Hi, everyone, happy Friday! As always, we hope you have a terrific weekend; we’ll see you back here Monday.:)

No column today.

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Top News in the A.M.

Uber just ordered 100,000 Mercedes S-Class cars, Manager Magazin reported earlier today. No word yet on what the company is up to. (Intrigue!)

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New Fundings

Cumulus Funding, a five-year-old, Chicago-based consumer finance startup that provides funding to customers in exchange for a percentage of their future earnings, has raised $6 million in Series A funding led by Continental Investors, with participation from HC Technologies, D-W Investments, Bridge Investments and Service Provider Capital. The company also secured $25 million in new debt financing commitments. More here.

HighGround, a four-year-old, Chicago-based cloud HR platform focused on employee engagement, has raised $7.6 million in new funding led by Chicago-based KDWC, with participation from earlier investors, including Columbus Nova Technology Partners and Lightbank. More here.

Kenandy, a six-year-old, Redwood City, Ca.-based company whose enterprise resource planning software is built on the Salesforce platform, has raised $11.5 million in Series B funding from Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Salesforce Ventures and Wilson Sonsini Ventures. FinSMEs has more here.

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New Funds

Atomico, a 10-year-old, London-based venture firm that invests across sectors and stages in startups that are largely located in Europe’s fastest growing tech hubs — particularly London, Stockhold, Helsinki and Berlin — is raising a $750 million fund, shows an SEC filing. (The firm has also confirmed the total to us). The team includes Niklas Zennstrom (who founded Atomico and cofounded Skype previously), Mattias Ljungman, Hiro Tamura, Haroldo Korte, Yann DeVries, as well as Siraj Khaliq, who previously founded The Climate Corporation and who recently joined Atomico. More here.

SV Angel, the seven-year-old, San Francisco-based seed-stage venture firm founded by renowned investor Ron Conway, is targeting $46 million in funding, shows a new SEC filing that states the first sale has yet to occur. The firm is currently managed by Conway’s son, Topher Conway, along with general partners Brian Pokorny, Kevin Carter, and Robert Pollack. It also employs one principal and two associates. SV Angel closed its last fund with $75 million in 2014. The Conways had said on stage at TechCrunch Disrupt last September that their next fund would be closer to $40 million. More here.

Union Square Ventures, a 13-year-old, New York venture capital firm founded by investor Fred Wilson, has raised a $166.8 million fund, according to an SEC filing first spied by Fortune. The fund is the company’s fourth early stage fund and roughly the same size as its third, which closed in 2012. At that time, USV had raised a separate, $175 million “opportunities fund” to make additional investments in its most promising portfolio companies. USV isn’t raising another later-stage fund this time around. More here.

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Exits

Google’s parent company Alphabet isn’t happy with Boston Dynamics, its robotics subsidiary. According to a Bloomberg report, Alphabet executives think that Boston Dynamics is unlikely to generate substantial revenue in the next few years and is hard to work with. Toyota or Amazon could be interested in acquiring Boston Dynamics for their manufacturing or warehouse operations. More here.

Kickstarter has acquired Drip, a five-year-old, Brooklyn-based online music community that had shut down last month after raising $1.5 million in seed funding. No financial terms were disclosed. Engadget has more here.

WeWork, the co-working space headquartered in New York and valued north of $5 billion, is acquiring Welkio, a 1.5-year-old digital sign-in system for guests at an office. According to Crunchbase, Welkio had raised around $400,000 in seed funding. Terms of the acquisition aren’t being disclosed. TechCrunch has more here.

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People

Jack Dorsey says Twitter’s 140 character limit is here to stay.

Mark Zuckerberg just jogged through Beijing’s Tiananmen Square. He also posted a picture of his run on Facebook, which is blocked in China.

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Jobs

The Knight Foundation is hiring a venture investment associate for its in-house venture fund, the Knight Enterprise Fund. The job is in Miami, Fla.

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Essential Reads

Dropbox, the cloud storage startup facing questions about its $10 billion valuation, is expected to authorize a sale of its common stock at a 34 percent discount to its most recent round of private funding, according to BuzzFeed News.

If the F.B.I. wins its court fight to force Apple’s help in unlocking an iPhone, the agency may run into yet another roadblock: Apple’s engineers.

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Detours

Eleven of the most expensive villas in the world.

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Retail Therapy

Fun. Clothes pins coat rack.

Happy St. Paddy’s Day, everyone! (Useless trivia: Americans drink about 600,000 pints of Guinness on an average each day. Today, about 3 million pints of Guinness will be guzzled.)

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Top News in the A.M.

It’s been only four months since Google convinced VMware founder Diane Greene to lead its fledgling cloud-computing business, but she’s already scored a second huge coup for Google: landing Apple as a customer. That’s not good news for Amazon.

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Human Ventures Turns ‘Normals’ Into Founders

A number of startup studios are in the midst of a years-long experiment, providing back-end assistance, office space and mentoring to talented, ambitious people in order to create a startup with them, often based around their expertise.

Betaworks was the first to try it, opening its doors in New York roughly nine years ago. Others, including Expa, a San Francisco-based firm with an office in New York; Science, based in L.A.; and Chicago-based Roniin are among many newer models, each with their own twist.

Human Ventures, which opened its doors in New York roughly a year ago, thinks it has struck on a model that can work, too.

The outfit was founded by entrepreneur Joe Marchese, who’d sold his adtech company to 21st Century Fox for $200 million in late 2014. But Marchese is just the largest among a group of mostly New York-based angel investors who are investors in Human Ventures. Indeed, the now six-person firm, which has raised an undisclosed amount of money, is largely run by CEO Heather Hartnett and Megan O’Connor, who joined the firm last May as its chief growth officer.

They aren’t longtime startup veterans. Hartnett ran business development at the venture firm City Light Capital and, before that, worked in philanthropy, including at the David Lynch Foundation. O’Connor also worked previously in nonprofits, including as a development director at both Pencils of Promise and Goods for Good.

That they’re comparative outsiders is kind of the point of Human Ventures, though.

More here.

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New Fundings

10x Genomics, a four-year-old, Pleasanton, Ca.-based company at work on a DNA sequencing technology to help researchers better identify subtle variations that get overlooked by others, has raised $55 million in Series C funding led by Fidelity Management & Research Company, with participation from Softbank and JS Capital Management, as well as earlier backers Venrock, Foresite Capital, and Paladin Capital. FierceMedicalDevices has more here.

Afluenta, a 3.5-year-old, Buenos Aires, Argentina-based peer-to-peer lending network, has raised $8 million in Series B funding from International Finance Corporation and Elevar Equity. More here.

DiACardio, a seven-year-old, Beer Sheva, Israel-based software company that makes decision-support tools for cardiologists using echocardiography, has raised $1.95 million in a post seed financing round led by Shengjing Grou, with participation from CE Ventures, AltaIR, and earlier backers Agate-Mac Fund and Capital Point. More here.

FloQast, a nearly three-year-old, L.A.-based startup that makes month-end closing software for accountants, has raised $6.5 million in Series A funding co-led by Polaris Partners and Toba Capital, with participation from Amplify.LA, Wavemaker Partners, and Danmar Capital. More here.

Gecko Biomedical, a three-year-old, Paris, France-based medical device company developing polymers to support tissue healing, has raised €22.5m ($25.4 million) in Series A2 funding led by Sofinnova Partners, with participation from Bpifrance and earlier investors Omnes Capital, CM-CIC Innovation and CapDecisif Management. More here.

Handshake, a 5.5-year-old, New York-based maker of wholesale order apps for mobile, has raised $14 million in Series B funding led by Sozo Ventures, with participation from Emergence Capital, SoftTech VC, BOLDstart Ventures, MHS Capital, Point Nine, and Primary Venture Partners. The company has now raised $23.5 million altogether. TechCrunch has more here.

Mandaê, a two-year-old, São Paulo, Brazil-based Shyp-like startup, has raised $2.5 million in funding from Qualcomm Ventures, with participation from earlier investors Monashees+ and Valor Capital Group. The company has now raised $5 million altogether. More here.

M-Files, a 14-year-old, Dallas, Tex.-based company whose document management software helps businesses organize, manage and track their documents and business processes, has raised $36 million in Series B funding led by Partech Ventures, with participation from Finnish Industry Investment and Draper Esprit. More here.

Momo, a young, Vietnam-based company whose mobile payment apps allow users to pay online and make peer-to-peer payments, has raised $28 million in funding from banking giants Standard Chartered Bank and Goldman Sachs. TechCrunch has more here.

Pieces Technologies, a months-old, Dallas, Tex.-based startup that plans to sell integrated monitoring, prediction, workflow optimization and organizational learning services and software to hospitals and health systems, has raised $21.6 million in Series A funding co-led by Pacific Advantage Capital and Jump Capital, with participation from Children’s Health (Dallas), Order of Saint Francis Healthcare System, PCCI, and unnamed angel investors. More here.

Trusted, a 15-month-old, San Francisco-based company that helps parents find child care, has added $1 million to seed funding that it had quietly raised last September. The newest capital, which brings the round to $2.1 million altogether, comes from AngelList cofounder Naval Ravikant and CrunchFund. Earlier investors in the company include Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Slow Ventures, Metamorphic Ventures, Techstars Ventures and Great Oaks Venture Capital. More here.

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New Funds

Founders Fund, the nearly 11-year-old, San Francisco-based venture capital firm co-founded by the billionaire Peter Thiel, has raised more than $1 billion for its latest investment fund, a person with knowledge tells the New York Times. More here.

Pejman Mar Ventures, a three-year-old, Palo Alto, Ca.-based early-stage venture fund, is targeting $75 million for its second fund, shows an SEC filing that lists the fund name as Pear Ventures II. Pejman Mar closed its debut fund with $40 million in 2013. We’d written about the founder-friendly outfit, which spends much of its time on the campuses of Stanford and, increasingly, UC Berkeley, here.

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Exits

SpoonRocket, the venture-backed on-demand food delivery startup that shut down earlier this week, has a buyer in Brazil-based iFood, a food delivery platform looking to dominate the on-demand economy in Latin America, as well as other emerging economies. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. TechCrunch has more here.

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People

Slack CEO Stewart Butterfield is not interested in hiring salespeople to help his fast-growing startup sell to companies. In a talk at the South by Southwest conference this week, he said Slack intends to keep relying on its viral growth, and some paid advertising, to sell its software.

Apple CEO Tim Cook talks with Time about the company’s fight with the FBI. “This seemed like a back door of the back door. You know, trying to force someone to put a back door in, making people more vulnerable. Clearly trampling on civil liberties. I mean, I think it’s hard to debate these things. I think these things are unequivocally what is going on.”

Unmasking Startup L. Jackson, Silicon Valley’s favorite Twitter persona.

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Jobs

Klarna is hiring a U.S. marketing director. (More about the company here.)

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Essential Reads

According to a new report from The Information, Snapchat, like Amazon,  has a “back-weighted” vesting schedule, meaning that fully 40 percent of employees’ stock option grants vest in their fourth year at the company. More, even if an employee sticks around for four years for all of their restricted stock units to vest, the stock expires two and a half years later if the company hasn’t had a “liquidity event” by that point. More here (subscribers only).

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Detours

The curse of people who can’t stop cracking jokes.

Cities where the highest share of young households are making at least $350,000.

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Retail Therapy

Self-lacing Nikes (are here).

It is Wednesday, phew. (This time change is still kicking our arse.)

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Top News in the A.M.

Instagram may change your feed, personalizing it with an algorithm.

First, Amazon patented one-click purchasing buying.  Now it’s pursuing a patent that will allow customers to pay by taking selfies.

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Super Hot Korea Gets a New Venture Fund

Korea is sizzling, and the fact isn’t lost on Altos Ventures or its backers. The early-stage venture firm, with an office on Sand Hill Road and in Seoul, has just raised an oversubscribed $110 million fund to invest exclusively in the country, the second fund of its type for Altos, which raised its last Korea-focused fund with $60 million in 2013. (The firm has also raised four U.S.-focused funds over the last decade.)

It’s easy to understand LPs’ enthusiasm. Korea boasts the world’s 12th economy, with more than 50 million inhabitants and GDP per capita of roughly $25,000, according to the World Bank. Its inhabitants are entrepreneurial, with 28 percent of the population self-employed versus 10 percent in the U.S. Korea also has among the world’s fastest and mostly broadly deployed broadband.

Also very notably, Korea has produced more than a dozen Internet companies worth more than a billion dollars over the last decade or so, including the web search giant Naver, a now publicly traded company valued at $17 billion; the web search company Daum Kakao, formed when Korean internet firm Daum merged with domestic messaging app company Kakao in a $2.9 billion deal in 2014 (it’s now valued at $5.5 billion); and Yello Mobile, whose mobile apps business was valued at $4 billion during its most recent funding round in December.

Yesterday, we talked with Altos Ventures managing director Anthony Lee to get a better picture of what’s going on, and how his firm is going to invest its new fund.

When and why did you start investing in Korea?

About 10 years ago. We started seeing this opportunity that was very much overlooked in many ways. Everyone knows the country for LG and Samsung, but there are now a lot of very real, billion dollars companies, and there’s almost zero Western capital in those companies. Many bootstrapped themselves. They were almost entirely missed by VCs in Silicon Valley.

That must be changing. What other investors are you starting to see who you didn’t see five years ago?

There’s now a domestic VC market, investing $1.5 billion annually in all sorts of things, from Internet stuff to hardware, movies, medical, and manufacturing. We’re seeing a lot more foreign attention now, too. At the later stages, you’re seeing Chinese hedge funds, Japanese corporates — Softbank invested $1 billion in [our portfolio company, the e-commerce startup] Coupang last year. Goldman Sachs is coming in. Blackrock also led an investment in Coupang in late 2014. At the earlier stage, you’re also starting to see, Japanese, Chinese, and more U.S. investors start to venture over there.

There’s a much stronger focus on profitability in Korea than in the U.S., is that right?

Yes. Korean venture has been more merchant banking and corporate in its nature, meaning it invests for very quick returns. The government is a large LP in many funds and they’ve [accordingly been] optimized for lower risk. We sometimes find ourselves pushing companies in the direction of growth and not profitability. At the same time, of the 30 companies we’ve invested in there, we’ve only had one loss. It’s a bit emblematic of the way Korean entrepreneurs work. They hate to fail.

Much more here.

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New Fundings

Credly, a 3.5-year-old, New York-based online platform for verifying, sharing and managing digital credentials and badges (to recognize students or employees, for example), has raised $2.5 million in seed funding co-led by University Ventures and New Markets Venture Partners, with participation from Lumina Foundation Venture Fund, City & Guilds Group, and Lion Brothers Company. EdSurge has more here.

Crowdstreet, a three-year-old, Portland, Ore.-based crowdfunding marketplace that connects accredited investors with real estate investments, has raised $3.5 million in Series A funding led by Rally Ventures, with participation from seed investors Green Visor Capital, Seven Peaks Ventures and Portland Seed Fund. The company has now raised $4.8 million altogether. GeekWire has more here.

eeGeo, a 5.5-year-old, U.K.-based startup focused on interactive outdoor and indoor 3D mapping, has raised $5 million in funding led by NetSol Technologies, a company that provides IT solutions to the asset finance industry. TechCrunch has more here.

HealthTell, a five-year-old, San Ramon, Ca.-based diagnostics company that aims to commercialize panels for tests for autoimmune diseases like lupus, has raised $26 million in Series B funding led by Third Point Ventures. More here.

InstaRem, a two-year-old, Singapore-based international remittance payments startup, has raised $5 million in Series A funding led by Vertex Ventures, with participation from Fullerton Financial Holdings and existing investor Global Founders Capital. TechCrunch has more here.

Linmon Pictures, a 1.5-year-old, Shanghai, China-based boutique entertainment studio, has raised $77 million in Series B funding led by the Chinese private equity firm Hony Capital, with participation from Tencent and Mango V Foundation. DealStreetAsia has more here.

Prenetics, a seven-year-old, Hong Kong-based DNA testing technology company, has raised $10 million in Series A funding led by Ping An Ventures, the venture arm of one of China’s largest insurance groups, with participation from Venturra Capital, 500 Startups, COENT Venture, and Capital Union Investments. TechCrunch has more here.

Ring, a five-year-old, Santa Monica, Ca.-based company that makes Wi-Fi-connected video doorbells that allow users to remotely see who’s standing at their door from their phones, has raised $61.2 million in Series C funding led by Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, with participation from Richard Branson. The round brings the company’s fundraising total to $93.7 million. Fortune has more here.

Striim, a nearly four-year-old, Palo Alto, Ca.-based streaming analytics and intelligence platform, has added $10 million in funding to its Series B round, which now stands at $30 million. The fresh capital came from Atlantic Bridge Capital. Earlier investors include Intel Capital, Summit Partners, Panorama Venture Partners, Regis McKenna and Frank Caufield. More here.

Usermind, a nearly three-year-old, Seattle-based enterprise business operations platform, has raised $14.5 million in Series B funding led by Menlo Ventures, with participation from earlier backers Andreessen Horowitz and CRV. GeekWire has more here.

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New Funds

Contour Venture Partners, a 10-year-old, New York-based early-stage venture capital firm, has closed its third fund with $56 million in capital commitments, including from the New York State Common Retirement Fund. (The firm says it was targeting $50 million.) Contour also raised a $25 million “opportunity” fund to invest in the later rounds of its more mature portfolio companies. Contour — which focuses on financial services, enterprise SaaS and digital media sectors, with a particular emphasis on startups in New York City — now has $145 million under management. More here.

New Crop Capital, a seven-month-old, Washington, D.C.-based venture capital fund that  invests exclusively in plant and culture-based alternatives to animal agriculture, along with tech platforms that make plant-based eating easier, is announcing a $25 million, debut seed-stage fund. More here.

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Exits

Verizon has acquired Volicon, a 12-year-old, Burlington, Ma.-based maker of video capture and monitoring software for TV broadcasters, for undisclosed terms. According to CrunchBase, Volicon had raised an undisclosed amount of funding from Globespan Capital Partners, Brookline Capital Partners, and Naftali Investments. TechCrunch has more here.

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People

Etsy, the Brooklyn-based online marketplace, just expanded paid parental leave benefits for its 800-plus employees worldwide to 26 weeks, effective April 1. The company says it will no longer distinguish between the concept of “primary” and “secondary” caregivers, either.

Noah Lichtenstein, a business development executive who joined Cowboy Ventures as a partner in January 2013, announced on Facebook yesterday that he’s leaving his full-time role and transitioning to venture-partner.

Pope Francis already tweets and may soon start posting on Instagram, too. Italian newswire ANSA reports that the pontiff will make his Instagram debut on March 19 using the handle Franciscus.

Nick Tomaino, a former business development executive with Coinbase,  is joining the Russia-based venture firm Runa Capital as a principal in San Francisco (h/t: Fortune’s Dan Primack).

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Data

Lex Machina just released its annual patent litigation year-in-review report. Some highlights: 5,819 patent cases were filed in 2015, up 15 percent from 2014; 43.7 percent of all 2,540 patent cases filed in 2015 were filed in the Eastern District of Texas; Samsung overtook Apple as the most-sued patent defendant in 2015 (64 cases versus 57 for Apple); Amazon, HP, LG Electronics, Dell and HTC are among the top patent defendants. More here.

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Essential Reads

Venture capital’s answer to high-priced housing: dorms for grown-ups.

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Detours

Turning rescue dogs into Broadway stars.

Findings from the newest World Happiness Report.

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Retail Therapy

What the what.

Good morning, everyone! It is the Ides of March. Prepare yourself (for a whole lot of Ides of March references).

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Top News in the A.M.

In the final game of their historic match this morning, Google’s artificially intelligent Go-playing computer system has defeated Korean grandmaster Lee Sedol, finishing the best-of-five series with four wins and one loss.

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Michael Goguen’s Counter-Complaint Calls Accuser an “Exotic Dancer” Looking for a “Payday”

Michael Goguen, the longtime venture capitalist who was asked to leave Sequoia Capital following a stunning breach of contract complaint, yesterday filed a counter complaint in San Mateo County Court that proposes the accusations against him are a myth.

In reaction to claims that Goguen sexually and emotionally abused a woman named Amber Laurel Baptiste for more than a decade, and then failed to follow through on an agreement to pay her $40 million to keep her claims confidential, Goguen is now countersuing Baptiste for extortion.

He’s not holding any punches. In his countersuit, Goguen’s legal team paints a picture of a woman in love with him, and features a long list of text and email messages from Baptiste to underscore that depiction.

Among them: “The love that I hold in my heart for you was instant. It is a perfect love. And to me it is the perfect way to love someone. It is forever and unconditional;” “I love our visits. I feel so blessed to have met you and have been able to maintain a special relationship with you. I can only hope that it continues;” “I know it feels really good when we are together and to me it feels so perfect and I never want to let go of you;” and “I miss you so Much [sic]. My Body Misses you so Much. I love you so Much.”

The counter-complaint also features pictures that Baptiste, born in 1980, had allegedly sent to Goguen of herself dressed in lacy lingerie.

Goguen had joined Sequoia Capital in 1996, five years after getting his master’s degree in electrical engineering from Stanford. (The now-52-year-old studied electrical engineering as an undergrad at Cornell.)

More here.

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New Fundings

Arterys, a 4.5-year-old, San Francisco-based cloud platform to enable clinicians to visualize and quantify blood flow non-invasively in the human body, has raised more than $12 million in Series A funding led by Emergent Medical Partners. Other participants in the round include GE Ventures, the Stanford-StartX Fund, Norwich Ventures, Asset Management Ventures, AME Cloud Ventures and Morado Ventures. More here.

ChartIQ, a four-year-old, Charlottesville, Va.-based startup that provides HTML5 financial charting for capital markets, has raised $4 million in Series A funding led by Illuminate Financial, with participation from ValueStream and Tribeca Angels. More here.

Couchbase, a seven-year-old, Mountain View, Ca.-based developer of Couchbase Server, an open-source, NoSQL, document-oriented database, has raised $30 million in Series F funding led by Sorenson Capital. Earlier backers also joined the round, including Accel Partners, Adams Street Partners, Ignition Partners, Mayfield, North Bridge Venture Partners and WestSummit Capital. Bitcoin Agile has more here.

Crate Technology, a three-year-old startup that’s been developing an open-source SQL database technology (from offices in San Francisco, Berlin, and Dornbirn, Austria), has raised $4 million in fund led by Dawn Capital. Other participants include Sunstone Capital, DFJ Esprit, Speedinvest and Solomon Hykes. TechCrunch has more here.

Forge, a three-year-old, San Francisco-based mobile apps developer company, has raised $4.5 million in seed financing led by True Ventures and Resolute Ventures, with participation from WME Ventures. More here.

Kurio, a two-year-old, Jakarta, Indonesia-based news reader app, has raised $5 million from another news reader app, Japan-based Gunosy. TechCrunch has more here.

Librestream, a 13-year-old, Winnipeg-based mobile video collaboration platform for end markets like energy and field services, has raised $8.2 million in funding from Emerald Technology Ventures, with participation from BDC Capital. More here.

Marley Spoon, a two-year-old, Berlin-based cook-at-home food delivery service that competes with the likes of Blue Apron, Plated, and HelloFresh, has raised $17 million in Series B funding from QD Ventures, Kreos Capital, the media-for-equity fund GMPVC, and earlier backers, including Lakestar. TechCrunch has more here.

Next Insurance, a three-month-old, Palo Alto, Ca.-based online platform for helping small businesses find and obtain insurance, has raised $13 million in seed funding from Zeev Ventures, TLV Partners and Ribbit Capital. The company’s cofounders previously sold their bill-payment mobile app developer Check to Intuit for $360 million. VentureBeat has more here.

NimbeLink, a three-year-old, Plymouth, Mn.-based company that sells cellular modems, cellular gateway systems, and developer services, has raised $2.5 million in new funding from First Analysis. More here.

Outpost Medicine, a brand-new, Menlo Park, Ca.-based biopharma startup focused on treating urologic and gynecologic diseases and disorders, has raised $41 million led by Frazier Healthcare Partners, with participation from Adams Street Partners, Novo A/S, and Vivo Capital. Outpost was recently formed by Frazier Healthcare Partners and Japan’s largest drugmaker, Takeda Pharmaceutical Co. More here.

PowerCore, a year-old, East Palo Alto, Ca-based online platform that pairs game players with digital rewards and merchandise, has raised $2 million in seed funding from 500 Startups, East Ventures, Golden Gate Ventures, and Cherubic Ventures. The outlet e27 has more here.

Sight Sciences, a six-year-old, Menlo Park, Ca.-based ophthalmic medical device startup, has raised $7 million in Series B funding led by Hicks Equity Partners, with participation from earlier backers Scientific Health Development and Allegro Investment Fund. FinSMEs has more here.

Skyport Systems, a three-year-old, Mountain View, Ca..-based enterprise security architecture company, has raised $30 million in Series C funding led by Google Ventures, with participation from Cisco Investments, Thomvest Ventures, Northgate Capital, InstantScale and earlier investors Index Ventures, Sutter Hill Ventures and Intel Capital. TechCrunch has more here.

Spirox, a four-year-old, Menlo Park, Calif.-based company developing minimally-invasive devices for patients with nasal obstruction, has raised $45 million in Series C funding led by KKR, with participation from HealthQuest Capital and earlier investors Aisling Capital, Aperture Venture Partners and Venrock. Reuters has more here.

Hi, everyone, happy Monday — hope you had a wonderful weekend!

(We’re shooting off SVC a little earlier this a.m. as we have somewhere to be.)

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Top News in the A.M.

While the Justice Department wages a public fight with Apple over access to a locked iPhone, government officials are privately debating how to resolve a prolonged standoff with another technology company, WhatsApp, over access to its popular instant messaging application. The New York Times has more here.

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VC Michael Goguen Hit with Explosive Lawsuit

Michael Goguen, a longtime partner at Sequoia Capital who joined the tony Sand Hill Road firm roughly 20 years ago, has been named in an extraordinary breach of contract lawsuit that accuses him of sexually mistreating a woman he met in 2001, then refusing to honor a financial arrangement they made in more recent years to keep her from suing him.

Filed in San Mateo County court on Tuesday of last week, Goguen is accused of having abused the plaintiff, named Amber Laurel Baptiste, “sexually, physically and emotionally for over 13 years.” More centrally, states the complaint: When Baptiste “could no longer tolerate his behavior,” Goguen signed a contract to pay her $40 million “as compensation for the horrors she suffered at his hands.” But “after paying her $10 million, Mr. Goguen refused to honor the rest of his agreement.”

Baptiste could not be reached for comment Friday night. Her attorney, Patricia Glaser of the L.A.-based litigation firm GlaserWeil, is traveling in Israel, according to her office; she has not responded to an emailed request for comment.

Goguen’s attorney, Diane Doolittle, the co-chair of the national trial practice at Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan, meanwhile wrote us a statement Friday night, saying: “On Monday, we will be filing a legal cross-complaint against [Baptiste] alleging extortion. The cross complaint will include an enormous amount of evidence, and cite contemporaneous emails and texts, that will help paint a full and complete picture of this entire matter. We will rely on all of this evidence to mount the most vigorous defense possible in court.”

Either way, Goguen looks to be out of a job suddenly. Reached Friday night for more information, a Sequoia spokesman wrote us that, “We first learned of these claims yesterday. We understand that these allegations of serious improprieties are unproven and unrelated to Sequoia. Nevertheless, we decided that Mike’s departure was the appropriate course of action.”

In Baptiste’s complaint, she is described as a “victim of human trafficking since she was 15.” It says that she was “brought to America in 2001,” “sold as a dancer to a strip club,” and that shortly after her arrival, she met Goguen at a Texas strip club and was soon submitting to his “constant sexual abuse” and “relying on his promise that he would help her break free of the human traffickers who held her in perpetual debt.”

Continues the complaint, “Unbeknownst to Ms. Baptiste, Mr. Goguen was a worse predator than the human traffickers who were keeping her in bondage.”

More here.

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New Fundings

Alooma, a 2.5-year-old, Tel Aviv, Israel-based startup that helps companies process and work with big data in real time delivered as a cloud service, has raised $11.2 million in Series A funding led by Lightspeed Venture Partners and Sequoia Capital. TechCrunch has more here.

Future Finance, a nearly two-year-old, Dublin, Ireland-based startup that provides loans to students using big data algorithms to assess their credit-worthiness, has raised £119 million ($171 million) — £19 million in equity and £100 million toward future loans made through the platform. Future Finance’s equity investors include QED Investors (a major VC in U.S. fintech), Blackstone Strategic Opportunity Fund, Colchis Capital, Invus Opportunities, KCK, DW Partners, Fenway Summer Ventures, Ridge Road Partners and 1/0 Capital. Goldman Sachs has also been backing the company, providing funds for the £25 million ($35.8 million) in loans paid out on on the platform to date. TechCrunch has more here.

LendInvest, a 2.5-year-old, U.K.-based online marketplace for property finance, has raised £17 million ($25 million) in Series B funding from Atomico. It’s the company’s second round in nine months; last June, LendInvest raised £22 million ($33 million) in Series A funding from Beijing Kunlun, a listed Chinese technology company. LendInvest has now raised $285 million altogether. More here.

Noodle.ai, a new, San Francisco-based data science company incubated by TPG Growth and led by previous executives from MicrosStrategy, Infosys, GE Digital and IBM Watson, has raised a Series A round. The amount isn’t being disclosed. More here.

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New Funds

Cherubic Ventures, a 5.5-year-old, early-stage venture firm with offices in Beijing, Taipei, San Francisco, and Shanghai, is looking to raise up to $120 million for its newest fund, reports the outlet e27. The firm, which focuses on SaaS, virtual reality, robotics, machine Learning, and cross-border e-commerce across the U.S., China and Southeast Asia, has already closed on more than $70 million, it says.

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Exits

The app data and insights platform App Annie continues a shopping spree with the acquisition of AppScotch, an app marketing data company. Terms of the deal aren’t being announced, but the roughly 10 employees of AppScotch — which launched two years ago and raised roughly $1 million in seed funding from Eastern European angel investors — have already joined App Annie at its downtown San Francisco headquarters. More here.

The New York Times is expanding its native ad studio with the acquisition of HelloSociety, a digital marketing agency owned by Science in an all-cash deal whose price isn’t being disclosed. TechCrunch has more here.

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People

Napster cofounder and early Facebook exec Sean Parker on whether Twitter survives (in conversation with Bloomberg’s Emily Chang):  “Twitter is a victim of their own success in so many ways. They are a company that—had it not been for the media’s infatuation with Twitter—Twitter never would have built an enormous user base. But that came at a cost. And the cost was the lack of deep, close-knit community between its users. Twitter was never an accurate reflection of your real social network. It didn’t have the same level of intimate interaction. I don’t think Twitter would’ve existed had it not been for its relationship with celebrity and media. But at the same time, I think its relationship with celebrity and media is its biggest weakness.”

Alphabet Chairman Eric Schmidt had dinner with the Telegraph and the question arose of whether AI will replace people in roles beyond board game champions. His answer:  “There’s no question that as [AI] becomes more pervasive, people doing routine, repetitive tasks will be at risk . . .  I understand the economic arguments, but this technology benefits everyone on the planet, from the rich to the poor, the educated to uneducated, high IQ to low IQ, every conceivable human being. It genuinely makes us all smarter, so this is a natural next step.”

A whistleblower has sued Volkswagen, saying he was fired for trying to stop the company from deleting evidence for weeks after U.S. authorities began their investigation into excess emissions by its cars.

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Jobs

Correlation Ventures is hiring a pre-MBA associate. The job is in Palo Alto, Ca.

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Essential Reads

How gut bacteria are shaking up cancer research.

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Detours

Super recognizers.

Introducing “The Nobby.”

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Retail Therapy

Polaroll. (A step too far, perhaps.)

Friday! Whoop, whoop!

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Top News in the A.M.

General Motors today announced it’s acquiring Cruise Automation, a 2.5-year-old, San Francisco-based startup at work on sensors that turn regular vehicles into ones that can drive themselves. Terms of the deal aren’t being disclosed, but outlets, including Fortune, say GM is shelling out more than $1 billion. According to CrunchBase, Cruise had raised $18.8 million from investors, including Homebrew, Founder Collective, Flight Ventures, Maven Ventures and CrunchFund. The company was incubated at Y Combinator and marks its biggest exit to date. TechCrunch has more here.

Looks like that Slack round nearing a close, and at a $4 billion valuation. Business Insider has more here.

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Your Favorite Accelerators, Ranked

For the fifth year in a row, biz school professors Yael Hochberg of Rice University and Susan Cohen of the University of Richmond have ranked the many accelerator programs now up and running in the U.S. as a way of helping making sense of which are worth the time, effort, and, often, equity — and which aren’t.

It’s no small undertaking. According to their findings, there are currently 160 accelerators in operation, representing year-over-year growth of around 50 percent dating back to 2005, when pioneer Y Combinator first came on the scene.

Some have come and gone. In fact, many outfits don’t survive more than a couple of years. Yet there are often upstarts to replace them, a growing number of which are corporate programs. (Research from Hochberg and Cohen show that 26 such corporate accelerator programs sprung up last year, compared with one or two back in 2011.)

If you click through to TechCrunch, you can see which programs rank most highly overall. We talked with the professors yesterday to find out how they ranked everyone, and what the difference between the buckets they’ve established — including platinum, gold, and silver — really means.

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New Fundings

8Dol.com, a three-year-old, China-based online-to-offline startup that enables college students to order food and drinks online, then delivers it to campuses, has raised $30 million in an extended Series B round led by the cosmetics company Longrich, with participation from Jiangsu Suda Tiangong Venture Capital. DealStreetAsia has more here.

Aspyrian Therapeutics, a six-year-old, San Diego, Ca.-base biotech company that’s developing precision targeted oncologic drugs to treat solid tumors, has raised $40 million as part of a Series B financing that was mostly provided by Rakuten CEO Hiroshi Mikitani, through his personal investment companies. More here.

Bustle, a three-year-old, Brooklyn, N.Y.-based digital media outlet that targets millennial women, has raised $11.5 million in new funding led by Saban Capital Group, with participation from GGV Capital and earlier investors Time Warner Investments, General Catalyst Partners and Social Capital. Business Insider has more here. Crimson Hexagon, an 8.5-year-old, Boston-based social media analytics company, has raised $20 million in growth equity financing from Sageview Capital. TechCrunch has more here.

Flipkart, the 8.5-year-old, Bangalore, India-based e-commerce company, is looking to raise upwards of $1 billion in new equity funding, likely in a down round, says TechCrunch. The company had reportedly raised money at a $15.5 billion valuation last year.

Inmoji, a two-year-old, Boston-based ad tech company that connects brands with consumers on mobile messaging using interactive emojis, has raised $5 million in Series A funding led by healthcare executive John Wigneswaran. Inmoji had previously raised $2.4 million in seed funding from ex-PayPal Media COO David Chang, Paypal Start Tank and Accomplice. More here.

Propel, a year-old, San Jose, Ca.-based maker of product lifecycle management software, has raised $4.2 million in Series A funding led by Cloud Apps Capital Partners, with participation from Salesforce Ventures and SignalFire. More here.

Soothe, a three-year-old, L.A.-based on-demand massage company, has raised $35 million in funding led by earlier backer The Riverside Company. Forbes has more here.

Whistle Sports, a seven-year-old, New York-based digital sports media content company, has raised $20 million in Series C funding from Tegna, NBC Sports Ventures, Sky Media and Emil Capital Partners. Variety has more here.

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IPOs

Depressing statistics from Renaissance Capital: There have been 5 IPOs priced so far this year, a -83 percent change from last year. Meanwhile, the Renaissance IPO Index has returned -12.0 percent so far this year, compared to -2.7 percent for the S&P 500.

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People

Vanity Fair speaks with former Zenefits employees about co founder and former CEO Parker Conrad, “brogrammer” culture, and what really happened in those office stairwells.

Alphabet’s executive chairman, Eric Schmidt, has been caught taking pictures with a, gulp, iPhone.

A group of former Skype technologists, backed by the co-founder of the messaging platform, has introduced a new version of its own messaging service that promises end-to-end encryption for all conversations, including by video. It’s called Wire. More here.

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Essential Reads

After commissioning two independent lab tests, the WSJ says The Honest Company is using an ingredient in its laundry detergent that it pledged to avoid.

Inside Instacart’s fraught quest to become the Uber of groceries.

“I ran the numbers on the burn rate and well, [w]e can’t talk about this here. Meet me in the hot air balloon.”

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Detours

New Order, 1933 style.

Okay, so no need to see that “Taken” trilogy, ever.

Mixing random photos using neural networks.

—–

Retail Therapy

Vintage trunk sound system.

It is Thursday! (Right?) Hope you have a great one, everyone.

No column this morning.

—–

Top News in the A.M.

Both Box and Square released better-than-expected results on earnings calls yesterday. More here and here.

Interesting: A startup backed by Sean Parker called The Screening Room is reportedly trying to sell Hollywood studios and exhibitors anti-piracy technology that would allow them to stream new releases to people’s homes on the the same day they hit theaters. Variety has the story here.

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New Fundings

4Tech, a five-year-old, Galway, Ireland-based company that makes a transcatheter device designed to allow clinicians to repair a diseased tricuspid heart valve in a reproducible interventional procedure, has raised $29 million in Series B funding co-led by Valiance and RMM, with participation from NeoMed Management. More here.

Avametric, a five-month-old, San Francisco-based fashion software company at work on a technology to help online shoppers see how garment will fit on 3-D digital images of themselves, has raised $10.5 million in funding led by Khosla Ventures. VentureBeat has more here.

Constant Therapy, a three-year-old, Boston-based company whose brain app is designed to help with stroke rehabilitation, traumatic brain therapy, and indications of Alzheimer’s disease, has raised $2 million in Series A funding led by Golden Seeds. Kapor Capital, Launchpad Venture Group, Pond Capital and Community Health Network of Connecticut also took part in the round. MedCity News has more here.

HealthTell, a four-year-old, Arizona-based blood diagnostics startup that can allegedly assess a patient’s immune response to 30 conditions with a single drop of blood, has raised $26 million in what looks to become a $35.5 million funding round, according to an SEC filing flagged by MedCity News. The company’s previous investors include Vital Venture Capital, Paladin Capital Group, Acadia Woods Partners, Cambridge Global Capital and the Broe Group. More here.

Icertis, a seven-year-old, Bellevue, Wa.-based company that makes enteprise contract management software, has raised $15 million Series B led by Ignition Partners. The company has now raised $21 million to date. TechCrunch hasmore here.

IndiaMART, a 20-year-old, India-based company that runs an online B2B platform for small and medium businesses that connects them with global suppliers, has raised an undisclosed amount of Series C funding led by Amadeus Capital. WestBridge Capital and Accion Frontier Inclusion Fund also participated in the round, along with earlier backer Intel Capital. VCCircle has more here.

Julie Desk, a two-year-old, Paris-based startup whose virtual assistant software automates the email back-and-forth typically associated with scheduling meetings and appointments, has raised €600,000 in new funding from SIDE Capital, a venture firm that counts a number of prominent French entrepreneurs as board members, including Frederic Mazzella of Blablacar and Thierry Petit of Showroomprivé. TechCrunch has more here.

Justworks, a 3.5-year-old, New York-based benefits and payroll company that competes with Zenefits, has raised $33 million in Series C funding, bringing the total amount the company has raised to $53 million. Redpoint Ventures led the round, with participation from earlier backers Bain Capital Ventures,Thrive Capital and Index Ventures. Venture Capital Dispatch has more here.

Nom.com, a months-old, San Francisco-based interactive video community and app for foodies that presents a mix of professional cooks alongside an open-ended platform that will let anyone direct, produce and host their own food show, has raised $4.7 million in funding from Cheryl Cheng of Blue Run Ventures, GV managing partner David Krane (but not GV itself), WI Harper Group, Khosla Ventures, SV Angel, PSY, actor Jared Leto, chef Corey Lee and American restaurateur Ming Tsai. Nom was founded by YouTube cofounder Steve Chen. TechCrunch has more here.

Penrose Studios, a year-old, San Francisco-based startup that’s developing its own in-VR creation tools in a bid to become the Pixar of VR and tell stories in immersive worlds, has raised $8.5 million in seed funding. Accelerate-IT Ventures led the round; it was joined by TransLink Capital, 8 Angel, Suffolk Equity, and several angels. TechCrunch has more here.

Resolver, a 16-year-old, Toronto-based maker of risk and incident management software, has raised C$4 million (about $3 million) in new funding from earlier backer Klass Capital. FinSMEs has more here.

WeWork, the six-year-old, New York-based shared-office-space startup, has raised roughly $430 million in new funding led by the Beijing-based private-equity company Hony Capital and Legend Holdings, its parent company. WeWork executives tell the WSJ the company was assigned a valuation of about $16 billion with the financing. More here.

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New Funds

Mucker Capital in L.A. has raised $45 million for its third fund, Mucker III. The 4.5-year-old firm said that it will continue to invest in software and services startups and continue to focus on the greater Los Angeles area. In addition, it will invest in seed and pre-seed stage companies through MuckerLab, a new accelerator program. TechCrunch has more here.

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Exits

HoneyBook, the three-year-old, San Francisco-based event management platform, has reportedly spent a “few million” dollars to acquire AppMyDay, a 3.5-year-old, Tel Aviv, Israel-based service focusing on event photography. The exact sum of the deal was not disclosed, but “it’s definitely enough to recoup AppMyDay’s investments from Firstime Venture Capital and Star Farm Ventures,” says Geektime. (According to CrunchBase, AppMyDay had raised $900,000.) More here.

Publicly traded Tableau Software has acquired HyPer, an early-stage German startup born in academia that has developed an advanced database technology. CrunchBase doesn’t turn up any funding for the company. TechCrunch has more here.

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People

Vanity Fair has just now published photos by Annie Leibovitz from its New Establishment Summit, held in San Francisco last October. You know they are dated because beleaguered Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes is seated in the middle of things smiling.

Entrepreneur Elon Musk isn’t crazy about the way an American Enterprise Institute meeting was characterized earlier this week, with an earlier report describing it as secretive brainstorming session for top minds to stop Donald Trump’s ascendancy. Tweeted Musk yesterday: “The AEI meeting wasn’t secret and I was only there for a few hours to talk about Mars and sustainable energy. Nothing to do with Trump.”

Take note, friends abroad. Google’s Eric Schmidt says driverless cars could hit U.K. streets, too.

Sonos, the smart home audio company, has announced that it will be laying off an untold number of employees as it moves into new directions, including voice recognition. More here.

Yahoo has appointed two new independent directors in advance of its meeting this week with Starboard Value, the activist hedge fund that’s led the push for the company to sell its core business. The two sides will discuss whether they can avoid a proxy fight for control of Yahoo.

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Jobs

Nokia Growth Partners is looking to hire an analyst for a two- to three-year commitment. Looks like you can work in either Geneva or Helsinki.

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Data

China’s country’s government-backed venture funds raised about 1.5 trillion yuan ($231 billion) in 2015, tripling the amount under management in a single year to 2.2 trillion yuan, according to data compiled by the consultancy Zero2IPO Group. That’s the biggest pot of money for startups in the world and almost five times the sum raised by other venture firms last year globally, according to London-based consultancy Preqin. Bloomberg takes a look at great tech startup experiment here.

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Essential Reads

Ola, the India-based Uber rival, has closed its food and grocery ordering services less than one year after launching them. The company says it’s focusing squarely on mobility instead. More here.

Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post has become the latest casualty of China’s tightening grip on the media as internet censors shut down its microblogging accounts on Sina Weibo, Tencent Weibo, and WeChat.

Stanford wins. Its scientists say they’ve created a renewable plastic from carbon dioxide and plants.

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Detours

The incredible rise and final hours of fracking king Aubrey McClendon.

25 songs that tell us where music is going.

A most beautiful bike ride.

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Retail Therapy

Frank Zappa’s house can be yours $9 million. (Bonus/Warning: You may still sense Zappa’s “electricity” there.)

Hi, everyone, happy Wednesday! Sorry for the super abbreviated newsletter this a.m; running off to yet another field trip. More tomorrow!

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Top News in the A.M.

Google Search now has travel guides to help plan your vacation.

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NewCo Raises New Funding Led by True Ventures

NewCo, a nearly four-year-old, San Francisco-based company that produces city-like festivals that acquaint attendees with local businesses, has raised roughly $4.3 million in fresh funding, shows a new SEC filing that states the outfit has raised just north of $6 million to date.

Cofounder and CEO John Battelle tells us larger number includes an earlier convertible note that’s been turned into equity. (The company received that note of $1.7 million early last year.)

The new funding was led by earlier investor True Ventures, and included participation from other previous backers Obvious Ventures, Transmedia Capital, Bloomberg Beta, other early angel investors, and Battelle himself.

NewCo organizes its events around target cities, with participating companies planning events for attendees in their offices. Last year, the 17-person startup orchestrated 11 events. This year, says Battelle, NewCo has plans for 15 cities, including in hubs where it hasn’t hosted events in the past, including London, Detroit, Toronto, and Mexico City.

More here.

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New Fundings

iFlix, a year-old, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia-based company that rivals Netflix in Southeast Asia, has raised $45 million in new funding from the British satellite TV operator Sky. TechCrunch has more here.

Indochino, a nine-year-old, Vancouver, B.C.-based made-to-measure menswear brand, has raised $30 million in funding from China-based clothing manufacturer Dayang Group. The company had previously raised more than $17 million in funding from Highland Capital Partners and Madrona Venture Group, among others. TechCrunch has more here.

Facebook has made an image filtering acquisition, buying Masquerade, an app that adds fantastical filters to smartphone-generated images. Much more here.

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Jobs

AltspaceVR, a venture-backed virtual reality communications company, is looking to hire a business development manager. The job is in Redwood City, Ca.

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Essential Reads