Happy Monday, everyone. Did you catch last night’s NBA Finals game? What an incredible series this is! (Go Cavs!)

—–

Top News in the A.M.

According to a new report from The Information, Facebook has just ditched its plans to spend as much as $1 billion to build and launch a satellite to provide Internet service on continents such as Africa. Facebook’s decision follows a pull-back by Google regarding a big investment in satellites. More here. (Subscription required.)

Apple‘s eagerly anticipated Worldwide Developers Conference kicks off at 10 a.m. PST. Among other things, Apple is expected to finally reveal its new streaming music service and to introduce tools that provide app developers with deeper access to the Apple Watch. The Verge already has a live blog up and running here.

—–

The Opportunity: Servicing the On-Demand Service Worker

While consumers wade through the ever-ballooning list of brands wanting to wash their clothes, clean their homes, park their cars and deliver them dinner, a newer crop of startups has begun catering to the needs of those contract workers who make the on-demand economy possible.

They’re smart to be zeroing in these independent contractors. On-demand employees represent a huge and growing wave of people who now operate as free agents, with the freedom and flexibility — and often instability — that’s part of life without a corporate parent. In fact, Intuit has somewhat famously predicted that fully 40 percent of U.S. workers will be “contingent” workers by 2020.

Patricia Nakache, a general partner at Trinity Ventures who has led deals in on-demand companies, including Eat Club, calls 1099, or contract, workers  part of a generational shift. “Millennials are much less receptive to the monolithic education or work-experience notion that, ‘I’m going to have this job with a single company for 10 or 12 years or take all my classes from one-four year institution,’” she says. “They’re really beginning to question the boundaries of those experiences.”

And VCs have begun meeting with companies that cater to them.

For example, Homebrew cofounder Satya Patel points to several companies that hope to serve the most immediate needs of contract workers — which, in most cases, is frequent and steady work. Peers, for one, a San Francisco-based, still-in-beta startup launched by RelayRides founder Shelby Clark, wants to make it easier for people to find, compare and manage on-demand work opportunities. (It also points them to tax, financial and legal resources.) Kung Fu, an eight-month-old San Francisco-based company, is similarly building a platform to help people earn income based on their location and skills.

“I definitely think there is a major opportunity” here, says Patel.

Nakache is meanwhile seeing more startups approach contract workers from specific service angles. One such group are applicant tracking systems startups that — unlike predecessors catering to larger companies — are designed for batch processing. OnBoardIQ, an eight-month-old, San Francisco-based outfit, is among the newest startups trying to streamline the process hiring hundreds of people quickly. Playbook HR, a 10-month-old, San Francisco-based company, also began life as an applicant tracking system (though, sorry investors, Intuit acquired it in March).

According to Nakache, WorkPop, a year-old, L.A.-based company that’s been building a marketplace for hourly workers to find food and retail jobs (and which Trinity has backed), is beginning to eye the category, too.

A separate group of companies has sprung up around background checks. One of them is year-old, San Francisco-based CheckR; another is three-year-old, London-based Onfido. While background checks are nothing new, the industry hasn’t traditionally needed to act quickly or process large numbers of people at once; meanwhile, newer companies are only too happy to do both, even if their predecessors aren’t readily ceding the territory. (Uber, the ride-hailing company, uses Hirease, a 13-year-old, Southern Pines, N.C.-based company, to vet its drivers. Competitor Lyft similarly uses a more established company, 40-year-old, New York-based SterlingBackcheck.)

Yet there are other types of companies catering to the specific needs of contract workers.

Don’t be surprised to see more shift-planning startups like five-year-old, San Francisco-based ShiftPlanning and four-year-old When I Work in St. Paul, Mn.

Payroll startups that make for contractors to get paid are also springing up, from four-year-old ZenPayroll in San Francisco, to 1.5-year-old Tiempo in Sunnyvale, Ca.

Of course, healthcare — which most contract workers don’t receive from their employers — may represent the biggest opportunity of all. Among the startups beginning to eye the space: two-year-old, San Francisco-based Stride Health, a health insurance recommendation engine that’s targeting the needs of small businesses and sees 1099 workers as a potential source of business.

There are so many startups beginning to target 1099 workers, in fact, that Nakache says Trinity has yet to pull the trigger on a related investment. She doesn’t expect it will be long, though.

“We haven’t found quite the right fit for the stage at which we invest,” she says. “But it’s safe to say that we’re actively looking and actively engaged in the sector. We have a lot of companies on our radar screen.”

—–

New Fundings

AmnioLife, a two-year-old, Gainesville, Fla.-based research and development organization focused around “placental-derived technologies,” has raised $833,000 in Series A funding led by Fountainhead Investment Partners. More here.Colabo, a five-year-old, San Carlos, Ca.-based company whose software platform provides marketers with self-service analytics, has raised $7 million in new funding led by Marker LLC, with participation by Kaedan Capital and earlier backers Paul Maritz, Ray Rothrock, and The Hive. The company has now raised $10.5 million altogether, shows Crunchbase. VentureBeat has more here.

Delivery Hero, the four-year-old, Berlin-based takeout food ordering service, has raised $110 million from two unnamed, U.S.-based “public market” investors at a post-money valuation of more $3.1 billion, says the company. That’s roughly triple the nearly $1 billion in equity that Delivery hero has raised so far — $600 million of it in 2015 alone — including from Insight Venture Partners, General Atlantic, Point Nine Capital, Holtzbrinck Ventures, Kite Ventures, and Rocket Internet. TechCrunch has the story here.

Jimdo, an eight-year-old, Hamburg, Germany-based company that helps users create sites on their computers, smartphones, or tablets, has raised €25 million (roughly $28 million) from the growth equity firm Spectrum Equity. The company, which also has offices in Tokyo and San Francisco, had previously raised just €500,000 in outside capital. More here.

Luxury Retreats, a 16-year-old, Montréal, Quebec-based marketplace for people to list and find high-end homes for short-term rentals, has raised $11 million in Series B funding led by earlier investor iNovia Capital. The company has now raised $16 million altogether. TechCrunch has more on the company (and the broader trend of high-end home rentals) here.

Menlo Security, a two-year-old, Menlo Park, Ca.-based security company that isolates all web and email content in the cloud before it reaches an endpoint to eliminate the threat of advanced malware, has raised $25 million in Series B funding led by Sutter Hill Ventures, with participation from General Catalyst Partners, Osage University Partners and Engineering Capital. The company has now raised $35.5 million altogether. More here.

Skeleton Technologies, a six-year-old Estonia and Germany-based company that makes high-performance ultracapacitors for transportation, industrial and grid applications, has raised €9.8m ($10.7 million) in Series B, including from Harju Elekter Group, which owns electrical equipment manufacturing plants in the Nordic-Baltic markets, and UP Invest, one of largest investment firms in the Baltic region. The company has now raised $18.9 million to date, shows Crunchbase.

Spero Therapeutics, a year-old, Cambridge, Ma.-based company that’s developing drugs to combat drug-resistant bacteria, has raised $30 million in Series A funding from Lundbeckfond Ventures, Kraft Group, Merck Research Ventures Fund, Atlas Venture, Partners Innovation Fund and SR One.

SQream Technologies, a nearly five-year-old, Tel Aviv, Israel-based company that says its technology enables customers to load and analyze as many as 100 terabytes of raw data on a single computing node in near real-time, has raised $7 million in Series B funding led by Blumberg Capital. Venture Capital Dispatch has more here.

Springbot, a three-year-old, Atlanta, Ga.-based ecommerce marketing platform designed for small to mid-sized online businesses, has raised $6 million in new funding led by TTV Capital, with participation from earlier investors TechOperators and Silicon Valley Bank. The company has now raised $10 million altogether, shows Crunchbase.

TaskUs, a seven-year-old, Santa Monica, Ca.-based company that provides outsourced business process tasks to other startups, has raised $15 million in new funding from the Philippines-based private equity firm Navegar. The outlet Inc. has much more on the company here.

Vinli, a year-old, Dallas, Tex.-based connected car platform, has raised $6.5 million in Series A funding led by Samsung Venture Investment Corp., with participation from Cox Automotive, Continental ITS and the Westly Group. TechCrunch has more here.

—–

New Funds

Cradle Seed Ventures, a months-old, Malaysia-based seed-stage group, has announced plans to invest between $270,000 and $800,000 in promising Malaysia-based startups. The outlet e27 has more here.

Fuel Capital, a two-year-old, San Francisco-based, early-stage venture firm founded by Christopher Howard (as a longtime principal with Ignition Partners previously, he’d launched the firm’s seed-stage investment program), is looking to raise $35 million for its second fund, shows an SEC filing. The firm’s bets so far include Homejoy (reportedly in talks to be acquired by competitor Handy); recently shuttered Secret; and Layer, which closed on $14.5 million in Series A funding last month.

Tribeca Venture Partners, a four-year-old, New York-based venture firm that primarily backs early-stage startups in New York, is raising its second fund with a $100 million target and $125 million hard cap, according to Fortune’s Dan Primack. The firm had closed its debut fund with $65 million. StrictlyVC talked with firm founder Brian Hirsch last year about Tribeca and New York more broadly.

—–

People

Joanne Bradford, who joined Pinterest as its head of partnerships in December 2013, is leaving the company, Recode reported on Friday. The move comes as Tim Kendall, the company’s head of monetization and Bradford’s boss, decided to take on some of Bradford’s responsibilities. Bradford had joined Pinterest from the San Francisco Chronicle, where she was briefly president. She has also held executive roles at Demand Media, Yahoo, and Microsoft.

Google has hired Sissie Hsiao away from Microsoft to take over as director for all mobile ads, including AdMob, the mobile exchange. Recode has the news here. She is replacing her current boss, Jonathan Alferness, who is heading over to lead commerce, a role that was vacated last month when Sameer Samat left to join Jawbone as president.

India’s tech boom is luring many of India’s brightest back home from the U.S., reports Bloomberg Businessweek. India “is like the late 1990s in the U.S.,” says Kunal Bahl, Snapdeal‘s CEO, who attended the University of Pennsylvania and founded his company — now among the most highly valued in India — after his application for a U.S. visa was rejected.

—–

Jobs

Andreessen Horowitz is looking to hire a corporate development associate. The job is in Menlo Park, Ca.

—–

Essential Reads

From St. Petersburg, Russia, an army of well-paid “trolls” has tried to wreak havoc all around the Internet — and in real-life American communities.

Hyperloop Transportation Technologies, a company formed specifically to turn Elon Musk’s hyperloop idea into reality, says it has secured the agreements needed to break ground on a five-mile test track near the town of Quay Valley, California.

—–

Detours

John Oliver toasts FIFA President Sepp Blatter’s demise by chugging a Bud Light.

Housing through the centuries.

—–

Retail Therapy

The 10 best Nerf dart blasters you can buy right now. (It’s nearly summer, after all!)

Friday! We’d squeeze your cheeks if we could.

Hope you have a wonderful weekend, everyone!

(Note: No column today.)

—–

Top News in the A.M.

Apple predicted that 2015 would be the year of Apple Pay. But many retailers remain skeptical about the payment system, says a new Reuters report.

In more potentially bad news for Apple: Just days before it plans to reveal a music streaming service, the company is still negotiating with record labels over terms, reports Bloomberg Businessweek.

—–

New Fundings

Hi, everyone! Hope your Thursday is off to a good start.

—–

Top News in the A.M.

Dish Network is reportedly in talks to merge with T-Mobile US — a deal that would accelerate a wave of consolidation across the U.S. media and communications industries, reports the WSJ.

On Monday, Apple will begin its annual developer conference, where the company is set to release new tools for software developers to create smarter apps for its Apple Watch. The New York Times has more here.

—–

Madrona Venture Group Seals Up Its Sixth Fund in Seattle

Madrona Venture Group, the 20-year-old, Seattle-based early-stage venture capital firm whose bets include Redfin, Apptio, iSpot.TV and others, has closed its sixth fund with $300 million. Yesterday, we chatted briefly with longtime managing partner Matt McIlwain about the fund and the investing scene in the Pacific Northwest more generally.

Your new fund is the same size as its predecessor, closed in 2012. 

Same size fund, same strategy. It’s all systems go.

Is the team the same?

One of our managing directors, Greg Gottesman, is transitioning to a venture partner role. [Gottesman, who joined Madrona in 1997 and was previously CEO of the dog-owner community Rover.com] will still be involved but he’s been kicking around some new entrepreneurial ideas that he wants to pursue and he’ll be talking about them later in the summer. We also added three strategic advisors [Isilon co-founder Sujal Patel; retiring F5 CEO John McAdam; and Concur CEO Steve Singh].

You’re obviously a big proponent of the Pacific Northwest investing scene. 

I hate to use the word, but it’s really become a juggernaut of innovation in cloud, in big data, augmented reality, next-generation consumer… Related to that, the rise of Amazon and revitalization of Microsoft is attracting all kinds of talent to this region, which bodes well for us.

How are you measuring the impact of [Microsoft’s newest CEO] Satya Nadella? 

I was over at Microsoft last week getting a tour of its HoloLens [holographic goggles technology] and I was blown away by the demos. Operationally, there’s a huge difference, too. One of our startups, Smartsheet [which makes cloud and mobile-first productivity tools], had tried unsuccessfully a few years ago to integrate with Microsoft. [Under Nadella], the company has gotten traction with Office 365 and was just featured at a recent conference as an example of a great integration partner. The pace at which Microsoft folks are understanding and building integration with the startup community is significantly enhanced over the last 18 months. Satya has just set a different tone — more humble and more outward looking about what the ecosystem and customers want.

Madrona was super active last year, investing $463 million into the Pacific Northwest with its syndicate partners. Are valuations still comparatively more reasonable up there?

[Laughs.] Yes, they’re somewhat more reasonable, and the cost of living is somewhat more reasonable. We roll our eyes when square footage hits the high $30s; you [in the Bay Area] start rolling your eyes when it hits the high $70s. It also doesn’t hurt that we don’t have a state income tax.

[As important] we have a growing [well of] deep talent here. Some people have come to work at Microsoft and Amazon but Facebook and EMC and Google also now have hundreds if not thousands of employees here. We’ve funded 15 companies that have come out of the University of Washington. Our LPs are also very excited about this multi-generational effect we’re starting to see. For example, we backed Isilon [the enterprise storage company that was acquired by EMC in 2010 for $2.25 billion]; now we’ve backed two teams to come out of the company, the next-gen storage companies Igneous and Cumulus. There’s just talent all over the place.

—–

New Fundings

1World Online, a 3.5-year-old, San Jose, Ca.-based company that sells web and mobile-based engagement applications, content, and analytics for publishers, political candidates, and brands, has raised $2.5 million in funding from DEFTA Partners, Altair Capital, GV Launch Gurus, and Nest HK. The company has now raised $4 million to date, shows Crunchbase. More here.

Auspherix, a 1.5-year-old, Sydney, Australia-based early-stage anti-infectives company that’s developing antibacterials, has raised £6 million ($9.2 million) in Series A funding led by new investor Imperial Innovations, with participation from earlier backer Medical Research Commercialisation Fund. More here.

Believe Digital, a 10.5-year-old Paris, France-based digital distributor and label services provider for artists and labels worldwide, has raised $60 million in funding from Technology Crossover Ventures, XAnge, GP Bullhound, and Ventech. More here.

Blend Systems, a two-year-old, San Francisco-based social app whose users create a trend (a movement, inside joke, or challenge), then nominate their friends and others to join them, has raised $6.3 million in Series A funding led by New Enterprise Associates, with participation from Metamorphic Ventures, Red Sea Ventures, Great Oaks Capital, and the Al Nowais family from Dubai’s Waha Capital. Earlier investors, including CAA Ventures, Foundation Capital, Galvanize Ventures, BaseVC, and others also joined the round. The company has now raised $10 million altogether. More here.

Bolt Threads, a year-old, Emeryville, Ca.-based company that’s creating engineered silk fibers based on proteins found in nature, has come out of stealth mode with $32.3 million in Series B funding led by Foundation Capital, with participation from Formation 8 and Founders Fund. The company has raised a total of $40 million to date. Forbes has much more here.

Calhoun Vision, an 18-year-old, Pasadena, Ca.-based vision correction company whose technology centers on a light-based procedure, has raised $69 million in its first outside funding from Longitude Capital, Balance Point Capital Partners, H.I.G. BioVentures and RA Capital Management. More here.

Cockroach Labs, a five-month-old, New York-based company focused on creating an open source database designed to scale and survive disasters, has raised $6.25 million in Series A funding led by Benchmark. More here.

Electronic Commerce, a 19-year-old, Elkhart, In.-based HR platform company, today announced it has secured a $40 million majority growth investment from Frontier Capital. More here.

FourKites, a three-year-old, Chicago, Il.-based logistics platform that tracks delivery trucks, has raised $1.25 million in seed funding led by Hyde Park Venture Partners, with participation from Hyde Park Angels, Harvard Business School Angels, Bluestein & Associates and Otter Consulting. The Chicago Tribune has more here.

LaunchDarkly, a year-old, San Francisco-based feature-flags-as-a-service product (note: feature flags allow software teams to turn features on and off for users at different times), has raised $2.6 million in seed funding led by SoftTech VC, with BloombergBeta, 500 Startups, Cervin Ventures and numerous angel investors participating. More here.

Layer3 TV, a two-year-old, Boston-based “next-gen cable company,” has raised $51 million in fresh funding from earlier investors Evolution Media Partners and North Bridge Venture Partners, along with new, unnamed investors. The company has now raised more than $80 million altogether. More here.

MineSense, a seven-year-old, Vancouver, British Columbia-based developer of sensor-based ore sorting systems, has raised an undisclosed “multi-million dollar” amount of Series B financing. The round was led by Prelude Ventures, with participation from Export Development Canada, Cycle Capital Management, and earlier backer Chrysalix Energy Venture Capital. The company had previously raised $8.9 million, shows Crunchbase.

PicsArt, a four-year-old, San Francisco-based photo editing app on Android and iOS, has raised $15 million in new funding from Insight Venture Partners and Sequoia Capital. The round follows a $10 million investment from Sequoia earlier this year.

Plotly, a two-year-old, Montreal, Canada-based collaborative data science company, has raised $5.5 million in funding from MHS Capital, Siemens Venture Capital, Rho Ventures, Real Ventures and Silicon Valley Bank. Vator has more here.

Qnergy, a five-year-old, En-Harod Ihud, Israel-based energy technology company, has raised $20 million in Series A funding led by Tene Investment Funds. More here.

Sphero, a five-year-old, Boulder, Co.-based company that develops “connected” play toys, has raised $45 million in new funding led by Mercato Partners, with participation from a subsidiary of The Walt Disney Company and other strategic investors. The company has now raised at least $80 million altogether, including from earlier investors Techstars, Grishin Robotics, Highway 12 Ventures, Shea Ventures, SK Ventures and individual investors. TechCrunch has more here.

TabbedOut, a five-year-old, Austin, Tex.-based mobile payment startup, has raised $21.5 million from investors in what it tells Venture Capital Dispatch will be its final funding round before going public. The company has now raised $39 million altogether, shows Crunchbase; its backers include Heartland Payment Systems, Morgan Creek Capital Management, and New Enterprise Associates.

Welocalize, an 18-year-old, Frederick, Md.-based supply chain management software company, has raised an undisclosed amount of funding from Norwest Equity Partners. According to Crunchbase, the company had raised at least $34 million previously, via a 2010 round from Riverside Partners.

Zentera Systems, a three-year-old, San Jose, Ca.-based cloud network company that connects enterprise applications and data from on-premise environments to private or public cloud data centers, has raised $4.9 million in Series A funding from CDIB Venture Capital, along with unnamed earlier investors.

—–

New Funds

Paige Craig, a Marine-turned-entrepreneur-turned-angel investor who has made more than 100 investments, including in Lyft, Postmates, AngelList,Twitter, and Plated, has officially launched a seed fund called Arena Ventures that intends to lead up to 20 deals a year in San Francisco and L.A., where Craig is based. He’ll also be sharing his deal information and other insights via a weekly email that can sign up for here. (We met Craig late last year while moderating a panel about seed investors’ pro rata rights. If you’re interested in learning more, L.A. Business Journal has just published a nice profile of him.)

Kensington Capital Partners, a 19-year-old Toronto-based investment firm, has held a second closing of its newest fund of funds, which now has investor commitments of $193 million (or $154.6 million in U.S. dollars), up from $160 million when it held a first close last November. Among the fund’s newest LPs: Torstar Corporation. Among its biggest LPs: the Canadian government. More here.

Next Frontier Capital, a new, Bozeman, Mt.-based venture capital firm, has raised $11 million for a debut fund that it hopes will close with $20 million. Founder Will Price tells the Bozeman Daily Chronicle he plans to fund up to a dozen companies with the capital. Price was previously CEO of a San Francisco-based ad tech platform named Flite. He also spent several years as a principal, then managing director, at Hummer Winblad Venture Partners (now known as HWVP).

Valor Equity Partners, the 20-year-old, Chicago, Il.-based private equty firm, has closed its third fund with $490 million. The firm says it has made 66 investments in 34 platforms over the years and that as of March, roughly a third of its newest fund’s capital had been committed in companies, including Addepar, Fooda, Porch.com, and Renovate America. ChicagoInno has much more here.

—–

Exits

Cisco is acquiring Piston Cloud Computing, a four-year-old, San Francisco-based startup known for its own distribution of the OpenStack cloud software stack. Terms of the deal weren’t disclosed. Piston had raised at least $22.4 million from investors, shows Crunchbase. Its backers include Data Collective, Swisscom Ventures, True Ventures, and Cisco itself. eWeek has more here.

eVestment, a 15-year-old, Marietta, Ga.-based company that produces traditional and hedge fund data and analytics for the institutional investing community, has acquired TopQ, an Edinburgh, Scotland-based private equity analytics platform. The amount of the deal was not disclosed.  According to Crunchbase, eVestment has raised $19 million from Silicon Valley Bank.

IBM is buying Blue Box, a 12-year-old, Seattle-based private-cloud-as-a-service company that had raised at least $26.6 million from investors, including Founder Collective and Voyager Capital. Terms of the deal weren’t disclosed. Fortune has more here.

—–

People

Jason Child, who has spent the last four years as the CFO of Groupon — and who helped take the company public in 2011 — is joining Jawbone at July’s end, becoming CFO of the consumer gadget maker. Before joining Groupon, Child had spent eight years at Amazon, serving as VP of finance among other roles.

OpenView Venture Partners has promoted four employees — Blake Bartlett, Mackey Craven, Devon McDonald and Ricky Pelletier — to partner. More here.

Mina Radhakrishnan, who was long Uber’s head of product, is becoming an entrepreneur-in-residence at Redpoint Ventures, reports Recode.

Early (and continuing) Twitter shareholder Chris Sacca finally publishes some of his highly anticipated advice for the company and where it can go from here.

Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, who abruptly lost her husband, Dave Goldberg, one month ago while their family was vacationing in Mexico, marked the end of sheloshim  — a 30-day period of mourning for close relatives– with a moving tribute on Facebook. “[I] am sharing what I have learned in the hope that it helps someone else. In the hope that there can be some meaning from this tragedy.”

—–

Data

According to new data out of the IVC Research Center, venture capital dollars shot up 300 percent in China between 2013 and 2014, and more Chinese investors are looking to plug capital Israeli high tech companies, too. IVC estimates that Chinese investors will invest at least half a billion dollars in Israel-based startups this year and that half of the funds that raise money by year end will have at least one Chinese investor. Globes has more here.

—–

Essential Reads

Oh, it is on: According to Bloomberg, the fantasy sports company DraftKings just signed a multiyear marketing agreement with Madison Square Garden Co., displacing rival FanDuel in a contract that gives the No. 2 daily fantasy sports company its first sponsorship that includes multiple teams and a venue. More here.
—–

Detours

My 977 days with Somali pirates.

Costco’s amazing pizza sauce machine.

Serious balloon art.

—–

Retail Therapy

Now you can customize your air, too.

Happy Wednesday, everyone!

—–

Top News in the A.M.

Pinterest, the richly valued visual bookmarking site, said yesterday that it’s launching a “buyable pin,” a feature that will turn some of the 50 billion images posted by users into a shopping catalog. The WSJ has much more here. The New York Times goes on to note that Pinterest won’t take a cut from each sale but rather make money selling promoted-pins advertisements to retailers, who can then insert buyable pins into those ads.

Amazon is now offering free shipping on small items to all of its customers, without requiring a minimum order. (Delivery will take four to eight days.)

Amazon has also been trying to join the mobile pay party, reports The Information. (Subscription required.) The service would potentially allow people to pay for things in physical stores by using mobile devices.

—–

A French VC Shows Off a New Fund — and Growing Interest in Europe

Frédéric Court has been a venture capitalist for about 15 years, but it was only recently that he hit the fundraising trail for the first time.

The experience went well, apparently. This morning, Court, a longtime partner with the European venture firm Advent Venture Partners, is taking the wraps off his own, London-based venture fund, Felix Capital, which he says raised $120 million in just a few months.

That might not be terribly uncommon in Silicon Valley, but it doesn’t happen very often in Europe. More unusual, Court is the sole managing partner, though he has enlisted longtime Advent colleague Less Gabb as his finance partner and Antoine Nussenbaum – formerly of Atlas Global – as principal.

Earlier this week, we talked with Court about why he has struck out on his own, and whether his debut fund says anything more broadly about what’s happening in Europe.

Why leave Advent after all these years? 

Our last fund is doing extremely well, but Advent is now a life sciences fund [which closed its newest, life sciences fund last fall with $235 million]. It’s a bit like what happened at Atlas Venture. The tech partners were going to raise a tech fund from scratch and I decided instead to start something quite new and have a sector-focused and thematic approach.

Your new theme is “operating at the intersection of technology and creativity.” What does that mean? 

It means investing in more creative businesses like digital brands, especially in markets like commerce and media, in sectors like fashion, and beauty and wellness more generally. Some fantastic global brands have been built in Europe, and we think there’s a generation of new companies to be built that are digital first – companies like FarFetch [an e-commerce site featuring designer apparel from hundreds of boutiques], which we backed at Advent and is in our portfolio now at Felix, as well.

Are you looking to fund European companies alone?

They’ll either be in Europe or have a European angle. We have one [still-undisclosed] investment in New York where we’ve been helping them expand across the pond. We did that at Avent with companies like [the mobile payment company] Zong, which we helped move from Switzerland to Palo Alto [where the company was acquired in 2011 by eBay], and [social media marketing company] Vitrue, which is based in Atlanta and we helped expand into Europe.

What size checks will you be writing?

We have the flexibility to invest from $100,000 up to $10 million in a later-stage round, though our sweet spot will be $2 million to $4 million in Series A and B rounds.

You’re announcing three companies as part of the launch. For curious readers, what are they?

There’s FarFetch. We’ve also funded the Business of Fashion, which started pretty much like your newsletter and over the last seven or eight years has become one of the most authoritative media brands in the online fashion industry. Along with [coinvestors] Index Ventures and LVMH, we’re helping the founder turn it into a platform. Our third investment is in Rad, a Paris-based online street wear brand that’s a bit like Urban Outfitters and is expanding across Europe.

This new fund closed with $40 million more than you were targeting. Are LPs loosening their purse strings in Europe more broadly?

There is capital in Europe, but the delta between the opportunity and available capital is significant. It’s still a fraction of the available capital in the U.S.

But you’re also seeing more U.S. firms like Insight Venture Partners enter Europe and take stakes in high-growth companies.

They typically come in much, much later. What we’ve seen in the past two or three years is a reduction in competition from U.S. firms because the market is so competitive in the U.S.; firms just don’t have the bandwidth to fly to Europe unless one of their trusted friends mentions a deal to them. Also, when you’re talking about Insight and [Technology Crossover Ventures] and DST [Global], they’re looking to write checks of $50 million to $70 million, and the number of companies that can take that much capital is much lower here than in the U.S.

Is Europe seeing more corporate investors? They’ve sort of filled a hole in the U.S., especially when it comes to Series B rounds.

We see some corporate money, though much less than in the U.S.. We’re more seeing local sovereign funds step in, where governments have realized that a lack of capital [to startups is a disadvantage]. One of the biggest backers is [the French government’s] Bpifrance.

Are things fairly collegial among traditional early-stage investors then?

There are firms that we know well – Accel, Index – and they were very helpful to me in raising my new fund, and in introducing me to their LPs. In the early stages in Europe, there isn’t the kind of competition you see in the U.S., while in parallel, we’re seeing the quality of talent rise in both founders and people joining startups. These will be very interesting years to invest.

—–

New Fundings

Anthem Vault, a four-year-old, Las Vegas, Nv.-based provider of retail gold and silver bullion and vaulting services, has raised $3.2 million in funding from unnamed investors. The company says it will use the capital to launch HayekGold, an open digital gold payment platform. More here.

Arkin, a two-year-old, Mountain View, Ca.-based operations platform for converged infrastructure and software-defined data centers, has raised $15 million in Series B funding from earlier backers Nexus Venture Partners and other strategic investors. The company has now raised $22 million altogether.

Atomwise, a three-year-old, New York-based drug discovery platform, has raised $6 million in seed funding led by Data Collective, with participation from Khosla Ventures, DFJ, AME Cloud Ventures and OS Fund. TechCrunch has more here.

CounterTack, an eight-year-old, Waltham, Ma.-based real-time endpoint threat detection company, has raised $15 million in Series C funding led TenEleven Ventures, with participation from EDBI, Mitsui & Co., and unspecified earlier investors. The company has now raised roughly $50 million altogether, including from Razor’s Edge Ventures, Goldman Sachs, Siemens Venture Capital and Fairhaven Capital.

DataScience, a year-old, Culver City, Ca.-based company that analyzes corporate data using a mix of technology and human expertise, has raised $4.5 million in Series A funding led by Greycroft Partners, with participation from earlier investors Pelion Ventures Partners, Crosscut Ventures andTenOneTen. The company has now raised $6 million altogether. Fortune has more here.

Doorman, a 1.5-year-old, San Francisco-based on-demand package delivery company that schedules drop-offs after office hours, has raised $1.5 million in seed funding led by Motus Ventures, with participation from Western Technology Investment, MicroVentures, and VGO Ventures. TechCrunch has more here.

Entropix, a months-old, L.A.-based computational imaging company developing super-resolution video surveillance technology for enterprise customers, has raised $1 million in seed funding from undisclosed backers. More here.

FullStory, a three-year-old, Atlanta, Ga.-based platform that enables businesses to visualize, search, analyze, and react to their users’ online experiences via a script that records all interactions during a visit, has raised $9 million in Series A funding led by Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, with participation from Google Ventures and Atlanta investor Tom Noonan. The company — founded by former Google engineers — has now raised $10.6 million altogether. The Atlanta Business Chronicle has more here.

HWTrek, a 1.5-year-old, Taipei-based platform that pairs manufacturing experts with project creators to help deliver high-quality products quickly, has raised $4 million in Series funding led by WI Harper and ITIC. Legend Star Capital, JD.com, and the Tokyo-based venture firm Global Brain also participated.

LawnStarter, a nearly two-year-old, Austin, Tex.-based online platform for homeowners to schedule lawn mowing, fertilization, bush trimming and other lawn care services, has raised $6 million in Series A funding led by Binary Capital. The company has now raised $7.25 million altogether, including from Gary Vaynerchuk and other angel investors. Silicon Hills News has more here.

Mic, a four-year-old, New York-based media company focused on news for millennials (and formerly known as PolicyMic), has raised $17 million in Series B funding led by previous investor Lightspeed Venture Partners, with participation from media giant Axel Springer, Lerer Hippeau Ventures, Netscape cofounder Jim Clark, Advancit Capital, Red Swan Ventures and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. The company has now raised more than $32 million altogether. TechCrunch has more here.

Mirror, a four-year-old, San Francisco, Ca.-based online bitcoin exchange, has raised $8.8 million in Series A funding led by Route 66 Ventures, with participation from existing investors including RRE Ventures, Crosslink Capital, Battery Ventures and Tim Draper. The company has raised $12.8 million altogether.

Mishi, a six-month-old, Hangzhou, China-based mobile app that pairs foodies with in-house chefs (it has been compared to EatWith), has raised $15 million in Series B financing round led by Sequoia Capital, with participation from earlier backer Morningside Ventures. China Money Network has more here.

Nantero, a 15-year-old, Waltham, Ma.-based nanotechnology company that uses carbon nanotubes to develop semiconductor devices, has raised $31.5 million in Series E funding from CRV, DFJ, Globespan Capital Partners and Harris & Harris Group. The company has now raised $73 million altogether, shows Crunchbase.

PillPack, a two-year-old, Cambridge, Ma.-based pharmaceutical delivery startup, has raised $50 million in Series C funding led by CRV, with participation from Accel Partners, Menlo Ventures, Atlas Venture, and Sherpa Ventures. PillPack has now raised a total of $62.75 million. TechCrunch has more here.

Purch, a 12-year-old, Ogden, Ut.-based digital media firm with a suite of technology content and ecommerce websites, has raised $135 million in equity and debt funding led by Canso Investment Counsel. The company has now raised roughly $175 million altogether, including from Village Ventures, ABS Capital Partners, and Highway 12 Ventures. More here.

Urban Massage, an 18-month-old, London-based on-demand mobile massage service, has raised an undisclosed amount of funding led by Firestartr, with participation from Samos, LCIF, numerous unnamed angel investors, and earlier investor Passion Capital. TechCrunch has more here.

Virtual Software Systems, a nine-month-old, Waltham, Ma.-based cybersecurity startup, has raised $2 million in seed funding from Bulldog Investors, Sequel Capital Management, and a number of unnamed private investors.

—–

New Funds

Business Growth Fund, a four-year-old, London-based outfit backed by five of the U.K.’s main banking groups, including Barclays, HSBC, and Lloyds, is launching a new £200 million ($307 million) venture capital fund for early-stage tech UK companies. The fund, which will open for business this fall, is being spearheaded by Rory Stirling and Harry Briggs, formerly of MMC Ventures and Balderton Capital, respectively, as well as Simon Calver, former chief executive of LOVEFiLM. More here.

Point Nine Capital, the four-year-old, Berlin-based early stage venture firm, has closed its third fund with $60 million. According to TechCrunch, the capital will be used to invest up to $1 million in roughly 40 startups across Europe and North America. More here.

Revolution, the four-year-old, Washington, D.C.-based investment firm formed by former AOL execs Steve Case, Donn Davis and Ted Leonsis, is raising a $450 million fund — Revolution Growth III — shows an SEC filing. Washington Business Journal has more here.

—–

IPOs

Nivalis Therapeutics, an eight-year-old, Boulder, Co.-based company that’s developing a complementary small molecule therapy for cystic fibrosis,revealed plans this morning to raise $60 million by offering 4.3 million shares at a price range of $13 to $15. At the midpoint of the proposed range, the company would be valued at $200 million. Some of the company’s biggest outside shareholders include Deerfield Management, Wellington Management Company, Tiger Partners, and RA Capital Management.

Sophos Group, a 30-year-old, Abington, England-based internet security firm, plans to raise about $100 million from a float on the London Stock Exchange, reports the WSJ. More here.

—–

Exits

Avalara, an 11-year-old, Bainbridge Island, Wa.-based provider of cloud-based software for sales tax and other transactional tax compliance, has acquiredEZtax, an 18-year-old, Overland Park, Kansas-based company that makes tax compliance software for the telecom industry. No financial terms were disclosed. EZtax doesn’t appear to have raised institutional capital. Avalara has raised roughly $224 million from investors, shows Crunchbase; its backers includeWarburg Pincus and Technology Crossover Ventures.

—–
People

BuzzFeed has hired longtime PepsiCo marketing executive Frank Cooper as its chief marketing officer and chief creative officer, reports AdAge. Cooper will reportedly oversee BuzzFeed’s creative services team, which makes sponsored content for brands. He’ll also manage BuzzFeed’s market research, business-to-business and consumer marketing, as well as work with marketers and advertising executives on forming partnerships.

Tim Cook: Apple “doesn’t want your data.” The company doesn’t think “you should ever have to trade it for a service you think is free but actually comes at a very high cost.”

RRE Ventures, the New York City-based venture capital firm, has brought aboard Raju Rishi as a general partner. Rishi joins the firm from Sigma Prime Ventures, which he’d joined after cofounding a company called Rave Mobile Security. RRE has also promoted Alice Lloyd George to the role of associate. She joined the firm last year as an analyst.

—–

Essential Reads

The California Senate on Monday approved a bill that requires the University of California to release performance data for 10 funds from Sequoia Capital and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. The bill now goes to the state Assembly, where it must win approval before being sent to the governor for his signature. More here.

Let the snooping resume: the Senate just revived Patriot Act surveillance measures.

—–

Detours

Wall Street billionaire John Paulson just gave Harvard the biggest gift in its history.

The original selfie.

—–

Retail Therapy

Mark Cuban clothes for the aspirational. We’re definitely buying the “If I Can Do It You Can Do It” T-shirt and wearing it everywhere to be obnoxious. (H/T: Alex Wilhelm)

Happy Tuesday, dear readers!

—–

Top News in the A.M.

All United Airlines flights in the U.S. were grounded this morning for nearly an hour over “dispatching information.” Wired has more here.

—–

Bessemer’s Byron Deeter on the Future of Cloud Companies

Like many venture firms, Bessemer Venture Partners provides all manner of perks for its CEOs, including a day of race-car driving and wine tasting.

Today, in San Francisco, the firm will be providing its CEOs with a different kind of perk. Together with Salesforce Ventures, Bessemer is hosting a day-long “cloud” summit that brings together CEOs backed by the two outfits to share best practices, let them learn from each other, and to dazzle them with speakers like quarterback-turned-investor Steve Young and the futurist Ray Kurzweil.

Yesterday, we caught up with longtime Bessemer partner Byron Deeter, who organized the event, and who has led deals in numerous high-flying cloud companies — including the online storage service Box, the app-building software service Twilio, and the digital signatures specialist DocuSign – to learn more.

What are you hoping these CEOs will learn today?

Part of the event is just understanding where we are. Analysts are now predicting that midway through next year, the majority of application revenue in [customer relationship management] will be cloud-based, which is a tipping point we’ve long been predicting. More broadly, we’ve beentracking public cloud companies for a while now, and based on our data analysis, we’ve come to believe this group will have a combined market cap of half a trillion dollars by 2020, up from $180 billion today — which is itself up from $40 billion three years ago.

As an investor looking to make two bets per year, roughly, where are you spending your time? What sub themes do you think are most interesting right now?

I’ve personally been most active in industry cloud and enterprise mobile, which is finally coming of age.

Industry cloud?

Industry cloud is really this notion of the “verticalization” of software and the opportunity for a large vendor like Veeva [which makes cloud-based software for the life sciences industry] or Athena Health [which provides its customers with electronic health records, revenue cycle management, and more] or Shopify [which juggles all kinds of store management issues for its retailer customers] to create dedicated [cloud-based] software for a dedicated industry group. And these models can have massive success.

And enterprise mobile? We have to admit that long-suffering Good Technology [among the first startups to provide email access via mobile devices] still springs to mind whenever we hear those words.

We founded Visto [which acquired Good in 2009 and took its name] at Bessemer [in 1996]. Early investors lost money, but out of the wreckage has emerged a valuable business. It represents some of the challenges of entering a market before it’s ready. Being early is the same as being wrong if you’re just too aggressive and run out of money before the market comes to you. Now, with the penetration of smart phones, internet usage is tipping to mobile and empowering a workforce of people who have smart phones but don’t sit in front of a PC all day. And this is just the early days of that opportunity.

How are valuations?

Privately held cloud companies are trading at multiples well above their public market counterparts. It’s about double the public company multiples for the hottest late-stage private companies, which is unusual in that private companies used to trade at a discount to public comps because they were illiquid.

Does this now years-long trend concern you?

Well, it’s very hard to lead new investments in late-stage cloud companies because many are priced to perfection. You have all these groups – late stage investors, private equity investors, crossover public investors – that want exposure to hypergrowth and that are being aggressive about it, and they’re combining to drive up valuations. In many cases, they’ve been rewarded for their actions, too, with very positive, profitable returns.

But companies are also staying private longer as a result.

I think you need to disconnect the two. Investors can invest at any stage and, within reason, still have very positive results. That’s separate from when the company chooses to go public.

Does it make sense to wait [on an IPO]? I do think companies are overthinking it and waiting too long. When they have strong businesses with proven business models, waiting to grow from $2 billion to $10 billion in market cap makes less sense. Many are staying private for the right reasons, though, [such as] to work through business model and strategic issues.

Bessemer is the largest shareholder in Pinterest. Does it make sense for Pinterest to go public any time soon?

It doesn’t. Pinterest is still refining its business model, and that’s best done as a private company, where you can take a lot of risk and not have to report on every action in a public setting.

—–

New Fundings

Hi, good Monday morning, everyone!

—–

Top News in the A.M.

Intel has acquired fellow chip maker Altera for $16.7 billion in cash. It’s the latest sign of consolidation in the semiconductor industry, which has been under pressure from Wall Street to fatten its revenues, notes the WSJ.

—–

A Bitcoin Entrepreneur Fights Through a Fog of Uncertainty

Kraken is a San Francisco-based bitcoin exchange that last year stepped in to help return money to customers of the bitcoin exchange Mt. Gox after it abruptly shut down. Now Kraken, known for its cautious approach around regulations, is navigating the vicissitudes of the bitcoin market in the hope of keeping its own doors open for many years to come.

One of the challenges it’s facing is U.S. authorities, who’ve long struggled to understand bitcoin and have yet to figure out exactly how to regulate it. California and New York, for example, are still in the midst of passing virtual currency-specific licensing requirements, rules that many thought would be finalized by now. Like other bitcoin companies, Kraken has also seen many formerly bullish investors turn weary now that it’s apparent bitcoin’s story will take longer than imagined to unfold.

The week before last, we chatted with Kraken founder and CEO Jesse Powell about what a bitcoin entrepreneur is to do in the current market. Our chat has been edited for length.

Who is using your exchange?

We have clients in more than 130 countries, but our customers are mostly Europeans. With have a partnership with Fidor Bank in Germany, and it can receive and make same-day payments within the eurozone for 9 cents, which is kind of hard to beat. That relationship has allowed us to flourish in Europe.

Are those mostly wealthy Europeans? What’s the use case? 

There are certainly some wealthy people using the exchange, but it’s more like middle-to-upper class Europeans who are using bitcoin and trading bitcoin. It’s a bit of a luxury item; people who are trading hopefully have some discretionary income.  It’s still a risky asset to be playing with, so I expect most [users] aren’t living paycheck to paycheck.

Do you have any partnerships with U.S. banks?

We don’t operate in the U.S. because the regulatory situation is much more open abroad and we have regulatory coverage there. Unlike virtually every other bitcoin business, we’ve chosen not to operate here until we have the licenses required. Competitively, that’s difficult, because other services are serving U.S. clients. Whether they’ll pay the price in the long run, we’ll see, but they’re exposing their companies and investors to huge liabilities. It’s not a risk we’re comfortable taking.

[Editor’s note: After our chat, Kraken announced that it has hired a chief compliance officer to help it prepare for regulatory changes in the U.S. and elsewhere.]

What kind of feedback have you been receiving from investors? Do you gather they’ve run out of patience already?

In some cases. You have to be a believer in bitcoin. We don’t know when bitcoin is going to become a success or what that will look like, but if you believe it’s inevitably going to happen – as we do – it’s a good time to get in. If the price goes to $1,000 again or hits $10,000, some companies, including ours, won’t need investment [because they’ll be collecting much more off each trade], and they’ll be worth far more. A client base of 100,000 users today could be 100,000 millionaires when the price of bitcoin increases tenfold.

What about other digital currencies? We talked about a year ago and you seemed unconvinced that bitcoin would be the undisputed king.

Most of those [other digital] currencies have lost a tremendous amount of value and I don’t see any of them regaining traction.

Does this feel like an early tipping point for the industry?

There’s definitely some consolidation happening right now. We’ve seen some exchanges fold recently. It’s getting to be a problem for the smaller players, especially in a down market, where bitcoin has been relatively flat for the last six months. That’s definitely had an effect on a lot of business [whose customers] might have chosen to speculate on bitcoin. Also, because the price is down [trading at roughly $230, from a 2013 peak of $1,240 per bitcoin], if you’re taking a percentage of each transaction as a fee, you’re taking in less revenue. Meanwhile, the infrastructure required to maintain an exchange or a wallet is high. There are very few businesses that are actually profitable right now, other than those who’ve done no compliance or shown little consideration of the regulatory requirements.

Why do you think some startups are operating without the regulatory requirements? 

Maybe they’ve received special off-the-record exceptions through the right connections. It’s kind of like, ‘We’ll look the other way until we figure out what we want to do.’

—–

New Fundings

Arsenal Medical and 480 Biomedical, two four-year-old, Watertown, Ma.-based companies that share lab space, resources, and CEO Maria Palasis, have raised a combined $26.5 million in funding from Polaris Partners, North Bridge Venture Partners, and Intersouth Partners. Arsenal Medical, a company developing novel, polymer based foam and nanofiber products, raised $16 million; 480 Biomedical, a clinical-stage company developing innovative bioresorbable scaffold products, raised $10.5 million. Both rounds included a conversion of debt, in addition to new equity financing.

Funderbeam, a two-year-old, Tallinn, Estonia-based subscription service for startup intelligence, has raised €500,000 ($547,700) in new funding from the London-based investment firm Rockspring and early Skype engineer Jaan Tallinn. The company has now raised $1.4 million altogether, shows Crunchbase.

Hedvig, a 2.5-year-old, Santa Clara, Ca.-based distributed storage platform founded by long-time Silicon Valley software engineer Avinash Lakshman, has raised $18 million in Series B funding led by Vertex Ventures, with participation from earlier investors True Ventures and Atlantic Bridge. The round comes just two months after Hedvig announced its $12.5 million Series A led by Atlantic Bridge Capital, with participation from True and Redpoint Ventures. Venture Capital Dispatch has more here.

Klook, a nine-month-old, Hong Kong-based service that helps tourists find interesting activities to do when they travel overseas in Asia, has raised $1.5 million in seed funding led by Tencent executive Xiaoguang Wu and Shuren Hu, formerly a vice chairman at the China National Tourism Administration. TechCrunch has more here.

LendKey, an eight-year-old, New York and Ohio-based online lending platform that connects borrowers with credit unions and banks, has secured an $8 million venture debt line from Silicon Valley Bank. Crunchbase shows the company had earlier raised roughly $24 million in debt and equity, including from TTV Capital, Updata Partners, Gotham Ventures, and DFJ.

Nexar, a six-month-old, Tel Aviv, Israel-based “connected driving” startup that centers on improving driving behavior via a network of machine sensors, has raised $4 million in funding led by Aleph, with participation from Slow Ventures and angel investors.

Paddle8, a four-year-old, New York-based online auction house, is raising up to $30 million in new funding, shows an SEC filing that states the company has already secured $22 million. Paddle8 had previously raised $17 million in equity and debt across three rounds, shows Crunchbase; previous backers include Haystack, Founder Collective, artist Damien Hirst, Mousse Partners, the Mellon Family and Winklevoss Capital. More here.

Snapchat, the four-year-old, Venice, Ca.-based messaging service, revealed Friday in a filing with SEC that it has raised about $537 million in new funding from investors — money that values the company at $16 billion, reports the WSJ. An unusual stipulation of the round, says its report, is that its investors, including Alibaba and two hedge funds, received common stock, instead of preferred stock, which offers downside protection to investors. Much more here.

Sumo Logic, a five-year-old, Redwood City, Ca.-based cloud-native machine data analytics platform, has raised $80 million in new funding led by DFJ Growth, with participation from Institutional Venture Partners and earlier backers Greylock Partners, Sequoia Capital, Sutter Hill Ventures and Accel Partners. The company has now raised $160.5 million altogether. Fortune has more here.

Yhat, a two-year-old, New York-based data science technology company that helps organize data scientist teams, has raised $1.5 million in new funding from more than 20 individual investors, including Parse cofounder Ilya Sukhar and Twitch cofounder Justin Kan. TechCrunch has more here.

Yonder,  a two-year-old, Woodstock, Vt.-based outdoor recreation mobile app and platform used by outdoor enthusiasts to connect and share adventures, has raised $2 million in seed funding led by Vermont Seed Capital Fund, Monster Worldwide and angel investors. More here.

—–

New Funds

Formation 8, the nearly four-year-old, Palo Alto, Ca.-based venture firm, is looking raise up to $100 million for a fund focused exclusively on hardware. Its strategy, outlined for investors, was sent to BuzzFeed News over the weekend; you can check it out here.

Geodesic Capital, a two-month, Palo Alto, Ca.-based late-stage venture firm, has raised $250 million for its debut fund, which could raise up to $400 million shows a new SEC filing first flagged by Fortune. Geodesic’s founders include Ashvin Bachireddy, who spent the last four years as the head of growth investing at Andreessen Horowitz and had been an investor at Lightspeed Venture Partners and 3i Venture Capital previously; and John Roos, a former U.S. ambassador to Japan and formerly the CEO of law firm Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati.

—–

IPOs

Teladoc, a 13-year-old, Dallas, Tex.-based telehealth services company providing medical care via video conferencing or telephone consultations, has publicly filed its official paperwork to debut on the public markets. The company has raised raised more than $100 million from investors, including Jafco Ventures, Greenspring Associates, the Mellon Family Foundation, QuestMark Partners, FLAG Capital Management, Cardinal Partners, HLM Venture Partners, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, New Capital Partners and Trident Capital. According to its S-1, the only firms with stakes in the company meeting or exceeding five percent include Cardinal, HLM, KPCB, and entities affiliated with Icon Ventures.

—–

Exits

AppLift, a nearly three-year-old, Berlin, Germany-based mobile app marketing platform, has acquired 1.5-year-old Bidstalk, a Singapore-based self-service, white label mobile DSP. Bidstalk had raised just $500,000 in seed funding, shows Crunchbase. AppLift has meanwhile raised $20 million from Prime Ventures.

Tempo, a 3.5-year-old, Menlo Park, Ca.-based company that leveraged years of Stanford Research Institute’s artificial intelligence research to create a “smart” calendar app, has been acquired for undisclosed terms by Salesforce. Tempo had raised $12.5 million in funding from investors, including Relay Ventures, Sierra Ventures, Mayfield Fund, Horizon Ventures, Qualcomm Ventures, SingTel Innov8, Miramar Venture Partner, Golden Venture Partners, Seavest Capital Partners and ENIAC Ventures. TechCrunch has more here.

Accel Partners has sold all of its shares in Supercell, the Finnish mobile gaming giant, to existing investor SoftBank, which now owns 73.2 percent of the company. TechCrunch has more here.

—–

People

Early Facebook employee-turned-venture capitalist Kevin Colleran recently delivered the commencement address at his alma mater, Babson College. Colleran, who nearly died after being hit by a van whilewalking in Boston earlier this year, shared among other lessons that, “You do not need to work for yourself and start your business to be an entrepreneur.”  More here.

Ed Gilligan, the 55-year-old president of American Express, died Friday after becoming ill on an overseas flight to New York from Tokyo. Gilligan began working as an intern at the firm while a student at NYU. He was named vice chairman in 2007 and president in 2013, overseeing digital initiatives, including a partnership reached last year with Uber. More here.

Ross Ulbricht, the 31-year-old founder of Silk Road, a notorious global drug bazaar, was sentenced to life in prison Friday in Federal District Court in Manhattan. Dealbook has much more here.

Jessica Verrilli is stepping down as director of corporate development and strategy at Twitter to join Google Ventures as a partner, reports Fortune. Earlier this year, Verrilli joined six other female Twitter executives in forming an angel investing group called #Angel. It isn’t yet clear if she’ll be able to invest independently in her new role.

A disagreement between West Coast investor Chris Sacca and New York’s beloved Fred Wilson spilled into view over the weekend. Seemingly, it began when Sacca — known for aggressively buying up Twitter before its IPO — blogged two weeks ago that he plans to go public soon with constructive feedback for Twitter. On Saturday, Wilson, who also invested in Twitter early on, threw his support behind Twitter CEO Dick Costolo in his own blog post, adding, “I do not plan to be more critical of Twitter in the coming months.” Sacca picked up on the apparent dig, tweeting to Wilson: “Thanks for the thinly veiled slam on me. Maybe wait until I post something and then critique that? . . . Meantime, thanks again for selling me all that Twitter stock well before the IPO. You’re such a loyal investor.”

George Zimmer, the ousted founder of Men’s Wearhouse, is back with a new company, zTailors, that connects on-demand tailors with people needing helptout de suite. “It’s Uber for tailors,” he tells Dealbook.

—–

Jobs

Airbnb is looking for a corporate development manager. The job is in San Francisco.

Electronic Arts is looking for a corporate development associate. The job is in Redwood City, Ca.

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

—–

Essential Reads

Rothenberg Ventures’ lavish parties are the firm’s primary strategy, but it’s unclear if the plan is sustainable, reports Bloomberg Businessweek in a profile of the three-year-old, San Francisco-based firm.

Uber has unveiled images detailing what its new, 420,000-square foot office in San Francisco will look like.

Guess who doesn’t fit in at work? (Take note, VCs.)

—–

Detours< Who owns London’s most expensive mansion?

—–

Retail Therapy

Footwear sketch books. This is also fun if you’re into shoes.

How great are short weeks? Hope you have a wonderful weekend, everyone. See you back here Monday.

—–

Top News in the A.M.

At its annual developer’s conference yesterday, Google introduced a service to store and organize an unlimited number of photos and videos — for free. The Google Photos app will be available on both Android and Apple devices and support pictures of up to 16 megapixels and 1080p high-definition video. More here.

Google also unveiled Android Pay yesterday to take on Apple Pay, which allows iPhone 6, 6 Plus, and Apple Watch users to make purchases on their device or in brick-and-mortar stores. More here.

You know what? Just — here’s everything Google announced yesterday in one handy list.

——

Four VCs on What’s Happening Now in On-Demand Startups

Last week, at the new On-Demand conference in San Francisco, we interviewed a panel of venture investors about the many companies they’re seeing – and funding — that deliver food, massages, and medical advice in real-time. We talked about the opportunity presented by these startups, as well as the many open questions that on-demand companies have created.

Each of the panelists – Patricia Nakashe of Trinity Ventures, Satya Patel of Homebrew, Simon Rothman of Greylock Partners, and Steve Schlafman of RRE Ventures – had thoughtful points of view. And while our recording of the event wasn’t crystal clear owing to the room’s acoustics, we were able to piece together parts of that discussion below.  Hope you enjoy it.

So many on-demand companies have now been funded. How is that impacting what you’re seeing? Are there fewer on-demand startups knocking on your doors or more?

SR: I actually counted. If you look at marketplaces, [we’ve been pitched] by about 1,000 of them in the last 18 months.

SS: We’re seeing them every single day. It’s across the board: B2B, B2C, infrastructure, some more horizontal apps in platforms; we’re not seeing any let up at all.

SP: We see 200 new companies each month and probably a quarter are related to the on-demand economy.

What are they centered around? Anything really novel?

Good Thursday morning, everyone! No column today.

—–

Top News in the A.M.

Avago Technologies is buying rival Broadcom for $37 billion in cash and stock, the latest in a wave of deals for giant chip makers. The combined company will be called Broadcom. More here from the WSJ.

Amazon isn’t messing around when it comes to the same-day delivery wars. It announced today that it’s expanding its same-day delivery service to two new markets — San Diego and Tampa Bay — while also making the service free to customers whose orders exceed $35. The service is now available in roughly 15 cities across the country. TechCrunch has more here.

Jawbone has sued its rival Fitbit, accusing it of “systematically plundering” confidential information by hiring Jawbone employees who downloaded sensitive materials shortly before leaving, including, in one case, a market trends and opportunities presentation, and, in another, confidential information about future products. Dealbook has the story here. (Interestingly, among Jawbone’s specific allegations, it says Fitbit poached one employee owing to his expertise in audio design, saying in its complaint that audio projects now appear to be a strategic initiative of Fitbit. Recode examines the claim here.)

A Canadian man was just ticketed for playing with his Apple Watch while driving. (He’s contesting the ticket, saying the watch does not qualify as a handheld device, which are illegal to operate in Quebec while at the wheel.)

—–

New Fundings

AutoGraph, a four-year-old, Seattle-based company whose technology enables users to get targeted deals without giving up personal information, has raised $2.7 million in funding from earlier backers Voyager Capital and members of the Alliance of Angels. The company has now raised $7.4 million altogether. GeekWire has more here.

BarTendr, a five-year-old, Oakland, Ca.-based social app centered around drinking (really; it analyzes the user-generated information and sells its findings about users’ habits and preferences to the beverage industry), has raised $1 million in seed funding New York Angels and Band of Angels. The company has now raised $2.3 million altogether.

Calimmune, a nine-year-old Tucson, Az.-based clinical-stage company whose lead therapy was engineered to control HIV infection and protect individuals with HIV from progressing to AIDS, has raised $15 million in Series B funding by a large (unnamed) pharmaceutical company, with participation from Alexandria Venture Investments and earlier backers RA Capital Healthcare Fund and Translational Accelerator.

Carvana, a three-year-old, Phoenix, Az.-based company that sells used cars online, is attempting to raise $300 million in growth funding to ramp up operations, reports TechCrunch. To date, the company has been financed by DriveTime, a Phoenix-based network of used-car dealerships.

CitizenShipper, a seven-year-old, Austin, Tex.-based online shipping marketplace that uses a peer-to-peer, auction-style platform to connect people in need of shipping services with drivers, haulers and transporters, has raised $500,000 in funding, including from Marvel Venture Partners.

ClearDATA, a 16-year-old, Tempe, Az.-based company that sells HIPAA-compliant cloud hosting and information security services to the healthcare industry, has raised $25 million in Series C funding from Heritage Group, HLM Venture Partners and Flare Capital Partners, along with earlier backers Norwest VenturePartners, Merck Global Health Innovation Fund and Excel Venture Management.

Complete, a new, Palo Alto, Ca.-based platform for people to share their to-do lists, has raised $1 million in funding led by Alloy Ventures, Structure Capital, and Red Eagle Ventures. The San Francisco Chronicle has more here.

Dockwa, a 10-month-old, Newport, R.I.-based mobile app providing reservations to boaters and the marine industry, has raised $1.1 million in seed funding, including from David Skok of Matrix Partners, HubSpot executives Brian Halligan and Mike Volpe, and other individual investors. The company has now raised $1.4 million altogether.

Flat4Day, a three-year-old Istanbul, Turkey-based vacation rental website that lists nearly 30,000 properties, most of them homes in Turkey and elswhere in Europe, has raised $2 million in funding led by publicly traded HomeAway, with participation from regional venture capital fund 212. The company has now raised just more than $6 million altogether.

Freedom Meditech, a nine-year-old, San Diego-based medical device company whose first product is a non-invasive tool that measures the autofluorescence in the eye, has raised $4.8 million in Series C funding from undisclosed sources. The company has now raised $14 million altogether, it says.

GumGum, an eight-year-old, Santa Monica, Ca.-based “in-image” advertising provider for publishers and brands, has raised $26 milion in new funding at a $200 million valuation led by Morgan Stanley Expansion Capital, with participation from New Enterprise Associates, Upfront Ventures and First Round Capital. The company, which had previously raised $10.8 million participating, says it chose Morgan Stanley with the hope that the bank will help take it public in 2017 — assuming ad tech stocks have rebounded by then. “The reality is that we’ve been around for a while and we want to provide some liquidity to our shareholders,” CEO Ophir Tanz tells Venture Capital Dispatch.

LifeIMAGE, a seven-year-old, Newton, Ma.-based network for exchanging medical imaging, has raised $17.5 million in new funding led by Cambia Health Solutions, with participation from earlier backers Cardinal Partners,Galen Partners, Long River Ventures, Mass Ventures, and Partners Innovation Fund.

Lystable, a seven-month-old, London-based startup whose cloud-based workflow management platform helps enterprises evaluate and manage contracts with external parties like freelancers, has raised $1.5 million in funding led by Valar Ventures, with participation from Backed, Playfair Capital, and numerous individual investors.

Monese, a 1.5-year-old, U.K.-based soon-to-launch mobile banking service for immigrants and expats who might otherwise find it difficult to open a bank account outside of their home country, has raised $1.8 million in backing from Seedcamp, SmartCap, and Spotify advisor and investor Shakil Khan, among others. More here.

NeuWave Medical, an 11-year-old, Madison, Wi.-based medical device company focused on the ablation of soft-tissue lesions, has raised $25 million in Series C funding led by Versant Ventures, with participation from earlier backers H.I.G. BioVentures, Venture Investors and others. The company has now raised at least $57.4 million, shows Crunchbase.

Pronutria Biosciences, a five-year-old Cambridge Ma.-based biotechnology company developing a new class of therapeutics to mediate amino acid biology, has raised $39 million in Series C funding led by Fidelity Management & Research Company, with participation from founding investor Flagship Ventures, among others. The company has now raised $62.1 million altogether, shows Crunchbase.

Tapad, a five-year-old, New York-based cross-screen marketing technology platform, has raised $18.5 million in B-2 funding led by Blue Cloud Ventures, with participation from Avalon Ventures, FirstMark Capital, G&H Partners, KnightEnterprise Fund, Silicon Valley Bank and Zanadu Capital Partners. The company has now raised $26.8 million altogether, shows Crunchbase.

Tegile Systems, a five-year-old, Newark, Ca.-based company that makes flash-driven storage arrays for databases, virtualized server and virtual desktop environments, has raised $70 million in new funding. The capital comes from Capricorn Investment Group, Cross Creek Advisors and Pine River Capital Management, along with earlier backers August Capital, Meritech Capital Partners, Western Digital and SanDisk. The company has now raised $117.5 million altogether.

Trustpilot, an eight-year-old, Copenhagen-based online source of user-generated reviews of (primarily online) businesses, has raised $73.5 million in Series D funding led by Virtruvian Partners, with participation from earlier backers DFJ Esprit, Index Ventures, Northzone and SEED Capital Denmark. The company has now raised $118 million to date. Venture Capital Dispatch has more here.

Virgin Pulse, the 11-year-old, Framingham, Ma.-based corporate wellness arm of Richard Branson’s Virgin Group, has raised $92 million in funding led byInsight Venture Partners, with participation from Virgin Group. BetaBoston has more here.
—–

New Funds

Next Frontier Capital, a new, Montana-based venture firm, has closed its debut fund with $20 million. The outfit plans to invest between $200,000 and $1.5 million in startup it backs — all based in Montana.

—–

Exits

CA Technologies is acquiring Rally Software, a provider of Agile development software and services, for approximately $480 million. Rally had gone public in 2013. EWeek has more here.

InsideSales, an 11-year-old, Provo, Ut.-based sales acceleration platform, has acquired the eight-year-old, San Mateo, Ca.-based predictive sales company C9for undisclosed terms. C9 had raised roughly $40 million from investors, including Mayfield Fund, InterWest Partners and Leapfrog Ventures. InsideSales has raised $199 million, including from HWVP, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, and Zetta Venture Partners. Venture Capital Dispatch has more color here.

Sony has acquired the optical data storage company Optical Archive, founded by Frank Frankovsky, a former VP of hardware design and supply chain operations for Facebook. The deal — whose terms aren’t being disclosed — is expected to help Sony market new products to business customers. The WSJ has the story here.

—–

People

Reddit‘s interim CEO, Ellen Pao, said yesterday that she has no regrets about suing her former employer, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. You can find her comments here.

Apple expert John Gruber dissects what Jony Ive’s promotion to chief design officer at the company really means.

—–

Happenings

Tonight in San Francisco, a Tedx event designed to champion the issues of women in tech. More information is available here.

Coming up June 12: the PreMoney conference, featuring Dave Morin, Ellen Pao, Naval Ravikant, Kate Mitchell and many others. Register here and use the code STRICTLYVC for a $150 discount.

—–

Jobs

Hulu is hiring a corporate development associate. The job is in Santa Monica, Ca.

Visa‘s corporate development and M&A unit is hiring an associate. The job is in San Francisco.

—–

Essential Reads

Google is set to unveil plans for an overhaul of its mobile payment products today at the company’s biggest event of the year. (The Verge is live-blogging the event right here, by the way.)

Self-driving cars are “farther out than some people are predicting,” says GM CEO Mary Barry. More here.

—–

Detours

A map that compares the gross domestic product of each U.S. state with the national GDPs of other nations.

How family incomes affect children’s college chances.

One of the best police blotters in America.

—–

Retail Therapy

You’ll be able to buy your virtual reality Oculus headset soon, but it won’t come cheap. CEO Brendan Iribe said at Recode’s conference yesterday that he expects consumers will have to shell out $1,500 — a price he hopes will fall to below $1,000 over time.

Ecocapsule. Just in case.

Hi, everyone! Hope you’re having a fine Wednesday.

——

Top News in the A.M.

Recode, the news website led by the veteran journalists Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher, is being acquired in an all-stock deal by Vox Media, a move that “reflects the turmoil among digital organizations focused on covering the tech industry,” notes the New York Times. No one is talking about the price, but Quartz notes that the two digital publishers already shared an investor in Comcast, which could wind up owning them outright.

A new SEC filing reveals that the Chinese microblog Weibo is investing $142 million in China’s dominant taxi-hailing firms Didi Taxi and Kuaidi Taxi, presumably to fend off their aggressive U.S. rival Uber. Reuters has more here.

Investment-banker-turned-VC Mary Meeker released her newest Internet Trends report this morning. You can view it here.

——-

With $2.5 Million from VCs, Mapsense Charts Its Next Steps

Mapsense, a 12-person, San Francisco-based company that’s been quietly producing map analytics tools for corporate customers, is today revealing that it has raised $2.1 million in funding led by General Catalyst Partners, with participation from Redpoint Ventures, Formation 8 and Amplify. LA.

The announcement is interesting for a few reasons, starting with what Mapsense is at its core: a modern API for geo data visualizations. Indeed, according to the company, it can cater to any customer wanting to make better sense of the many billions of location-based data points being streamed constantly from a wide variety of sources, including smartphones, connected cars, cheap satellites, commercial drones and smart grids, to name a few.

Mapsense co-founder and CEO Erez Cohen puts it in perspective, noting that “there was more location data produced in 2014 than in all of time until then.”

Mapsense counts as customers, for example, two publicly traded credit card companies that respectively see 10 percent and 50 percent of the transaction data in the U.S. While they’re (hopefully) mindful of using the data they collect in a responsible way, Mapsense is helping them help their customers. For instance, they can show restaurateurs what people are paying for Thai food in certain neighborhoods, and how their competitors down the street fared last Tuesday (and how they fared the next town over, and around the country, if they really want to know).

Others of Mapsense’s customers include mobile ad companies looking to better target potential customers.

Obviously, Mapsense is well-timed, particularly given growing corporate interest in mapping technologies. (Nokia’s mapping division has become a particularly hot commodity of late.)

Starting today, Mapsense — which charges its enterprise customers a yearly average of “six figures” based on the amount of data they push to Mapsense —  is also hoping to sell its analytics tools to developers.

They won’t be paying as much to use Mapsense’s technology, but it’s a way to accelerate its growth, says Cohen, who adds that anyone can upload their data for free if they’re willing to make it public.

Worth flagging, particularly for StrictlyVC readers: Mapsense is announcing its newest funding today but actually sealed up the round a year ago. (It has raised $2.5 million to date.)

Cohen – a former Palantir Technologies engineer – insists the company’s funding announcement has nothing to do with its future fundraising plans. If it did, Mapsense would be among a growing number of companies to go public with their funding just as they begin looking to the next round.

(By the way, here’s a rough video demonstration of how Mapsense’s technology works.)

—–

New Fundings

Campanda, a two-year-old, Berlin-based booking site for motor homes and trailers, has raised €5 million ($5.4 million) in Series A  funding led by the European investment fund Ecomobility Ventures, with participation from Ringier Digital Ventures, Accel Partners, Groupe Arnault, and previous investors Atlantic Labs, and b-to-v.

DocuSign, the 12-year-old, San Francisco-based end-to-end document management company, has raised an additional $45 million from the venture arms of Dell and Intel, just weeks after closing funding from growth investors at a $3 billion valuation. The money brings the company’s Series F round to $278 million and its overall funding to $508 million. Venture Capital Dispatch has the story here.

eGifter, a four-year-old, Huntington, N.Y.-based e-gifting company, has raised $3.5 million in funding from the Long Island Angel Network, BDS Capital, Angel Dough Ventures, 94Bits and several angel investors.

Enervee, a three-year-old, Santa Monica, Ca.-based, smart data and commerce platform designed to help consumers compare energy products, has raised $3.7 million in funding led by Obvious Ventures, with participation from angel investors in the U.S. and Europe.  Enervee had previously raised $1 million in seed funding. Vator has more here.

EverCompliant, an eight-year-old, Tel Aviv, Israel-based company that sells security risk and compliance management software, has raised $3.5 million in Series A funding from Carmel Ventures, Nyca Partners and earlier investor Joey Low of Star Farm Ventures.

Jobandtalent, a six-year-old, Valencia, Spain-based recruitment startup that uses linguistic analysis to alert candidates to jobs they might otherwise have missed, has added $25 million in funding to its previously closed Series A round, bringing its total to $39 million. The newest infusion was led by earlier investor, Percacer CEO Pelayo Cortina Koplowitz, with participation from Qualitas Equity Partners, Kibo Ventures, Fundación José Manuel Entrecanales, and business angel Nicolás Luca de Tena.

Kantox, a four-year-old, London-based currency exchange marketplace that says it offers small and mid-size businesses better rates than banks or traditional brokers, has raised $11 million in Series B funding led by Partech Ventures and IDinvest Partners, with participation from Cabiedes & Partners. All three are already investors in the company, which has now raised $19 million altogether.

Mapi Pharma, a seven-year-old, Ness Ziona, Israel-based pharmaceutical company focused on treating multiple sclerosis, has raised $10 million in Series A funding led by Shavit Capital, with participation from chairman and CEO Ehud Marom.

MatterFab, a two-year-old, San Francisco-based metal 3D printer manufacturing company, has raised $5.75 million in Series A funding from GE Ventures and earlier backer Innovate Indiana Fund. MatterFab had received an undisclosed amount of previous funding, including from Lemnos Labs and Kima Ventures.

Notion, a two-year-old, Denver, Co.-based company that makes sensors for in-home monitoring, has raised $2 million in seed funding from Draper Nexus Ventures, Gabriel Investments, Galvanize Ventures, Foundry Group Angels and TechStars. The startup, a TechStars Boulder alum, raised just over $280,000 in crowdfunding last year. More here.

Omadi, a four-year-old, Provo, Utah-based company whose app offers paperless reports, on-duty task assignments, photo management and GPS tools to provide visibility into the operations of distributed workforces, has raised $700,000 in funding led by Peak Ventures. More here.

Pryynt, a two-year-old, London-based in-app photo printing platform for iOS and Android apps, has raised $2 million in seed funding from undisclosed investors. More here.

QR Pharma, a seven-year-old, Berwyn, Pa.-based biopharmaceutical company developing therapies to treat Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and other neurodegenerative diseases, has raised $5.7 million in Series A funding led by QR Pharma’s chairman, Michael Hoffman, with participation from Robin Hood Ventures, earlier angel investors, and additional angel investors from Delaware Crossing and from Keiretsu Forum.

Rani Therapeutics, a three-year-old, San Jose, Ca.-based maker of a “robotic pill” that could deliver drugs like insulin without the use of a needle, has raised roughly $25 million in Series C funding led by the pharmaceutical giantNovartis, with participation from returning investors Google Ventures, InCube Ventures and VentureHealth, among others. Venture Capital Dispatch has more here.

Shift Messenger, a months-old, San Francisco-based online communication tool designed to help coworkers manage their schedules, has raised $1.5 million in seed funding led by Version One Ventures. Other investors in the round include Golden Venture Partners, Kapor Capital, Commerce Ventures, NewGenVenture Partners, Venrock, and QueensBridge Venture Partners.

Si-Bone, Inc., a seven-year-old, San Jose, Ca.-based medical device company that makes a titanium implant system for the sacroiliac joint, has raised $21 million infunding led by Redline Capital Management, with participation from all existing major investors. According to Crunchbase, the company has now raised roughly $82 million altogether, including from OrbiMed Advisors,Montreux Equity Partners, Skyline Ventures, and Novo A/S.

Ubimo, a three-year-old, Tel Aviv, Israel-based startup that uses location-based data to make mobile ads more relevant, has raised $7.5 million in Series B funding led by Pitango Venture Capital, with participation from OurCrowd and Yahoo Japan Capital. The company has now raised $9.7 million altogether. TechCrunch has more here.

VitalFields, a four-year-old, Estonia-based farm management startup, has raised $1.2 million in Series A funding from investors, including SmartCap, the investment arm of taxpayer-funded Estonian Development Fund, and an unnamed Bay Area venture firm. TechCrunch has more here.

—–

New Funds

Airware, a four-year-old, San Francisco-based platform for developing and operating commercial drones, has announced the Commercial Drone Fund, which the company says will be used to invest anywhere from $250,000 to $1 million in dozens of nascent startups. In fact, says the company, it has already backed two companies: RedBird, a Paris-based drone data processing startup, and Sky-Futures, a London-based company that builds drone sensors for monitoring oil and gas infrastructure. Airware has itself raised roughly $40 million from investors, including Andreessen Horowitz, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, and Google Ventures. TechCrunch has much more here.

Kurma Partners, a six-year-old, Paris, France-based venture firm, has held the first closing of its third venture capital fund at €33 million ($35.9 million). The firm, which acts as a venture accelerator, helping to develop Europe-based diagnostics startups, counts The European Investment Fund, Fonds National d’Amorçage, Institut Pasteur and BNP Paribas as limited partners. It has raised two funds previously: Kurma Biofund I (€51M) & Kurma Biofund II (€75M).

Rockaway Capital, a venture firm focused on internet startups in emerging markets, has entered the U.S. market with its first office in San Francisco. The firm has invested $28 million so far in seed-stage start-ups; its first offices were in Prague and São Paulo.

—–

Exits

Aberdeen Asset Management, the Philadelphia-based asset management giant, is acquiring the fund of funds firm FLAG Capital Management. More here.

The publicly traded data storage giant EMC has purchased seven-year-old Virtustream, a cloud management firm, for $1.2 billion, to incorporate into its newly formed cloud managed services business. Virtustream had raised $129.6 from investors, shows Crunchbase, including TDF Ventures, QuestMark Partners, Columbia Capital, Noro-Moseley Partners, and Intel Capital.

Knowingly, an Austin, Tex.-based Internet startup, announced yesterday that it has acquired a portion of the assets of the shuttered tech blog Gigaom, including its website and content library. Talking New Media has more here about the deal, terms of which were not disclosed. Meanwhile, Mathew Ingram, a former writer for GigaOm, has more about Knowingly here.

The 17-year-old French tech company Mandriva is being liquidated. Business Insider has the story here.

Oculus VR has acquired the eight-month-old, London-based (seemingly bootstrapped) startup Surreal Vision to sharpen its expertise in recreating real-time 3D representations of the outside world. Terms were not disclosed. PC Gamer has more here.

Time Inc.  has acquired Missouri-based FanSided, a (seemingly bootstrapped) eight-year-old, Austin, Tex.-based sports, entertainment and lifestyle network of several hundred websites. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

—–

People

A Siberian Husky owned by Wang Jianlin, the son of China’s richest man, is reportedly being “hounded” on the social network Weibo for owning not one but two gold Apple watches. (Is it so wrong for a dog to want to know its heart rate?)

Ken King, who advises companies as head of the Silicon Valley law office of the Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, says he now spends about 30 percent of his time advising tech companies on investor activism, up from about 5 percent three years ago. His tactics reportedly include writing mock letters from potential activists.

Cameron Lester — a former Credit Suisse investment banker who cofounded the San Francisco-based venture firm Azure Capital Group in 2000 — is back at Credit Suisse, this time as its new global head of internet banking. He replaces Imran Khan, Credit Suisse’s former top internet banker, who joined Snapchat as chief strategy officer last December. No word on how Lester’s move impacts Azure. (StrictlyVC reached out to the firm yesterday but hasn’t heard back yet.) The WSJ has the story here.

—–

Jobs

Cisco is looking to add an associate to its venture investing unit. The job is in San Jose, Ca.

—–

Essential Reads

It isn’t just Twitter that’s kicking the tires at Flipboard. In recent weeks, reports the WSJ, Google and Yahoo have also held early discussions with the newsreader app maker.

Four-year-old Snapchat plans to go public, its cofounder and CEO, Evan Spiegel, disclosed yesterday at the popular tech summit Code Conference. Spiegel didn’t offer a timeframe for an IPO, but he said Snapchat now has nearly 100 million users logging onto the platform daily. (Here’s some video from his appearance.)

——

Detours

You’re kind of a jerk behind the wheel. Here’s why.