’s earlier shareholders Rocket Internet, Tesco, and Kinnevik. Lazada is now valued at $1.5 billion, according to Rocket Internet, which founded the company. TechCrunch has more here.

    Livongo Health, a 1.5-year-old, Mountain View, Ca.-based consumer digital health company focused on chronic conditions, has raised $44.5 million in Series C funding from Merck Global Health Innovation Fund; Cowen Private Investments; Sapphire Ventures; Zaffre Investments, which is he investment arm of Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts; Wanxiang America Corp; and earlier investors General Catalyst Partners, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, DFJ, and 7wire Ventures. More here.

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    New Funds

    Accel London, the 16-year-old, London-based venture fund that shares many limited partners (and deal flow) with Accel Partners in the U.S., has raised $500 million for its fifth fund, which will focus on Series A and B investments in Europe and Israel. Accel London’s last fund, a $475 million vehicle, closed three years ago. TechCrunch has more here.

    Greycroft Partners, the L.A. and New York-based venture firm co-founded by legendary investor Alan Patricof, has seemingly raised a $20 million fund expressly to fund virtual reality gaming startups. The SEC filing is here. (H/T: Dan Primack.)

    —–

    IPOs

    According to Bloomberg, IPO shares for stock exchange software operator Bats Global Markets are oversubscribed by more than five times, just three days before the sale is due to price. More here.

    The gene-editing biotech startup Intellia has filed for a $120 million IPO. STAT has more here.

    —–

    People

    Arthur Ventures, a 7.5-year-old, Fargo, N.D.-based venture firm cofounded by Doug Burgum (he’s the chairman of Atlasssian, among other things), has hired a new partner: Ryan Kruizenga, who has worked previously as a senior associate at Summit Partners and as a VP at Mainsail Partners. Kruizenga, previously based in San Francisco, will work out of the firm’s Minneapolis, Mn., office.

    Lady Gaga‘s startup, Backplane, backed by several high-profile investors, has officially crashed after struggling to raise more money.

    Versant Ventures, a 17-year-old San Francisco-based healthcare venture capital firm, has promoted Jerel Davis to managing director and Carlo Rizzuto to partner. The firm also hired Luca Santarelli as venture partner. Davis, who joined in 2011, was previously as an associate at McKinsey & Co. Rizzuto joined Versant in 2012 from Novartis. Santarelli, who will be based in Basel, Switzerland, was most recently the senior vice president and global head of neuroscience, ophthalmology and rare diseases at Roche.

    —–

    Data

    For life expectancy, money matters.

    —–

    Essential Reads

    When it comes to Indian startups, tenacity beats high tech.

    The IMF says the global economy is in big trouble. Here’s why.

    —–

    Detours

    Kobe Bryant and Michael B. Jordan plan out Bryant’s biopic in a very funny Apple ad.

    The emotional toll of ugly architecture.

    Design features that sell your home faster, for more money.

    —–

    Retail Therapy

    You need this coffee mug. (We need this coffee mug.)

    A new, ridiculous product for your dog.

    Connie

  • StrictlyVC: April 11, 2016

    Hi, everyone! Hope you had a wonderful weekend. Apologies for today’s very late send — busy morning!

    Btw, if you’re in San Francisco next week, you might want to check out an event called Bridging the Gender Gap. We’ve had some early discussions with the organizers (we’re moderating a panel) and would guess it’ll be worth your time. More information here.

    —–

    Top News in the A.M.

    Everyone wants a piece of the digital mapping company HERE. Reuters has the latest.

    The owner of Britain’s Daily Mail is reportedly in early discussions over a bid for ailing Yahoo. U.S. News & World Report has more here.

    —–

    Ground Delivery Robots: Passing Fancy or Next Wave?

    “Every failed on demand startup will reappear as a successful robotics driven business in five to 10 years.” So tweeted Jeremy Conrad, founding partner of the San Francisco-based hardware fund Lemnos Labs, one recent afternoon.

    Conrad apparently means what he tweets, having investing in Marble, a new, San Francisco-based ground-delivery robot that will focus on ground-based last-mile delivery for business, then consumer, applications. (Conrad wouldn’t discuss the still-stealth startup’s funding picture, but another source tells us it’s currently meeting with investors.)

    He’s hardly alone in thinking that ground robots will be bringing us everything from canned goods to Christmas lights sooner than we think. For example, last week, Andreessen Horowitz announced it had led a $2 million investment in Dispatch, a company whose self-driving ground delivery robots look like minibars on wheels.

    And Dispatch’s machines look an awful lot like the robots of Starship, an Estonia-based outfit created by Skype cofounders Ahti Heinla and Janus Friis, who took the wraps off their still-in-beta machines late last year. The robots, which also look like little refrigerators, are designed to deliver goods like groceries – about two bag’s worth – in 30 minutes of less.

    In each case, the idea is to save money on deliveries by cutting out costly humans. Starship is also promising to give customers more control over the delivery process. It says it will enable residents to schedule deliveries only when the timing works, as well as track in real time the whereabouts of the robots, whose tech includes GPS, gyroscopes, and nine cameras. (As an added bonus, its robots will produce zero emissions, says Starship.)

    Whether these new ground-based robot couriers represent the beginnings of a broader trend or a series of one-off bets remains a question mark. We’d bet on the former, though.

    More here.

    —–

    New Funds

    Venture capitalist Tim Draper has raised a new, $190 million early-stage fund under the brand Draper Associates. The core investment team consists of Draper, his son Billy, and Andy Tang. Before joining his father, Billy Draper was a designer at the online rental marketplace Apartment List. Tang was a longtime managing director atDFJ Dragon Fund and more recently CEO of Draper’s co-working space, Hero City.

    London-based venture firm Octopus Ventures has topped up its evergreen early -stage startup investment fund with another £100 million, bringing the total backing the fund to more than £400 million. TechCrunch has more here.

    Unicorn Capital Partners, a China-focused venture capital fund-of-funds launched by former partner at Emerald Hill Capital Partners Tommy Yip, has closed its debut fund with about $210 million. Yip left Emerald Hill Capital Partners in January of last year to create his own fund. China Money Network has the story here.

    Upside, a two-year-old, San Francisco-based seed-stage venture firm that was founded by former First Round partner Kent Goldman, has raised a second, $44 million, fund. Goldman named his firm Upside because it gives every founding team in its portfolio a piece of its carry, making them effectively Upside’s partners.

    —–

    IPOs

    SecureWorks, the cybersecurity arm of Dell, which helps corporations lock down their systems and check for computer intruders, has put a price range of $15.50 to $17.50 on its initial public offering of stock. The WSJ has more here.

    —–

    Data

    Institutional investors are writing bigger and bigger checks to fewer firms. So suggests the latest data from the National Venture Capital Association and Thomson Reuters, which shows that U.S. venture capital firms raised $12 for 57 funds during the first quarter this year — a 59 percent increase in capital over the first quarter of 2015 and a 17 percent decrease in number of funds raised. Somewhat amazingly, VCs haven’t raised so much money in three months since the second quarter of 2006, when 79 funds raised $14.3 billion. TechCrunch has more here.

    —–

    Essential Reads

    Less willing to post updates about your life on Facebook? Join the crowd.

    Slack has posted its platform roadmap for developers.

    How an internet mapping glitch turned a random Kansas farm into a digital hell.

    —–

    Detours

    Ricky Gervais’s David Brent is back and on the road.

    So easy a dog with a paintbrush can do it(?).

    The case for wine.

    —-

    Retail Therapy

    Explora Patagonia.

    Connie

  • StrictlyVC: April 8, 2016

    This work week is over. Cel-e-br-ate! Hol-i-day! Hope you have a wonderful weekend, everyone!

    Btw, quick thanks again to Highway1 for having us over earlier this week for a discussion about how to build a great hardware company, even while giants like Amazon and its Echo are making it trickier than ever to pull off. Here’s video from that talk, which featured Semil Shah, Charles Hudson, Rob Coneybeer and Joshua Schachter. (The second half is more interesting than the first, for what it’s worth.) If we have time, we’ll also pull out some highlights in a post for you.

    —–

    Top News in the A.M.

    Apple‘s fight over privacy with the U.S. isn’t over yet. Now the FBI wants help accessing the phone of a drug dealer in Brooklyn.

    Yahoo has moved the deadline for its bids out another week to April 18, according to Recode sources (“and the blabby bankers they talk to”).

    —–

    Secondary Buyers Appear from Overseas to Snap Up Startup Stakes

    We told you early last month that secondary businesses have been inundated with sellers in recent months, and that’s not expected to change anytime soon. Nary a tech company went public in the first quarter. There’s also the related issue of falling valuations, which has both institutional and individual shareholders nervously wondering whether to hang on to their holdings or get rid of them.

    Helping to keep the whole flywheel going: secondary buyers who are coming from overseas to snap up startup stakes. So says Timothy Harris, a partner in the emerging companies and venture capital group of law firm Morrison Foerster who got us up to speed on the market yesterday afternoon.

    Harris has his own agenda when it comes to secondaries — including helping startups decide whether to engage in transactions, how to structure them and to ensure companies have some degree of control over the process. But he spoke candidly about the good, the bad and the unexpected of what he’s seeing. Our chat has been edited for length.

    The Financial Times wrote a piece recently proposing that some still-private companies have no plans to go public, ever, saying this was okay and even healthy.

    That’s right. [The secondary market] is now one of the only ways that liquidity is provided to shareholders who don’t want to sit on their often highly appreciated shares. There were no IPOs in the first quarter. And some companies are still so highly valued, who can buy them? Meanwhile, you have people who joined these private companies thinking they’d go public and that [an IPO exit] was how they were going to pay their college tuition or for elder care or for the mortgage on their house.

    The impulse to sell is understandable. But who’s buying? Isn’t it like catching a falling knife right now?

    I don’t think that’s true. I’ve advised some VCs [about] what I perceive to be incredible deals based on what I’ve read about these companies and what they are worth. It’s like an art auction when the artists aren’t yet dead or they’re recently dead and it’s not clear how much their pieces will be worth in the future. People took a gamble on Facebook before it went public; they gambled on Square. Others who are buying into unicorns are similarly hoping the companies will go public someday or else that they can turn around and sell the shares for more later.

    But again, who exactly is buying?

    Many of them are tourist investors from overseas — both high net-worth individuals, funds, and public companies — who are thrilled to return home and say, “We just bought fill-in-the-blank-hot company.” They show up quite a bit and they appear relatively price insensitive, which makes them attractive to sellers. You also see investment bankers who represent someone who wants to buy or sell shares of certain companies. The angels and VC are also buying and selling to each other.

    More here.

    —–

    New Fundings

    Ant Financial, the 12-year-old, China-based finance affiliate of Alibaba Group, has upped the amount of funding it is raising to $3.5 billion, in a deal that could value the company at $60 billion, says Bloomberg. China Investment Corp. and an investment vehicle of China Construction Bank Corp. are leading the funding. More here.

    Globality, a year-old, Menlo Park, Ca.-based stealth-mode startup at work on a platform to facilitate cross-border trade, has raised $27.25 million in Series B funding. Investors include the company’s Series A investors, such as former Vice President Al Gore; Ron Johnson, CEO of Enjoy and a former Apple retail executive; John Joyce, CFO of Kony and former CFO of IBM; Michael Marks, a managing partner of Riverwood Capital and former CEO of Flextronics; and Yahoo CFO Ken Goldman. Globality was founded by Joel Hyatt, the former co-founder and head of Current TV and the founder of Hyatt Legal Services. TechCrunch has more here.

    KiteDesk, a four-year-old, Tampa, Fla.-based company that makes sales prospecting software, has raised $6 million in funding led by Armada Investment and Imlay Investments. More here.

    Luka, a 2.5-year-old, San Francisco-based free iOS messaging app that features intuitive AI-powered bots that help users make dinner reservations, get news updates and more, has raised $4.42 million in Series A funding. The round was led by Sherpa Capital; other participants include Y Combinator, Ludlow Ventures and Justin Waldron, a member of the founding team at Zynga. TechCrunch has more here.

    MedDay, a five-year-old, Paris-based biotechnology company focused on treating nervous system disorders, has raised €34 million ($38.5 million) in Series B financing led by Edmond de Rothschild Investment Partners. Earlier backers Sofinnova Partners and InnoBio (Bpifrance) and Large Venture (Bpifrance) also joined the round. More here.

    RideCell, an eight-year-old, San Francisco-based fleet-automation software company that helps customers from college campuses to car companies manage their mobility services, has raised $11.7 million in Series A funding led by BMWi Ventures, with the participation of Khosla Ventures and angel investors. More here.

    X.ai, a 1.5-year-old, New York-based artificial intelligence company, has raised $23 million in new funding led by Two Sigma Ventures, with participation from DCM Ventures, Work-Bench Ventures, and earlier backers IA Ventures, FirstMark Capital, Softbank Capital, Lerer Hippeau Ventures, CrunchFund, and Pritzker Group Venture Capital. VentureBeat has more here.

    —–

    New Funds

    An L.A. firm and a Bentonville, Arkansas-based firm have teamed up: Kayne Anderson Capital Advisors and NewRoad Capital Partners have formed a new fund to invest in early-stage, tech-enabled businesses in retail and other sectors. The fund is named Kayne NewRoad Ventures and it has $90 million in commitments from NewRoad Ventures Fund I, the Arkansas Venture Development Fund, and other investors. More here.

    —–

    IPOs

    MGM Growth Properties, a real estate income trust, has priced its IPO at $18 to $21 a share. It’s not a tech company, but the offering could help tech companies waiting in the wings if all goes well.

    A weekly reminder from our friends at Renaissance Capital: There have been 9 IPOs priced so far this year, 78 percent fewer than this time last year. The Renaissance IPO Index has returned -8.0 percent so far this year, compared to -0.1 percent for the S&P 500.

    —–

    People

    Amazon has given CEO titles to two division heads. Jeff Wilke, who runs the consumer business, and Andy Jassy, who manages the cloud services division, now share the CEO title with founder Jeff Bezos (who, do not be confused, is still top dog).

    Crikey. An Uber driver in New Delhi was killed by two teenager passengers he’d served, the company confirmed this morning.

    Thirteen women leading the life sciences movement in Silicon Valley.

    —–

    Essential Reads

    Uber has agreed to pay up to $25 million to California-based prosecutors to settle a case in which the ride sharing giant is accused of misleading consumers around the safety of its service. More here.

    Why the next hot job in Silicon Valley is for poets.

    Amazingly, Yale has made 93 percent a year on venture capital over the past two decades.

    —–

    Detours

    A comedian reads hilariously fake books on the subway.

    Swim. Bike. Cheat?

    The first big trailer for the newest “Game of Thrones” season (debuting April 24th; that’s just around the corner, people!).

    —–

    Retail Therapy

    The Atomic Trimmer. When you’re ready to get serious about personal grooming.

    Squad bowls. For team building(?).

    Connie

  • StrictlyVC: April 7, 2016

    Hi, everyone! Hope you’re having a good Thursday.

    —–

    Top News in the A.M.

    China has stanched, at least for now, the flow of money out of the country, new data suggests.

    —–

    Luma, a Sleek WiFi Router, Raises $12.5 Million from Accel and Amazon

    Finally, companies have begun to recognize a long overlooked opportunity to develop a next-generation router that looks sleek and is far more user-friendly than the networking hardware of yesteryear.

    Some contenders are the established companies themselves, including Asus, D-Link and Netgear, all of which have now have bells and whistles like parental controls, the ability to prioritize traffic based on network and device, and apps that help users repair their home network via smartphone or tablet.

    Newer entrants, including Google’s new OnHub router and two-year-old Eero, feature both more elegant designs and far greater ease of use, though OnHub gets mixed performance reviews. Meanwhile, Eero strongly suggests that users buy more than one, which can quickly become expensive. (The company says that each router covers roughly 1,000 square feet. A three-pack of Eero units costs $499.)

    Luma, a two-year-old, Atlanta-based entrant, may give them all a run for their money.

    For one thing, like the Eero, Luma’s glossy WiFi routers look like something Apple might have come up with. Luma, which like Eero, works best when sprinkled around the home, also offers more coverage and is more affordable by design. Each unit covers roughly 1,500 square feet, and a three-pack costs $299, compared with an individual unit, which costs $149. (Originally, Luma planned to feature pricing similar to Eero: $199 per unit and $499 for a three-pack.)

    Perhaps most important, especially to parents: Luma features the kind of network controls you might find at a large company.

    More here.

    —–

    New Fundings

    Airmap, a 15-month-old, Santa Monica, Ca.-based startup that provides airspace information and services for drones, has raised $15 million in Series A funding led by General Catalyst Partners, with participation from Lux Capital (which led the company’s $2.6 million seed round last July), Social Capital, TenOneTen Ventures, Bullpen Capital, and the Pritzker Group. Tnooz has more here.

    CloudOne, a 5.5-year-old, Fishers, Ind.-based company whose enterprise apps convert its customers’ IBM software into customized, on-demand SaaS services, has raised $9 million in Series E funding led by Plymouth Ventures, with participation from Hercules Technology Growth Capital and return backersBootstrap Venture Fund, Chatham Ventures, Elevate Ventures and Ryan Diem. More here.

    Clutter, a three-year-old, L.A.-based on-demand storage startup, has raised $20 million in Series B funding led by Sequoia Capital, which had also led the company’s $9 million Series A round back in October. TechCrunch has more here.

    CrownPeak, a 15-year-old, L.A.-based SaaS company focused around web content management systems, has raised $50 million in new funding from K1. The investment follows a merger with London-based rival ActiveStandards. L.A. Biz has more here.

    Electric Imp, a five-year-old, Los Altos, Ca.-based IoT platform that says it securely connects devices to advanced cloud computing resources, has raised $21 million in Series C funding led by London-based Rampart Capital. Other participants include company insiders and earlier investor Redpoint Ventures. The company has now raised $43 million altogether. More here.

    Intercom, a five-year-old, San Francisco-based startup whose products cover everything from website chat to marketing to customer support, has raised $50 million in fresh funding led by Index Ventures, with participation from Iconiq Capital, Bessemer Venture Partners and Social Capital. Intercom has now raised a total of $116 million. TechCrunch has more here.

    Karamba Security, a nearly year-old, Tel Aviv, Israel-based startup that makes cybersecurity software for the automotive industry, has raised $2.5 million in seed funding led by YL Ventures, with participation from GlenRock. TechCrunch has more here.

    Kyulux, a year-old, Fukuoka, Japan-based advanced-materials startup focused on OLED display and lighting technology known as thermally activated delayed fluorescence, has raised $13.5 million in Series A funding led by Samsung Ventures, with participation from OLED panel manufacturers, including Samsung Display, LG Display, Japan Display and Joled. Unnamed Japanese venture funds and a Japan-government-affiliated venture fund also joined the round. More here.

    LinkDoc Technology, a Beijing-based oncology-focused big data firm, has raised an undisclosed amount of Series B funding led by the Hong Kong-based private equity firm China Broadband Capital. Other participants in the round include Ally Bridge Group, Cenova Ventures, and New Enterprise Associates. DealStreetAsia has more here.

    LiveSafe, a four-year-old Arlington, Va.-based mobile safety and security communications platform, has raised $5.25 million in Series B funding from an affiliate of Fred Smith, chairman and CEO of FedEx, who is also joining LiveSafe’s board. FinSMEs has more here.

    Lumos Pharma, a five-year-old, Austin, Tex.-based biotechnology company focused on developing therapeutics for orphan diseases, has raised $34 million in Series B funding led by Deerfield Management Company, with participation from Clarus Ventures, Roche Venture Fund, and earlier investors New Enterprise Associates, Sante Ventures and the Belgian pharmaceutical company UCB. Austin Business Journal has more here.

    Luxe, a nearly three-year-old, San Francisco-based on-demand valet parking and car services company, has officially raised $50 million in Series B funding led by Hertz Global Holdings, with participation from earlier backers Redpoint Ventures and Venrock. TechCrunch and The Information had reported late last month that Luxe was raising roughly $50 million in funding led by Hertz.

    Mizzen + Main, a four-year-old, Dallas, Tex.-based company that makes moisture-wicking men’s apparel, has raised $3 million in Series B funding from a group of individual investors, including Thomas Morstead, a Super Bowl winning athlete with the New Orleans Saints; Ben Nash, the co-founder and CEO of PCS Wireless; and others. TechCrunch has more here.

    RiskRecon, a year-old, Boston-based startup that helps companies make objective security assessments of third-party cloud vendors, has raised $3 million in seed funding led by General Catalyst Partners, with participation from several unnamed private investors. TechCrunch has more here.

    Sweetch Health, a three-year-old, Jerusalemn-based health tech company whose platform helps identify individuals who are at risk of developing diabetes and coaching them on its prevention, has raised $3.5 million in Series A funding co-led by the health tech company Philips and OurCrowd, the equity crowdfunding platform. Earlier investors Pontifax and Lionbird also joined the round. More here.

    Twiggle, a three-year-old, Tel Aviv, Israel-based company that collects data from the across the product web, organizes it, and make it actionable, has raised $12.5 million in Series A funding led by the Internet conglomerate Naspers, with participation from Yahoo Japan, State of Mind Ventures (a returning investor), and Sir Ronald Cohen. The company has raised $14.7 million to date. TechCrunch has more here.

    Veriflow, a three-year-old, Oakland, Ca.-based network breach and outage prevention startup, has raised $2.9 million in private and public funding from New Enterprise Associates, the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of Defense. ChicagoInno has more here.

    —–

    New Funds

    David Prager, a founder of the early digital entertainment network Revision3, has cofounded a new, Oakland, Ca.-based micro venture fund called Monstro Ventures with just less than $5 million in capital commitments. Investors include Revision3 cofounder Kevin Rose, Nuzzel CEO Jonathan Abrams, and Lowercase Capital’s Chris Sacca, among others. TechCrunch has more here.

    Elevation Partners, the private equity firm co-founded by U2 frontman Bono, is still winding down. But in the meantime, three members are starting a new group and they’ve raised $100 million for the effort, called NextEquity. Bloomberg has the story here.

    —–

    Exits

    Amazon has quietly acquired Orbeus, a Sunnyvale, Ca.-based company that was founded in 2012 and produced scalable image and face recognition tools that software developers could add to their own products. No financial terms were disclosed. According to CrunchBase, Orbeus had raised roughly $1.5 million including from investors. According Bloomberg, the deal closed last fall.

    Smartling, a seven-year-old, New York-based translation tech company, has acquired Jargon, a two-year-old, San Francisco-based company that makes tools for mobile developers who want to localize heir apps for different international markets. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Jargon had raised a nominal amount of seed funding, shows CrunchBase; Smartling has raised $63 million, inluding from Tenaya Capital and Iconiq Capital. TechCrunch hasmore here.

    Twist Bioscience, a San Francisco-based startup focused on synthetic DNA, has acquired Genome Compiler, an Israel-based startup that makes software for genetic engineers and molecular and synthetic biologists. No financial terms were disclosed. More here.

    —–

    People

    General Catalyst Partners has promoted four people on its team. The announcements come just weeks after the 16-year-old venture firm, which has offices in Cambridge, Ma.; New York;  and Palo Alto, Ca., closed on $845 million in new capital commitments from its investors. Deepak Jeevankumar, who joined the firm almost six years ago was made a partner in the firm’s newest funds. Spencer Lazar, who joined the firm three years ago, was made a partner. And Gabe Ling, who has been both a principal and a venture partner at General Catalyst in recent years, is now a partner. General Catalyst has also promoted longtime principal-turned-venture partner Niko Bonatsos to managing director. We talked with Bonatsos yesterday about the news, andwhere he’s shopping now.

    Ryan Negri has joined IronYard Ventures, a four-year-old, Greenville, S.C.-based accelerator, as managing director. Negri will be focused on the outfit’s Las Vegas-based programs. More here.

    Unlike Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, serial CEO Elon Musk says he won’t read speeches from a teleprompter.

    —–

    Essential Reads

    Yik Yak, the once hot messaging platform at college campuses, has cooled considerably; it has also lost numerous high-level employees, including its CTO, reports TechCrunch.

    —–

    Detours

    In the words of investor Marc Andreessen, “They’re making this up. Right?”

    When First Ladies meet.

    Tesla versus Boeing.

    —–

    Retail Therapy

    Hermes bands for your Apple watch (coming in new colors).

    Connie

  • StrictlyVC: April 6, 2016

    Ah, Wednesday, we meet at last.

    No column today (we ran out of time) but more soon.

    —–

    Top News in the A.M.

    Pfizer and Allergan just called off their merger. Dealbook has more here.

    —–

    New Fundings

    Anchore, a three-month-old, Santa Barbara, Ca.-based company at work on a solution for inspecting, tracking and securing software containers, has raised $2.5 million in seed funding from Menlo Ventures and e-ventures. Fortune has more here.

    Bright Health, a new, Minneapolis, Mn.-based tech-enabled consumer health insurance company founded by former UnitedHealth CEO Bob Sheehy, has raised $80 million in Series A funding co-led by Bessemer Venture Partners and New Enterprise Associates, with Flare Capital Partners participating among others. Fortune has more here.

    CrossChx, a four-year-old, Columbus, Oh.-based company whose primary product is a healthcare identity management system for patients, has raised $15 million in Series C funding from Khosla Ventures, Drive Capital, Silicon Valley Bank, NCT Ventures and Moonshots Capital. TechCrunch has more here.

    Dispatch, an 11-month-old, San Francisco-based company that makes autonomous vehicles for home-delivery purposes, has raised $2 million in seed financing led by Andreessen Horowitz, with participation from Precursor Ventures and others. TechCrunch has more here.

    Finanzcheck, a 3.5-year-old, Hamburg, Germany-based consumer loans marketplace, has raised €33 million ($37.6 million) in Series C funding led by HarbourVest, with participation by Acton Capital Partners and earlier backer Highland Europe. TechCrunch has much more here.

    Haptik, a four-year-old, Mumbai, India and San Francisco-based personal assistant app that employs both people and artificial intellignece, has raised $11.2 million in Series B funding from the India-based media giant Times Internet. The company has now raised $35 million altogether. TechCrunch has more here.

    Joyowo.com, a Hangzhou, China-based online human resources startup, has raised $15 million in Series B funding led by Sequoia Capital China, with participation from Tsing Ventures, Meridian Capital China and others. Techstory.in has more here.

    Lola Travel, a 10-month-old, Boston-based travel app that matches customers with actual humans who dispense advice (it was co-founded by Paul English, who’d previously cofounded the travel-search company Kayak), has raised $19.7 million in Series A funding. Backers including Accel Partners and General Catalyst Partners. More here.

    Meadow, a 1.5-year-old, San Francisco-based company that makes specialized cannabis sales software, just closed on $2.1 million in seed funding from investors David Lee, Justin Kan, Steve Huffman, Hiten Shah, Slow Ventures, SOMA Capital, and Poseidon Asset Management. More here.

    Projector, a year-old, San Francisco-based still-in-private beta adaptive messaging and push notifications startup, has raised $4.5 million in seed funding led by Baseline Ventures. Other participants include Freestyle Capital, SV Angel, IDG Ventures, and True Ventures. Numerous angels also joined the round, including Owen Van Natta, Dick Costolo, and Damien Weiss. More here.

    Vinomofo, a five-year-old, Australia-based site that sells wine, has raised AUD $25 million ($19 million) in funding from regional venture firm Blue Sky Capital. More here.

    —–

    New Funds

    Private equity investor HarbourVest Partners has closed a new Canadian venture capital fund-of-funds with C$375 million ($285 million) in capital commitments. The money will be used to invest in venture funds that primarily back Canadian companies. Reuters has more here.

    —–

    People

    Cargomatic, an L.A.-based based logistics startup that’s been described as the “Uber for truckers” and has raised more than $10 million in funding, has laid off half its workforce — around 60 employees — over the past couple of months, reports Business Insider.

    Beyond the Rack, a seven-year-old, Montreal, Canada-based flash-sale fashion site, has filed for protection from creditors. The company had raised $90 million in venture capital and financing, including from Silicon Valley Bank, iNovia Capital, Panorama Capital and Highland Capital Partners. VentureWire hasmore here (subscription required).

    “The advantage to being second-to-market is that you can look at the guy who was there before you and learn from their past mistakes,” Juno CEO Talmon Marco tells Vanity Fair in a new profile about Marco and budding ride-sharing business.

    Nutanix CEO Dheeraj Pandey is sweetening the equity pot for employees as the company waits to go public. Though Pandey remains the company’s biggest individual shareholder, he voluntarily returned $17.5 million worth of restricted stock to the equity pool last month, as CNBC reports.

    Executives at the online lender Prosper Marketplace sold shares last year after a hefty financing round, reports VentureWire, citing one source who says the amount taken off the table and the timing of the sale are unusual(subscription required).

    Fenox Venture Capital is bringing on TiE Global Chairman and the founder of TiE Angels, Venktesh Shukla, as a general partner. TechCrunch has more here.

    —–

    People

    Peter Thiel’s Breakout Labs is looking for a communications guru to build out its overall voice and brand. The job is in San Francisco.

    —–

    Essential Reads

    It’s not just celebrities; Facebook is paying media companies to make live video, too.

    SurveyMonkey is suddenly getting into App Annie’s bidness.

    Verizon and AwesomenessTV are forming a mobile video service.

    Mystery solved? Fidelity‘s head of global capital equity markets tells The Information that Fidelity’s valuation calculations are heavily based on public stock comparisons.

    —–

    Detours

    People dressed like their surroundings.

    Classic poems modified for climate change.

    —–

    Retail Therapy

    Bike speedometer.

    Limited edition socks, coming soon to Neiman Marcus.

    Connie

  • StrictlyVC: April 5, 2016

    Hi, everyone! How about that dazzling NCAA tournament ending last night!?

    Looking forward to seeing some of you later at this hardware-focused seed and investing panel in SF.:)

    —–

    Top News in the A.M.

    Twitter says it has won a deal to show Thursday night NFL games online, giving it a key piece of content to attract mainstream users and make its service a go-to place to react to and discuss live events. Bloomberg has more here. Meanwhile Recode has some of the numbers behind the deal. (They’re surprising.)

    Three months after predicting Goldman Sachs would put the tumultuous end of 2015 behind it and stabilize profits, analysts are reversing course and cutting projections. Again. More here.

    —–

    Longtime Tesla Motors CIO jay Vijayan Has Formed a Stealth Startup

    Jay Vijayan, who spent four years as the Chief Information Officer of Tesla Motors, and who served as its VP of IT and business applications for a year before that, left the company in January to form his own Bay Area startup.

    Vijayan isn’t talking yet about that company. (StrictlyVC reached out to him last Monday and he hasn’t responded.)

    But his departure comes at an interesting time, given the almost unprecedented excitement surrounding the Model 3 car that Tesla unveiled to the public last Thursday night.

    As you may have already read, the company had booked more than 253,000 orders in the first 36 hours after CEO Elon Musk revealed several prototypes in a showy display reminiscent of Apple product releases.

    That kind of demand is surely putting to the test a proprietary software system called Warp that Vijayan and his team of engineers at Tesla designed to support the company’s direct sales efforts in the U.S. (In 2014, the WSJ had taken a long look at the platform here.)

    Vijayan also appears to be doing some angel investing, which may or may not be related to his new startup. Last Monday, numerous India-based outlets reported that FixNix, a Bangalore-based governance, risk management, and compliance platform, had raised $500,000 in seed funding led by Vijayan, along with other, unnamed, Silicon Valley-based angel investors.

    More here.

    —–

    New Fundings

    Africa Internet Group, a three-year-old, Lagos, Nigeria-based outfit that owns online retailer Jumia and earlier this month disclosed that it had raised $326 at a valuation of more than $1 billion, has raised yet more capital. Specifically, the mobile giant Orange has plugged around $85 million into the company. TechCrunch has more here.

    Flywheel, a 3.5-year-old, Omaha, Ne.-based WordPress hosting and management service, has raised $4 million in Series A funding led by Kansas City’s Five Elms Capital. TechCrunch has more here.

    Human Longevity, a  three-year-old, San Diego, Ca.-based genome outfit led by famed serial entrepreneur J. Craig Venter, has raised $220 million in Series B funding co-led by the cancer drug specialist Celgene and fellow California-based genome sequencing company Illumina. FierceBiotech has more here.

    Jinn, a three-year-old, London-based logistics and delivery platform that promises same-hour deliveries, has raised $7.5 million in Series A funding led by Samaipata Ventures (a new firm started by the founders of La Nevera Roja, a take-out ordering service sold to Rocket Internet last year for $100 million). Other participants include Elderstreet, Bull Partners, and earlier angel investors. TechCrunch has more here.

    Mintigo, a seven-year-old, San Mateo, Ca.-based predictive marketing analytics company, has raised $15 million in Series D funding led by earlier investor Sequoia Capital. More here.

    Origami Energy, a three-year-old, Cambridge, England-based tech platform for the smart management of distributed energy assets, has raised £13.7 million ($19.4 million) in Series A funding from earlier investors Cambridge Innovation Capital and Octopus Ventures, along with two (unnamed) individuals and Fred.Olsen companies. Tech.eu has more here.

    Persado, a three-year-old, New York-based company whose software can write what the company calls “cognitive content,” meaning it primes readers to engage, has raised $30 million in new funding led by Goldman Sachs. TechCrunch has more here.

    Sawyer, a seven-month-old, Brooklyn, N.Y.-based class-pass platform for kids’ activities, has raised $1.5 million in seed funding from Notation Capital, Collaborative Fund, VC1, and other strategic angel investors. More here.

    ShooWin, a five-month-old, New York-based platform that partners with leagues and sports teams to obtain tickets that can be reserved at low prices, has raised $1.25 million in seed funding led by BBG Ventures. TechCrunch has more here.

    Virool, a four-year-old, San Francisco-based video ad startup, has raised $12 million in Series A funding from Menlo Ventures, Yahoo Japan, Flint Capital and 500 Startups. TechCrunch has more here.

    —–

    New Funds

    New York-based Collaborative Fund has launched Collab+Consumer, a new venture fund focused on consumer products, in cooperation with the Collaborative-backed crowdfunding marketplace CircleUp Network. The firm isn’t disclosing the size of the fund. More here.

    —–

    Exits

    AccorHotels, one of Europe’s largest hotel groups, has acquired Onefinestay, a seven-year-old London-based short-term vacation rental company, for 148 million euros, or $169 million. According to CrunchBase, Onefinestay had raised roughly $80 million from investors, including Index Ventures and Canaan Partners. The New York Times has more here.

    Brocade Communications, a maker of networking gear, is buying Ruckus Wireless, a company with a fast-growing Wi-Fi product roster, for roughly $1.5 billion in cash and stock. Ruckus had gone public in 2012. Fortune has more here.

    MetaMind, a 1.5-year-old, Palo Alto Ca.-based AI startup, has been acquired by Salesforce for undisclosed terms. More here.

    Red Swan Ventures, a seed-stage venture firm born out of Bonobos founder Andy Dunn’s angel investing, has put new deal-making on hold. “Right now, we are kind of on pause,” Dunn tells Venture Capital Dispatch.

    —–

    People

    Larry Begley, a founder of .406 Ventures, is leaving the firm to become the first CFO of its portfolio company CloudHealth Technologies.

    Martina Lauchengco joined the Palo Alto, Ca.-based firm Costanoa Venture Capital last week as operating partner. Lauchengco has spent the last nine years working in management consulting with the outfit Silicon Valley Product Group.

    Vanity Fair takes a look at what sunk Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer‘s media ambitions.

    —–

    Jobs

    In case you missed this last week: longtime VC recruiter Jon Holman is doing a general partner/managing director search for a long-time player in the venture business who has raised a new fund. To apply, you have to be in the Bay Area already or have focused on Bay Area deals. Contact Holman here.

    —–

    Data

    China’s economic slowdown hasn’t dulled investor enthusiasm for the country’s tech companies, shows some surprising new data. According to the Tech in Asia database, investors ploughed $14.5 billion into Chinese tech startups and firms of all sizes in the first three months of the year — more than double what they invested during the same period last year.

    —–

    Essential Reads

    Rethinking ownership in an age of IoT devices.

    Medium is becoming the publishing platform for the The Awl and a dozen other sites.

    WeWork, the co-working real estate startup valued, controversially, at north of $5 billion, is launching WeLive, a residential rental building that offers flexible renting. The program will be tried first in New York and Arlington, Va. TechCrunch has more here.

    —–

    Detours

    An incredible, fast-paced journey through Japan.

    Slacklining.

    —–

    Retail Therapy

    Sailing, 007 style.

    Connie

  • StrictlyVC: April 4, 2016

    Hi, everyone, hope you had a fun weekend.

    —–

    Top News in the A.M.

    Holy data dump. The hidden wealth of some of the world’s most prominent leaders, politicians and celebrities was revealed yesterday by an unprecedented leak of millions of documents that highlight how some of them exploit secretive offshore tax regimes. The BBC has much more here.

    —–

    Peter Thiel’s Other Fund, Mithril Capital Management, Raises $600 Million

    Peter Thiel is having a good month.

    According to a new SEC filing, low-flying Mithril Capital Management, which Thiel co-founded with longtime colleague Ajay Royan in 2012, is out raising its second fund with a $600 million target. Sources say the fund is already oversubscribed, however, and that it may hit $1 billion before it holds a final close.

    Emails and a call to the firm were not returned Friday afternoon.

    The vehicle marks the second giant fund that involves Thiel in one week’s time. The Friday before last, Founders Fund, the early-stage venture firm he co-founded in 2005, closed its sixth fund with $1.3 billion.

    There’s seemingly no end to LPs’ appetite for anything involving Thiel, though it’s also worth noting that aside from his involvement, the firms don’t feature much overlap.

    StrictlyVC sat down with Royan in 2014 to discuss Mithril, which is named after a fictional metal from J. R. R. Tolkien’s fantasy writings. The way he explained its focus then was as a growth-stage fund, one focuses on established companies that are leveraging tech in some way but are not necessarily tech companies. (He compared it, in fact, to a young General Atlantic.)

    Though Mithril has backed some tech companies, including the cloud service marketplace AppDirect; Classy, which provides online fund-raising services for nonprofits; and the data analysis giant Palantir (which is one of Founders Funds’ biggest bets to date), it has numerous bets that better underscore its mandate, including to fund companies too mature for many VCs yet that don’t fit the mold of a private equity investment, either.

    More here.

    —–

    New Fundings

    Comma.ai, a seven-month-old, San Francisco-based autonomous car kit startup, has raised $3.1 million led by Andreessen Horowitz. Recode has more here.

    Entasis Therapeutics, a nearly year-old, Waltham, Ma.-based company focused on the discovery and development of anti-infective products, has raised $50 million in Series B funding led by Clarus, with participation from Frazier Healthcare Partners, Novo A/S, Eventide Funds, and founding investor AstraZeneca. (The company has spun out of AstraZeneca last summer.) More here.

    Garena Interactive Holding, a seven-year-old, Singapore-based online and mobile entertainment and e-commerce company, has raised $170 million in fresh capital led by Malaysia’s state investment arm, Khazanah Nasional Bhd. The deal values the company at $3.75 billion, according to a WSJ source.

    Hungama, a 16-year-old, Mumbai, India-based video and music streaming service, has raised $25 million in new funding led by the Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi, with participation from earlier investors Intel Capital, Bessemer Venture Partners and billionaire investor and trader Rakesh Jhunjhunwala. TechCrunch has more here.

    Influenster, a six-year-old, New York-based product discovery and reviews platform, has raised $8 million in funding from Ebates, an online cashback shopping service that’s owned by Japan’s Rakuten. TechCrunch has more here.

    Reserve, a nearly two-year-old, New York-based restaurant reservation booking and payment app, has raised an undisclosed amount of  funding from Diageo Technology Ventures, the venture arm of the consumer goods giant Diageo. More here.

    Schoold, a year-old, San Francisco-based college planning startup whose app helps students with the college admissions process, including through side-by-side college comparisons and an admissions predictor, has raised $4.5 million in funding from FastForward; entrepreneur and investor Lorne Abony; and several other unnamed individual investors. More here.

    Slack, the three-year-old, San Francisco-based cloud-based workplace collaboration software outfit, has raised $200 million in new funding at a $3.8 billion post-money valuation led by Thrive Capital, with participation from GGV Capital, Comcast Ventures, Sherpa Everest and return backers Accel Partners, Index Ventures, Spark Capital, and Social Capital. Business Insider has more here.

    Strainz, a three-year-old, Las Vegas-based cannabis brand management company, has raised $8 million, including $6 million in Series A funding, from undisclosed investors. More here.

    —–

    New Funds

    Entrepreneurship and Venture Capital (or EVC), a small, Cleveland, Oh.-based investment outfit, is launching an India-focused $50 million early-stage investment fund to fund enterprise software, internet and mobile-focused startups. The firm, led by serial entrepreneur and investor Anjli Jain, will primarily focus on startups operating in the education sector. The Economic Times has more here.

    —-

    IPOs

    ATS Global Markets, a nearly 11-year-old, Lenexa, Ks.-based securities exchange operator, has set its IPO terms to 11.2 million shares being offered at between $17 and $19 per share. Mid-range, the company would be valued at $1.72 billion. Among its biggest shareholders is TA Associates, which owns a 17.1 percent stake. For what it’s worth, this is the company that IPO experts think could crack open the IPO market — assuming the offering is a success. Dealbook has more here.

    SecureWorks, a 17-year-old, Atlanta, Ga.-based company that offers security as a service, could become the first tech IPO of 2016, reports the WSJ.

    —–

    Exits

    After raising two funds, the team of medical investor Thomas McNerney & Partners has decided to wind down the firm, reports VentureWire.

    Reserve, the nearly two-year-old, New York-based reservation startup, has acquired Dash, a payment technology company that had raised $7 million in funding from investors, including Caerus Ventures, Great Oaks Venture Capital and New York Angels. Terms of the deal weren’t disclosed, but Reserve used some new funds (see above, in New Fundings) to get the deal done. TechCrunch has more here.

    —–

    People

    Priscilla Chan, pediatrician, educator, philanthropist, CEO, and wife of Facebook cofounder Mark Zuckerberg, talks with the Mercury News about why she and Zuckerberg recently launched the nonprofit institution The Primary School. It’s worth reading.

    Sam Kass, President Obama’s former senior advisor for nutrition policy and former executive director of Michelle Obama’s Let’s Move campaign, has joined the Campbell Soup-backed venture capital fund Acre Venture Partners as a partner. Fortune has the story here.

    —–

    Jobs

    Wedbush Securities is looking to hire an investment banking associate into its healthcare group. The job is in San Francisco.

    —–

    Essential Reads

    DJI and Yuneec, the Apple and Samsung of drone world, are now entangled in a patent lawsuit. More here.

    The FBI’s method for breaking into a locked iPhone 5c is unlikely to stay secret for long, say senior Apple engineers, adding that once exposed, Apple should be able to plug the encryption hole.

    Tesla has an quality problem: sales of its new Model 3 electric sedan — which will average $42,000, says Tesla CEO Elon Musk — topped 253,000 in the first 36 hours after its unveiling. (Now to keep up with demand for the car, which is slated to enter production in late 2017.)

    —–

    Detours

    MW M4 takes its promo spot to extremes.

    Study says those who call out grammatical errors are, in fact, scientifically “jerks.”

    This just makes us happy.

    —–

    Retail Therapy

    A champagne gun (dreamed up, we’d guess, by someone who has spent too much time in St. Tropez).

    Connie

  • StrictlyVC: April 1, 2016

    Woot! It’s Friday and it’s April Fool’s Day. We are in luck, friends. Well, we’re in luck except for those of you who inadvertently used Google’s Mic drop button to send off important correspondence and have since been fired.

    No column today. (No joke.)

    —–

    Top News in the A.M.

    Fourteen pictures of Tesla’s Model 3, which is as sweet as you knew it would be. Pre-orders alone surged past the 150,000 mark, the company said last night at the car’s unveiling.

    —–

    New Fundings

    1776, a three-year-old, Washington, D.C.-based accelerator program, has raised $7.2 million in fresh funding led by the financial services company Pepper Group. Other participants in the round include Revolution founder Steve Case, the private equity firm Kiddar Capital, and the angel network K Street Capital. More here.

    Abl Schools, an eight-month-old, San Francisco-based startup that’s developing cloud-based scheduling and resource allocation software for schools, has raised $4.5 million in funding led by the education-focused fund Owl Ventures, with participation from First Round Capital and another education-focused investment firm, Reach Capital. Yammer cofounder and former CTO Adam Pisoni is the company’s founder. TechCrunch has more here.

    Blispay, a two-year-old, Baltimore, Md.-based startup that’s giving small and mid-size merchants a way to offer their customers financing plans, has raised $12.75 million in seed funding led by FirstMark Capital, with participation from Accomplice, New Enterprise Associates, and TriplePoint Capital. TechCrunch has more here.

    BlueBee, a four-year-old, Delft, Holland-based DNA analytics startup, has raised €10 million ($11.4 million) in Series A funding from Capricorn ICT Arkiv, Korys, and Biover II. Prior backer Buysse & Partners also joined the round. Tech.eu has more here.

    Kiweno, a two-year-old, Austria-based startup that specializes in self-tests for food intolerances — users can apparently test themselves at home — has raised €7 million ($8 million) from 7NXT and SevenVentures Austria. More here.

    Swanest, a 1.5-year-old, London-based onlinep platform that’s helping self-directed investors to invest in the stock market online, has raised $10 million in seed funding from Andreessen Horowitz. TechCrunch has more here.

    Tok.tv, a three-year-old, Palo Alto, Ca.-based sports-focused social network, has raised $5 million in Series A funding from investors, including Angel Lab,Techstars, Social Starts, XG Ventures, U-Start Club (Opea and Anya Capital), IAG, JetVentures, TEEC Angel Fund and Heyi Capital. More here.

    TransitScreen, a three-year-old, Washington, D.C-based information company that offers its customers a real-time display of the transportation options at their particular location, has raised $800,000 in seed funding from Middle Bridge Partners, 1776 Ventures, Alex Bresler, Mark Decker Jr., and other, unnamed angels. More here.

    TransLoc, a two-year-old, Durham, N.C.-based transportation app developer whose products include a live regional transit map and a bus tracking mobile app, has raised $8 million in funding co-led by SJF Ventures and Fontinalis Partners. Other participants in the round include Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff’s Efficient Capacity fund; Patient Capital Collaborative (PCC), an impact fund; and Thomas McMurray (a general partner at Sequoia Capital in the ’90s). FinSMEs has more here.

    —–

    New Funds

    500 Startups is looking to raise yet another new geo-focused micro fund. This time, the target is $30 million and the country is Canada. More here.

    —–

    Exits

    Whistle, a three-year-old, Washington, D.C.-based “Fitbit for dogs,” has been acquired by Mars Petcare, the pet division of the Mars (famed maker of Snickers and M&Ms.) Terms of the deal aren’t being disclosed. Whistle had raised $21 million from investors, including Melo7 Technologies, Nokia Growth Partners, Queensbridge Venture Partners, Slow Ventures, DCM Ventures, and Qualcomm, among others. CEO Ben Jacobs co-founded Whistle when he was an EIR at DCM in 2012. TechCrunch has the story here.

    —–

    People

    Venture capitalist John Doerr announced yesterday that he’s stepping away from his management duties at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers to become the firm’s first-ever chair. Doerr wrote in a blog post that he’s looking to Kleiner’s tenured partners—Ted Schlein, Beth Seidenberg, and Mary Meeker—to lead the firm with newer managing members, including Mike Abbott, Eric Feng, Wen Hsieh, and Mood Rowghani. Doerr joined Kleiner in 1980.

    Jahan Khanna, who co-founded Sidecar in 2011, has left GM after to join Uber, one month after GM acquired Sidecar’s assets and talent to develop its own car service. According to Fortune, his departure comes after growing disagreements between him and GM.

    A bias suit against Twitter is set to expand across its engineer ranks.

    So much for Kanye West’s plans to make his new album, “The Life of Pablo,” a Tidal exclusive. The artist has now put the album out on Tidal’s competitors, including Spotify, Apple Music, and Google Play Music.

    Mark Zuckerberg for H&M. (One of the better pranks we’ve seen this a.m.)

    —–

    Essential Reads

    More bad news for fantasy sports startups: DraftKings and FanDuel simultaneously announced yesterday that they reached a deal with the NCAA to temporarily suspend college sports on both platforms after this weekend’s March Madness tournament ends. More here.

    Theranos may be officially cooked. The WSJ reported yesterday that according to a 121-page government report, Therano’s blood-testing devices failed to meet the company’s own accuracy standards for an array of tests.

    We do not buy this argument. (Readers, what do you think?)

    —–

    Detours

    April Fool’s Day has been banned in China (for reals).

    Seven of Zaha Hadid’s most striking designs. The famed architect passed away yesterday at 65.

    —–

    Retail Therapy

    Thistle Hill Farm.

    Connie

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