Hi, happy Tuesday, everyone!

We know some of you didn’t receive yesterday’s email or else had trouble opening the links. (Sorry.) Our ESP suffered a denial-of-service attack early in the day. For those who missed the latest about our May 13 event in San Francisco (and other bits, including a job listing you might want to check out), click here.

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Top News in the A.M.

Qualcomm has rejected a call for its break-up by activist investor Jana Partners, saying that “synergies provided by our business model create more value for stockholders than could be created through alternative corporate structures.”

Bad news for Google: Apple has managed to sell more Apple Watches in a single day than the number of Android Wear smartwatches sold in an entire year.

Rakuten‘s shopping spree looks to continue. According to TechCrunch, the Japanese conglomerate may soon shell out $580 million for the online celebrity news site PopSugar. According to Crunchbase, the nine-year-old company has raised roughly $46 million from investors, including NBC Universal, Sequoia Capital, and Institutional Venture Partners.

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Duo Security Raises $30 Million More, Led by Redpoint

Duo Security, a five-year-old, 100-person company that sells its cloud-based two-factor authentication software to thousands of organizations, including Facebook, Twitter, Nasa and Uber, has just raised $30 million in Series C funding led by Redpoint Ventures, with participation from Benchmark, Google Ventures, Radar Partners and True Ventures. (The Ann Arbor, Mi.-based startup has now raised around $50 million altogether.)

Last week, we chatted the Duo Security’s cofounder and CTO, Jon Oberheide, about how his company is using mobile devices as a second form of authentication, and what comes next.

Some major company’s information is breached every week it seems, yet there are also other two-factor authentication services out there tackling the problem. What makes yours different?

First, we think the existing security is broken. Underlying information technology has shifted out underneath existing security technologies and they aren’t relevant anymore. In the past few decades, your security model was built within the physical walls of your organization, then people began accessing the same device but they weren’t necessarily in the building, which made phishing for those employees’ names and passwords easy. Poor hygiene across multiple sites was the problem we were trying to solve, and we succeeded in ensuring that your identification couldn’t be stolen.

Then mobile devices came along and now everyone uses their own favorite products.

Yes, and those mobile devices aren’t under the control of an IT administrator. You have these cloud services that are being controlled by third parties. IT departments have gone from saying “no,” to partnering with [various parties] to ensure their [devices’] secure enablement.

And you have a new edition that you say works even better than what your customers have been using. How so?

Our new platform edition allows companies to establish what security policies are acceptable and customize protection at the point of entry. It can stop break-ins regardless of whether hackers have a user’s name or password by analyzing a company’s policies for each log-in attempt, including the location of the user, the reputation of the IP address, and what level of device health they want to admit into their enterprises. It addresses, for example, the employee who might forget his phone at the bar. A company can require that a full encryption and screen lock [are activated] to prevent someone else rom picking it up and trying to access corporate information. Or, if you’re a domestic company whose employees primarily log-in from Starbucks, you might want to block access to China or Russia, where a lot of hackers come from. You just click a box and it’s done.

How much more will this new edition cost customers?

On a per user, per month basis, we currently charge $3; our platform edition wil cost $6 per user per month because we’re providing a lot more value to companies that we think justifies [the price hike].

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New Fundings

Adallom, a three-year-old, Palo Alto, Ca.-based SaaS-based security company focused on auditing user activity and protecting users from threats in real time, has raised $30 million in Series C funding led by Hewlett-Packard Ventures and Rembrandt Venture Partners, with participation from Sequoia Capital and Index Ventures.

Alfred Club, a 20-month-old, San Francisco-based startup that pairs people needing work with people wanting their errands handled, has raised $10 million in new funding led by New Enterprise Associates and Spark Capital, with participation from Sherpa Ventures and CrunchFund. Spark also led Alfred’s previous $2 million round.

CapriCoast, a months-old, Bangalore, India-based online furniture store that connects its customers with manufacturers directly, has raised $1.25 million in seed funding led by Accel Partners. DealCurry has more here.

Commeasure, a year-old, Singapore-based company that helps hotels develop their direct booking systems, has raised $1 million in seed funding led by the Singapore-based early-stage investor Jungle Ventures. VCCircle has more here.

Docker, a five-year-old, San Francisco-based company whose open platform enables developers and system administrators to create distributed applications, has raised $95 million Series D funding led by earlier investor Insight Venture Partners. Other investors in the round include Coatue, Goldman Sachs and Northern Trust and previous investors Benchmark, Greylock Partners, Sequoia Capital, Trinity Ventures and AME Cloud Ventures. More here.

Eaze, a 10-month-old, San Francisco-based medical marijuana on-demand delivery platform, has raised $10 million in Series A funding led by DCM Ventures, with participation from Snoop Dogg’s Casa Verde Capital (of course), 500 Startups, and earlier backer Fresh VC. Eaze had previously raised $1.5 million in a seed funding.

FinalCode, a year-old, San Jose, Ca.-based company that makes file-encryption software, has raised $6 million in Series A funding from Japan’s Digital Arts. CRN has more here.

Illumio, a two-year-old, Sunnyvale, Ca.-based cybersecurity company, has raised $100 million in Series C funding from BlackRock and Accel Partners, with participation from earlier backers Formation 8, Andreessen Horowitz and General Catalyst Partners. To date, the company has raised $142 million altogether. Venture Capital Dispatch has more here.

Movidius, an 8.5-year-old, San Mateo, Ca.-based fabless semiconductor company that designs compact, high-performance, ultralow power, computational imaging and vision processing chips and reference designs, has raised $40 million in Series E funding led by Summit Bridge Capital, with participation from ARCH Venture Partners, Sunny Optical Technology Group, and earlier backers Atlantic Bridge Capital, AIB Seed Capital Fund, Capital-E, DFJ Esprit and Robert Bosch Venture Capital. The company has now raised $86.5 million altogether. Silicon Angle has more here.

Npm, a 16-month-old, Oakland, Ca.-based company that makes software for JavaScript developers, has raised $8 million in Series A funding led by Bessemer Venture Partners.

Planet Labs, a five-year-old, San Francisco-based startup that aims to cover the Earth in tiny satellites, has raised $118 million in Series C funding led by the the International Finance Corporation, a division of the World Bank. Other participants in the round include Data Collective, and earlier backers Yuri Milner, DFJ, Capricorn Investment Group,O’Reilly Alpha Tech Ventures, Founders Fund, First Round Capital,Innovation Endeavors, AME Cloud Ventures, Industry Ventures, Felicis Ventures, Lux Capital, and Ray Rothrock. TechCrunch has much more here.

Pocket, an eight-year-old, San Francisco-based service that lets users save content from across the web to read or watch later, has raised $7 million in fresh funding led by New Enterprise Associates, with participation from Sound Ventures, a fund announced by actor Ashton Kutcher and talent manager Guy Oseary last month. Pocket has now raised $14.5 million to date. VentureBeat has more here.

PrimeRevenue, a 12-year-old, Atlanta, Ga.-based company that sells multi-bank supply chain finance services to buyers and suppliers worldwide, has raised $80 million led by BBH Capital Partners and Battery Ventures. The company had previously raised $11.6 million, including from Battery and RRE Ventures, shows Crunchbase.

ResiModel, a two-year-old, New York-based service that aggregates, standardizes and analyzes financial data for transactions in multifamily properties, has raised an undisclosed amount of money that brings its total amount of backing to $3.5 million. The company had previously raised nearly $2 million in debt, shows Crunchbase.

Take Eat Easy, a two-year-old, Paris, France-based company that, like DoorDash, invites users to order food online from restaurants that don’t traditionally offer a take-out and delivery service, has raised €6 million ($6.4 million) in Series A funding from Rocket Internet, DN Capital, and Piton Capital. More here.

Tiantian Yongche, an eight-month-old, Beijing, China-based carpool and ridesharing app, has raised an undisclosed amount of Series C funding led by Baidu, with participation from Sequoia Capital. The company claims its valuation is now close to $200 million. Baidu has been playing catch-up in the taxi app race. It has also recently invested in in 51yongche, another carpooling app, and in December, it invested in Uber, the car-booking giant. Tech in Asia has more here.

Tonara, a 6.5-year-old, Ramat Gan, Israel-based startup behind the eponymous interactive sheet music app, has raised $5 million from Chinese Internet giant Baidu and earlier backer Carmel Ventures. The company had previously raised $4.8 million, shows Crunchbase. Techcrunch has more here.

WhatWeLike, a a 15-month-old, Jakarta, Indonesia-based social shopping startup that focuses on local fashions, has raised an undisclosed amount of seed funding from East Ventures. Tech in Asia has more here.

Zomato, the seven-year-old, Gurgaon, India-based online restaurant guide, has reportedly raised roughly $24.9 million from Info Edge as part of a $50 million fundraise. Zomato had also raised $60 million from Vy Capital, Info Edge and Sequoia last November. Altogether, it has raised $163 million in funding until now, reports the Economic Times.

ZopNow, a four-year-old, Bangalore, India- based online grocery startup, has raised $10 million in new funding led by San Francisco-based Dragoneer Investment Group, with participation from earlier backers Accel Partners, Qualcomm Ventures and Times Internet. Inc42 has the story here.

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New Funds

Yesterday, 500 Startups announced a new $10 million carveout fund, called the DistroFund, aimed at helping early-stage companies with both financial backing and support services when they are trying to land Series A funding. PandoDaily has more here.

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People

Twitter’s former head of investor relations, Nils Erdmann, has a new job as a partner at the young secondary shop Battery East Group. TechCrunch asks him about the move here.

Eight VC firms, including Google Ventures, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Accel Partners, Shasta Ventures, and Redpoint Ventures, have opened or are opening offices in San Francisco’s South Park. “It’s Sand Hill, but with street art and better burritos,” Redpoint’s Ryan Sarver tells Recode.

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Data

Of the 56 current “unicorns,” just four are led by women (and just three if you exclude Good Technology, whose path continues to appear uncertain). Almost two-thirds of the companies don’t have a woman on the board, either. Silk has the data story here.

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Essential Reads

As vertical marketplaces rise, Craiglist is reportedly losing market share at long last.

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Detours

How not to be a jerk while wearing the Apple Watch.

Why everyone went nuts over Hillary Clinton’s new logo.

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Retail Therapy

Whoops. Looks like Johnny Walker hired the wrong branding agency.

Good morning, dear readers!

We’re happy to announce that Charles Hudson of SoftTech VC has just joined our upcoming program on May 13 in San Francisco, making an already terrific line-up even better. Thank you, Charles! And giant thanks to Personal Capital, Amazon Web Services, and Galvanize for helping us produce the evening. We’re getting excited to see everyone.

No column today. (Busy morning.)

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Top News in the A.M.

Chip maker Qualcomm is under pressure from activist investor Jana Partners to consider a breakup to boost its sagging stock price.

Twitter is reportedly encouraging its celebrity users to dump the live broadcasting app Meerkat and use its product, Periscope, instead.

Yesterday, the first four episodes of the “Game of Thrones” were leaked and promptly downloaded more than 100,000 times in just the first few hours following. As Forbes notes, the leak is bad news for HBO, which just rolled out a standalone streaming service that costs customers $15 per month.

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New Fundings

4i, a six-year-old, Amsterdam-based TV app development company, has raised $2 million in funding from investors, including Newion Investments.

CradlePoint, an 11-year-old, Boise, Id.-based wireless networking company, has raised $48 million in Series B funding from new investorsSorenson Capital, Delta-v Capital and the Caprock Group, reports VentureWire. The company has raised $65.5 million altogether over the years, shows Crunchbase. Earlier backers include OVP Venture Partners and Highway 12 Ventures.

Crowd Supply, a 2.5-year-old, Portland, Oregon-based crowdfunding and product development platform for hardware engineers and product designers, has raised $585,000 in seed funding led by Portland Seed Fund, with participation from SOSVentures, Inspiration Ventures, and a consortium of angels. The company had previously raised $500,000 in seed funding.

Embera NeuroTherapeutics, a 10-year-old, Sudbury, Ma.-based development-stage pharmaceutical company focused on developing treatments for smoking cessation and other addictions, has raised $2 million in A-2 funding from earlier investors and HRA Pharma, a Paris-based specialty pharmaceutical company. The company has now raised at least $7 million from investors, including Louisiana Ventures and Themelios Ventures.

Estimize, a four-year-old, New York-based startup that crowdsources estimates from more than 4,500 hedge funds, brokerages and independent analysts, has raised $3 million in Series B funding led by WorldQuant Ventures, with participation from Agilic Partners, numerous individual investors, and earlier backer Contour Venture Partners. The company has now raised roughly $5.6 million altogether, shows Crunchbase.

Fliptu, a two-year-old, L.A. company whose suite of social aggregation tools help brands curate their best brand and fan social content into visualizations, has raised $1.2 million in seed funding from Scout Ventures and numerous angel investors.

Khorus, a three-year-old, Austin, Tex.-based company that makes business management software for CEOs, has raised $4 million in seed funding from company founder Joel Trammel and angel investor Tom Greig, a senior managing director at the New York-based private equity firm Liberty Partners. The company has raised $6 million altogether. Austin Business Journal has more here.

Magency Digital, a four-year-old, Paris, France-based company that makes event apps for everything from small training seminars to large conferences, has raised €3M ($3.7M) in Series A funding led by Alliance Entreprendre and Sigma Gestion.

ScoreStream, a three-year-old, San Diego, CA-based platform for crowdsourcing scores and photos for local sporting events, has raised $2 million in seed funding led by Sinclair Digital Ventures, with participation from previous investors Avalon Ventures and New Enterprise Associates, Sagamore Ventures, and Paul Palmieri.

Spotify, the nine-year-old, Stockholm, Sweden-based music streaming service, is nearing a deal to raise $400 million at a $8.4 billion valuation, according to the WSJ, which says that Goldman Sachs and an Abu Dhabi sovereign-wealth fund have agreed to invest in the round.

Stem, a six-year-old, Millbrae, Ca.-based startup that uses batteries and software to help businesses reduce their electricity bills, has raised $12 million in Series C funding from Mitsui & Co. The company tells VentureWire that it expects to raise between $25 million and $30 million before closing the round, which also includes participation from earlier backers Angeleno Group, Constellation Energy, Iberdrola SA, and General Electric.

UCloud, a three-year-old, Shanghai, China-based cloud service provider, has reportedly raised roughly $100 million in Series C funding led by Legend Capital, with the participation from VMS Legend Investment Fund, DCM, Bertelsmann and GX Capital. The company, founded by former Tencent executives, had previously raised an undisclosed amount of Series A funding in 2013 and $50 million in Series B funding last year.

UgenTec, a year-old, Hasselt, Belgium-based laboratory software developer whose products aim to trace respiratory infections and certain types of cancer, among other things, has raised $1.4 million in funding led by an unnamed Belgian investor group; IWT, a government agency; and the Belgian investment company LRM (which provided provided $105,000 in debt).

UXP Systems, a four-year-old, Toronto, Ontario-based company whose software helps telecommunication and cable operators simplify user registration from any screen and for any member of their customers’ households, has raised an undisclosed amount of funding from cable and media veterans John Malone and John Risley.

Vacatia, a two-year-old, San Francisco-based resort marketplace for vacationing families, has raised $7 million in funding led by Javelin Venture Partners. The company has now raised $12 million altogether, shows Crunchbase. Earlier backers include Maveron, Bee Partners, Peterson Ventures, and operator-investor Erik Blachford.

Videoo, a six-month-old, Miami-based company that plans to sell crowdsourced video products to brands and advertisers, recently raised $1.6 million in seed funding, including from the Miami-based angel network Accelerated Growth Partners. The Miami Herald has more here.

Voyager Therapeutics, a year-old, Cambridge, Ma.-based company that focuses on treatments for fatal and debilitating diseases of the central nervous system, has raised $60 million in Series B funding led byBrookside Capital and Partner Fund Management, with participation from Wellington Management, Casdin Capital and two undisclosed investment funds. Voyager spun out of Third Rock Ventures last year, raising $45 million in Series A funding from Third Rock in the process.

Wingz, a 16-month-old, San Francisco-based ride-sharing app that invites users to book prescheduled rides to and from the airport, has raised $2 million in funding led by Binux Capital, Blue Angel Ventures and Florence Venture Partners, with participation from Ocotea Holdings, Big Bloom Investments, Olive Tree, and investor Larry Marcus of WaldenVC.

Zeemi.tv, a year-old, Indonesia-based live-streaming video platform, has raised $1 million in seed funding from DeNA and 500 Startups. TechCrunch has more here.

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New Funds

New Atlantic Ventures’s managing partner John Backus and True Ventures’s cofounder John Burke are raising a $300 million fund together, according to Washington Business Journal. From its report: “People familiar with the plans behind the fund say it would effectively make a proxy investment in a company on behalf of a smaller fund, but only when the smaller fund lacked the capital for a follow-on investment. The investment would be in exchange for half of the profits. In theory, this means the smaller fund would have the opportunity to earn additional returns without having to put down any additional money.”

OrbiMed, a 26-year-old, New York-based investment firm that backs both private and publicly traded life sciences companies around the world, is raising a second Israel-focused fund and it’s targeting $200 million to $250 million for the effort, reports the Globes. OrbiMed raised its first, $203 million, fund in Israel in 2010. According to documents obtained by the Globes, it has since invested that capital across 19 companies and exited (or partially exited) from six of them, establishing a current internal rate of return of 21.4 percent.

Pelion Venture Partners, a 29-year-old, Salt Lake City, Ut.-based early-stage venture firm that focuses primarily on enterprise software and cloud computing startups, is looking to raise up to $200 million for its sixth fund, shows an SEC filing that states its first sale has yet to occur.

SWaN and Legend Venture Partners, a three-year-old Leesburg, Va.-based venture capital firm, is looking to raise up to $150 million for a third fund, according to an SEC filing that states its first sale has yet to occur. The firm was cofounded by longtime colleagues Fred Schaufeld, Clifford White and Anthony Nader and has already made dozens of bets, among them Optoro, which helps retailers get rid of their distressed inventory; SocialRadar, which makes a location-based social app (StrictlyVC featured it out of the gate), and Tango Card, a rewards platform company. With the new fund come apparent changes. White is no longer listed anywhere at the site; meanwhile, David Bosserman has recently joined as a managing director and the firm’s chief financial officer.

There’s a new fintech accelerator on the scene called the TCF-PnP Program. The effort is a joint venture between The Co-Foundry, a venture accelerator in Singapore, and Plug and Play, the Silicon Valley-based accelerator. It aims to support financial tech startups with up to $200,000 (if they’re truly nascent), and up to $1 million if they’re further along. The startups, which will spend between 6 and 12 months with the program, can work out of either Singapore or Sunnyvale, Ca. Much more here.

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IPOs

Aduro Biotech, a 15-year-old, Berkeley, Ca.-based company that’s developing drugs that aim to teach the body’s immune system to fight cancer, expects to raise up to $93 million in an IPO this week by issuing 5 million shares at $14 to $16 per share. (It’s offering another 750,000 shares to underwriters.) Aduro has raised roughly $140 million from investors over the years. Some of its biggest shareholders include Morningside Ventures, which owns 37.8 percent of the company; Fidelity Investments, which owns 7.9 percent; and Johnson & Johnson, which owns 6.6 percent.

Etsy, the 10-year-old, Brooklyn-based marketplace for mostly handmade and vintage items, and Virtu, the seven-year-old, New York-based high-speed trading firm, are planning to go public this week. Virtu is the better bet, argues Crain’s New York, which has more details about both.

KemPharm, a nine-year-old, Coralville, Ia.-based specialty pharmaceutical company, plans to raise $60 million in IPO this week by issuing 4.6 million shares at between $12 and $14 per share.

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Exits

Elto, a three-year-old, San Francisco-based online marketplace that pairs business owners with web developers and marketers to help them grow their online presence, has been acquired for undisclosed terms by by GoDaddy, the now publicly traded web hosting company. Elto reportedly raised less than one million dollars, including from the Australian fund Blackbird Ventures. More here.

Sunstorm Games, a six-year-old, Las Vegas-based maker of casual gaming apps for kids, has been acquired for by TabTale, an Israel-based kids’ gaming and educational app publisher that has raised $13.5 million from Qualcomm Ventures, Magma Venture Partners, and Vintage Investment Partners. Terms of the deal haven’t been disclosed, but TechCrunch sources peg it at $6 million.

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Job Listings

Bessemer Venture Partners is looking to hire an associate for its Menlo Park, Ca., office.

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Data

European and Israeli VC trends in the first quarter of this year.

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Essential Reads

Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer announced a major reorganization of the company’s product teams on Friday. More here.

Venture-backed DataSift faces a new, and very big, problem — along with other third parties that have been reselling firehose data from Twitter.

More on the burgeoning battle over home services. (Tweeted venture capitalist Bill Gurley last night: “This will be messier than everyone realizes.”)

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Detours

Why people care more about their pets than other humans.

The Terminator is back. Again.

Gym membership packages: an overview.

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Retail Therapy

Candylab cars.

A new toothbrush subscription service. (Unlike GoodMouth, this one focuses on electric toothbrushes.)

It’s Friday! To our Greek friends, Kali Anastasi! To the rest of our Orthodox friends, Happy Easter.:)

Have a great weekend, everyone — we’ll see you soon.

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Top News in the A.M.

Hope you snuck your order in; according to 9to5Mac, all models of Apple Watch have now almost entirely sold out.

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One of Craiglist’s Biggest (Only) Threats to Date: VarageSale

It’s accepted wisdom that nothing and no one can destroy Craiglist, the San Francisco-based local classifieds marketplace whose success has continued unhampered for roughly 20 years, despite many newer entrants with far snazzier technologies.

VarageSale might just be different. At least, the 50-person, Toronto-based outfit is gaining enough traction that last month, Sequoia Capital and Lightspeed Venture Partners sank $34 million into its operations.

What makes the startup, which claims to have millions of users, so promising? A few things, according to cofounder Carl Mercier, who sold an antispam company to security-software maker Websense in 2009 and founded VarageSale with his wife, Tami Zuckerman, in 2012. For starters, users have to be accepted onto the platform by volunteer moderators in the many communities in which VarageSale now operates. (The company has quietly spread to cities in 42 states and in every Canadian province.)

As key, seemingly, the conversations that happen behind the scenes between Craigslist users — the harried “I’ll take it!” emails, along with the privately asked questions and price haggling — are instead displayed in Twitter-like feeds at VarageSale. It helps build interest in users’ items, suggests Mercier; it also builds community.

We talked with Mercier this week. Our conversation has been edited for length.

You say VarageSale has millions of users. Is that single-digit millions? And how many items are selling on the platform each month or year?

We have millions of users who view billions of items of month. For competitive reasons, we’d rather not be more specific. But 50 percent of our mobile users open the app every day, which is very unusual for a commerce app.

What are they returning to check out?

Typically people are coming to the site for information about a specific category they’re following — like clothes for a two-year-old boy, or smartphones. They also come back all the time because they want to make sure they don’t miss that treasure, or because they posted an item and there are 10 people who’ve expressed an interest in it.

Do you do anything to slow the pace of transactions to foster those conversations? It’s interesting that people don’t just sell to the first interested party.

It’s more akin to people putting their towel on a beach chair at 6 a.m to reserve it. Maybe the first person to express an interest [lands the item], but once they ask a question, then we see other people become interested — sometimes tens of them.

You don’t enable people to transact through the site, though. Like Craigslist, that happens offline. Might that change?

We really want to focus on building up our local communities right now — growing our user base and coverage. That’s where we feel like we’ll have the biggest impact.

I’d read about VarageSale meet-ups. How do most people come together?

It really depends on the people and the communities. Sometimes people meet in a parking lot or at their house; sometimes, our moderators organize events every one or two weeks.

Given your emphasis on community, VarageSale sounds like a hybrid of a number of things, including Craigslist and NextDoor. Maybe even Airbnb? Are people selling home items alone, or are you starting to see other things, like neighbors alerting others to their available in-law unit?

Hah, no. Airbnb is really good at that. Some people are renting properties [on the platform], but we mostly focus on physical goods.

You’ve just raised a lot of money. Is this an employee-intensive business? How will you use the capital?

Building strong communities isn’t something that we can just press a button and it happens. It’s definitely hard work that involves a lot of human intervention. We probably won’t be hiring 1,000 people, but we think we’ll add 30 to 40 employees in the next year. We already have a small presence in Europe, Australia, and Japan that we’re growing.

Will your eventual business model center on transaction fees? Local advertising?

Revenue isn’t a priority for us. We want to focus on improving user experience and we have great partners [in our venture investors]. With the money we now have in the bank, we have runway for a few years.

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New Fundings

1366 Technologies, an eight-year-old, Bedford, Ma.-based maker of inexpensive silicon wafers, has added $5 million to an earlier Series C round. Haiyin Capital led the new funding, with participation from earlier backers Vorndran Mannheims Capital, Tokuyama, Energy Technology Ventures, Polaris Partners, VantagePoint Capital Partners, and North Bridge Venture Partners & Growth Equity. The company has raised $66.5 million altogether, shows Crunchbase.

Asqella, a 3.5-year-old, Helsinki, Finland-based maker of advanced imaging systems for security screening applications, has raised 1.8 million euros ($1.9 million) in funding led by Shenzhen Lietou Fund and VTT Ventures Oy.

Aviso, a nine-month-old, Palo Alto, Ca.-based predictive insights software company for sales management, operations and forecasting, has raised $15 million in Series B funding co-led by Scale Venture Partners and Next World Capital, with participation from earlier backers including Shasta Ventures, First Round Capital, Bloomberg Beta and Cowboy Ventures. The company has now raised $23 million altogether, shows Crunchbase.

Carbon 3D, a two-year-old, Redwood City, Ca.-based company that uses something called liquid interface production technology to advance 3D printing from basic prototyping to manufacturing, has raised $10 million in venture funding from the Autodesk Spark Investment Fund. The company had earlier raised $41 million in two rounds of venture funding led by Sequoia Capital and SilverLake Kraftwerk, says VentureWire.

Clypd, a 2.5-year-old, Boston-based programmatic TV startup, has raised $19.4 million in Series B funding led by RTL Group, with participation from Atlas Venture, Data Point Capital, Duke University, TiVo, Transmedia Capital and Western Technology Investment. According to Crunchbase, the company has raised roughly $31 million to date.

DemoChimp, a two-year-old, Salt Lake City, Ut.-based company whose software automates custom product demos to accelerate sales, has raised $2.8 milion in seed funding from Seed Equity Ventures, Peak Ventures, Albion Financial, and individual investors.

EBR Systems, a 12-year-old, Sunnyvale, Ca.-based medical-technology company that makes a wireless implantable simulator for the heart, has raised $20 million in Series E funding led by Emergent Medical Partners, with participation from earlier investors Split Rock Partners, SV Life Sciences, Delphi Ventures and St. Paul Venture Capital. The company has now raised at least $81 million to date, shows Crunchbase.

Edge Therapeutics, a six-year-old, New Providence, N.J.-based company with a drug delivery system for brain hemorrhaging and other acute neurological conditions, has raised $72.5 million in Series C funding, including a C-2 round led by Venrock, with participation from Sofinnova Ventures, Janus Capital Management, New Leaf Venture Partners and BioMed Ventures, and a first tranche that closed in December and came from individuals, family offices and private foundations. MedCity News hasmore here.

Maven Clinic, a year-old, New York-based company whose mobile applications connect women with health-care providers via video, has raised $2.2 million in seed funding from Great Oaks Venture Capital, Box Group, Female Founders Fund and angel investors.

Niara, a 1.5-year-old, Sunnyvale, Ca.-based stealth security analytics company, has raised $20 million in Series B financing led by Venrock, with participation from New Enterprise Associates and Index Ventures. The company has now raised roughly $30 million altogether.

PeerIQ, a year-old, New York-based credit risk analytics firm that helps financial institutions analyze risk in the peer-to-peer lending sector, has raised $6 million in seed funding led by Uprising and John Mack, former chairman and CEO of Morgan Stanley. Other participants in the round include Vikram Pandit, former Citigroup CEO; Arthur Levitt, former SEC chairman; former Bloomberg CEO Dan Doctoroff ; and Eric Schwartz, former co-CEO of Goldman Sachs Asset Management.

Rubicon Labs, an 8.5-year-old, Austin, Tx.-based cybersecurity company that’s developing secure communication technologies for cloud-based data centers, has added Akamai Technologies as an investor in its Series A financing. The round, which now exceeds $11 million, also includes participation from Third Point Ventures and Pelion Ventures.

Stanza, a three-year-old, Redwood City, California-based company whose “button” lets users add online events to their personal calendar, has raised $4.3 million in seed funding from Metamorphic Ventures, Founder Collective, Tekton Ventures, Western Technology Investment, and Stanford-StartX Fund, along with a group of angel investors.

Urban Ladder, the 2.5-year-old, Bangalore, India-based e-commerce store that claims to be India’s largest online seller of furniture and home accessories, has raised $50 million in new funding led by Sequoia Capital and TR Capital, with participation from earlier backers Steadview Capital, SAIF Partners, and Kalaari Capital. The company has now raised $77 million altogether. TechCrunch has more here.

VendOp, a 1.5-year-old, San Francisco-based review site where professionals can share opinions on business and industrial vendors, has raised $1.1 million in seed funding from individual investors.

Vulcun, an 11-week-old fantasy e-sports site, has just raised $12 million in Series A funding led by Sequoia Capital, with participation from Matrix Partners, Universal Music Group, Battery Ventures, Creative Artists Agency, Crosscut Ventures, and a long list of notable angel investors, including AngelList cofounder Naval Ravikant, Zynga cofounder Mark Pincus, and Joe Kraus of Google Ventures. More here.

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New Funds

Illuminate Ventures, an Oakland, Ca.-based early-stage venture that focuses on enterprise cloud and mobile computing startups, is targeting a second, $30 million fund, suggests a new SEC filing that states a first sale has yet to occur. StrictlyVC talked with Cindy Padnos, the founder of Illuminate Ventures, when she closed her last, $20 million fund, roughly 15 months ago.

According to the Times of India, Sequoia Capital has added another $210 million to its existing $530 million India-focused fund, giving the firm a “bigger war chest and a substantial leg up over other VCs amid rising valuations of tech companies” in the country.

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IPOs

Etsy is crafting an “artisanal public offering,” reports the WSJ, whose sources say the Brooklyn, N.Y.-based online marketplace is making a big effort to attract small investors and fewer big investors.

ViewRay, an 11-year-old, Oakwood Village, Oh.-based company that markets an FDA-approved MRI-guided radiation therapy system, postponed its IPO yesterday.

The Nasdaq debut of Wowo — a three-year-old, Beijing, China-based company that operates the Groupon-like, Chinese group-buying site — didn’t wow investors this week. That could prove problematic for other, smaller tech IPOs, suggests The Street.

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Exits

Collegefeed, a two-year-old, Mountain View, Ca.-based company that helps college students and recent grads find jobs, has been been acquired by rival AfterCollege in San Francisco for an undisclosed sum. Collegefeed had raised $1.8 million from investors, including Accel Partners and Silicon Valley Angels. AfterCollege has raised an undisclosed amount of equity funding from Flywheel Ventures; it has also raised an undisclosed amount of debt funding, according to Crunchbase.

Shoefitr, a five-year-old, Pittsburgh, Pa.-based company whose 3-D technology helps consumers purchase footwear online by providing measurements pertinent to fitting, has been acquired by Amazon for undisclosed terms. Shoefitr looks to have raised $1.3 million in funding from Vital Venture Capital, Innovation Works, and AlphaLab. TechCrunch has more here.

—–

People

Analysts at Morgan Stanley say that Yahoo, which has fired up to 900 employees since last fall, needs to reduce its headcount by another 11 percent just to keep earnings flat between 2014 and 2015. That’s about 1,400 more employees.

People Magazine could go to trial for misidentifying an entrepreneur as the mistress of Google co-founder Sergey Brin, based on an April 3 court decision. More here.

What do Pharrell, Drake and Katie Perry have in common (well, besides being international celebrity entertainers)? They’re already wearing the Apple Watch.

Meet the Amazon Web Services mafia.

—–

Job Listings

General Catalyst Partners is looking to hire an investment associate in Cambridge, Ma.

Snapchat is hiring a business analyst. The job is in Venice, Ca.

—–

Essential Reads

Here’s what it looks like when a startup wins big at Y Combinator.

—–

Detours

Meet Walnut, the crane who fell in love with her zookeeper.

Where the white people live.

—–

Retail Therapy

Out with gray. In with blue. (Blue, blue, blue, we’re telling you.)

Hi, happy Thursday, everyone!

—–

Top News in the A.M.

LinkedIn is spending $1.5 billion in cash and stock to acquire Lynda.com, a 20-year-old, Carpinteria, Ca.-based online learning company that teaches business, technology and creative skills to aspiring professionals. It’s LinkedIn’s biggest deal to date, and the company explains the tie-up here. Lynda had raised roughly $290 million across two rounds fromSpectrum Equity, Meritech Capital Partners, and Accel Partners.

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Joya Raises $5 Million to Make Messaging More Fun

Three years ago, Michal and Vlada Bortnik, former Microsoft employees who met on a soccer field in Seattle, had a host of problems every time they gathered up their two young daughters and tried communicating online with far-flung family members.

The couple decided to do something about it, founding Joya, a mobile video communications company whose two newest messaging apps allow users to record playful messages of up to 30 seconds in length. One app, FlipLip, allows users to play with their voice and insert their face in a variety of county-fair-like digital cut-outs; the other, Cleo, invites people to make video selfies using filters designed to make them appear more attractive.

Whether the apps take off remains to be seen, but Facebook certainly thinks they’re promising. The couple was among 39 other developers to work with the company in advance of the rollout last month of its Messenger Platform, for which it hopes developers will build apps that integrate with Facebook Messenger.

Facebook’s apparent endorsement could prove especially meaningful as it attempts to turn Messenger into its own ecosystem. (Yesterday, as you likely read, Facebook launched a standalone Messenger app for the web with the hope that people will use Messenger both inside and outside of the social network.)

Certainly, Joya’s traction caught the attention of Battery Ventures and Altos Ventures, which have just provided the now seven-person company with $5 million in Series A funding.

As for what’s next, the pair — now based in Palo Alto, Ca. — say to expect more apps this year that will continue their focus on making quick, online messaging easier and more enjoyable.

They add that for now, they plan to make their existing (free) apps better and more tightly integrated with Messenger.

“It’s very rare that platforms like this come out with such large audience,” says Michal Bortnik, noting that according to Facebook, Facebook Messenger now has more than 600 million monthly active users.

“We’ve developed many concepts that never saw the light of day,” he says, “but we now have a clear product and a clear story: How can we make communications more personal and fun . . . We have something that’s growing.”

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New Fundings

Annapurna Microfinance, a six-year-old, Bhubaneswar, India-based microfinance venture, has raised $4.2 million in Series C funding from earlier investor Samridhi Fund. VCCircle has more here.

ApplePie Capital, a year-old, San Francisco-based online loan business focused on franchise financing, has raised $6 million in Series A funding led by Signia Venture Partners, with participation from Freestyle Capitaland QED Investors. (All three had backed the company last July, when it raised $3.7 million in seed funding.) Ron Suber, president of the lending marketplace Prosper, also invested in the new round. StrictlyVC talked ApplePie CEO Denise Thomas last November about how the company works.

CliQr, a five-year-old, Santa Clara, Ca.-based hybrid cloud management vendor, just raised $20 million in Series C funding from Polaris Partners, along with earlier backers Foundation Capital, Google Ventures andTransLink Capital. The company has now raised $38 million altogether.More here from Forbes.

Conversion Logic, a year-old, L.A.-based company whose software helps advertisers track the effectiveness of their ads across devices and channels, has raised $4 million in seed funding led by Rincon Venture Partners, with participation from Crosscut Ventures, Founder Collective, Lerer Hippeau Ventures, Raptor Ventures and TenOneTen. The company previously raised $1.1 million in seed funding.

DiabetOmics, a seven-year-old, Beaverton, Or.-based diagnostics company that makes a saliva-based glucose monitoring test for diabetes patients and an early detection test for gestational diabetes and pre-eclampsia, has raised $4 million in funding led by Ventureast. Crunchbase shows the company has now raised $10 million altogether, including fromRogue Venture Partners. More here.

Domo, a 4.5-year-old, American Fork, Ut.-based SaaS business founded by Josh James of Omniture fame, has raised $200 million in Series D funding at a $2 billion valuation led by BlackRock, with participation fromCapital Group and Glynn Capital. Earlier backer GGV Capital also reportedly contributed five times its pro rata. Domo previously raised $259 million from investors, including TPG Growth, Salesforce, T. Rowe Price,Fidelity Investments, Morgan Stanley, Viking Ventures, Dragoneer Investment Group, Greylock Partners, Institutional Venture Partners and Mercato Partners. The WSJ has the new funding details.

Engagio, a new, San Mateo, Ca.-based company that’s building an account-based marketing automation platform, has raised $10 million in Series A funding led by FirstMark Capital, with participation from Storm Ventures and First Round Capital. Its cofounder, Jon Miller, founded Marketo, which went public in May of 2013 and currently has a market cap of more than $1 billion.

Brainbees Solutions, a five-year-old, Pune, India-based company that operates the baby- and kids-focused e-commerce site FirstCry, has added $10 million to its Series D round from New Enterprise Associates. Last month, it had closed the round with $26 million led by Valiant Capital Partners, with participation from earlier backers IDG Ventures India, Temasek’s VC arm Vertex and SAIF Partners. FirstCry has now raised nearly $70 million altogether. VCCIrcle has the story here.

Global Fashion Group, a four-year-old, Luxembourg-based cluster of five of its Rocket Internet’s emerging market fashion sites that consolidated into one bigger operation last year, has raised $35 million at a $3 billion post-money valuation led by Tengelmann Ventures and Verlinvest. The company has also recruited as CEO Romain Voog, the former head of Amazon France. TechCrunch has more here.

Lili & Beauty, an eight-year-old, Shanghai, China-based cosmetics e-commerce platform, has raised $100 million in Series B funding led by Crescent HydePark, with participation from Milestone Capital and New Access Capital. China Money Network has more here.

Meican, a four-year-old, Beijing, China-based online food ordering platform, has raised $23 million in Series C funding led by the Yelp-like review site Dianping.com, with participation from earlier backers KPCB China, Nokia Growth Partners, and Trustbridge Partners, reports China Money Network.

Nabriva Therapeutics, a 14-year-old, Vienna-based biotechnology company focused on a new class of antibiotics for the treatment of serious bacterial infections that cause pneumonia, has raised $120 million in Series B led by Vivo Capital and OrbiMed, and with participation fromEcoR1 Capital, Boxer Capital of Tavistock Life Sciences, and earlier investor HBM. MedCity News has more here.

Opendorse, a 2.5-year-old, Lincoln, Ne.-based company that pairs athletes and brands seeking social media endorsements, has raised $1.75 million in funding led by Flyover Capital. Altogether, the company has raised $2.1 million from investors since its launch, it says. Forbes hasmore here.

Pixability, a seven-year-old, Boston-based video advertising startup, has raised $18.2 million in Series C funding from undisclosed investors. The company has now raised $28.2 million altogether. BetaBoston has more here.

Prosper, the nine-year-old, San Francisco-based peer-to-peer lending marketplace, has raised $165 million in Series D funding led by Credit Suisse NEXT Investors, part of Credit Suisse Asset Management. Additional participants included J.P. Morgan Asset Management, SunTrust Banks, a subsidiary of USAA, BBVA Ventures, Neuberger Berman Private Equity Funds, Passport Capital, Breyer Capital, and others. According to Crunchbase, the company has now raised $355 million from investors. Dealbook has more here.

Qingchifan, a year-old, Beijing, China-based dating app for meeting up with strangers for dinner dates, has raised an undisclosed amount of Series B funding led by Vertex Ventures, with participation from Sequoia Capital. Tech in Asia has more here.

Seismos, a three-year-old, Austin, Tex.-based company whose data analytics software focuses on real-time subsurface fluid flow for oil and gas production monitoring, has raised $4 million in funding led by Javelin Venture Partners, with participation from Osage University Partners and other oil and gas technology-focused investors, including Kemal Farid, founder of Merrick Systems; Donald Kendall, CEO of Blue Earth Capital; and Geoff Hicks, founder of Hicks Oilfield.

Testlio, a 2.5-year-old, Austin, Tex.-based community of expert test engineers that test mobile apps, has raised $1 million in seed funding fromTechstars Ventures, Galvanize, Geekdom Fund and individual investors.

The RealReal, the four-year-old, San Francisco, Ca.-based online luxury consignment site, has raised $40 million in Series D funding led by Industry Ventures, with participation from Greycroft Growth, e.ventures Growth, DBL Partners and earlier backers Canaan Partners and InterWest Partners. The company has now raised $83 million to date. StrictlyVC visited one of the company’s warehouses last summer.

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New Funds

Kalaari Capital, the three-year-old, India-based venture capital fund, is planning to raise $300 million for its second tech-focused fund, reports DealCurry. Kalaari was created in 2012 by the partners behind Indo US Venture Partners (IUVP, also known as IndosUS). Its portfolio consists of numerous fast-growing e-commerce companies, including Snapdeal, Flipkart, and Urban Ladder.

—–

IPOs

Adaptimmune Therapeutics, a U.K.-based clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company focused on cancer immunotherapy products, has filed to go public in the U.S., following on the heels of other IPOs in the field, including Juno Therapeutics, Bellicum Pharmaceuticals, and Kite Pharma. Investors Business Daily has more here.

aTyr Pharma, a 10-year-old, San Diego-based biotherapeutics company that discovers and develops protein biologics for human therapeutics, and which just announced $76 million in Series E funding nine days ago, has filed to go public. Major shareholders include Fidelity Investments, which owns 13.5 percent of the company, Domain Associates (10.5 percent),Polaris Partners (10.5 percent), Alta Partners (10.3 percent), Cardinal Partners (10.1 percent), Sofinnova Ventures (8.9 percent), and Baker Brothers Life Sciences (8.9 percent). Xconomy has more here.

—–

Exits

Apple quietly bought Dryft, a startup that develops keyboard apps, last year, reports TechCrunch.

Coinsetter, a New York-based bitcoin exchange that targets institutional and professional traders, acquired Canadian Virtual Exchange, a bitcoin trading platform that recently shut down due to security breaches. The deal was valued at $2 million, reports Reuters.

—–

People

Hillary Rodham Clinton has hired longtime Google executive Stephanie Hannon to oversee her likely presidential campaign’s technology development and build new ways for Clinton to engage with voters, reports the Washington Post.

Golden Venture Partners, a Toronto-based mobile-focused seed and early stage venture capital fund, has hired Ameet Shah as a partner and Bert Amato as a venture partner. In 2011, Shah cofounded Tira Wireless alongside Matt Golden, Golden Venture’s founder; he then sold his next startup, Five Mobile, to Zynga. Amato, cofounded Delrina, which was acquired by Symantec. More here.

Less than two years after Don Mattrick was installed as CEO of the online games company Zynga, he’s abruptly out the door and founding CEO Mark Pincus is back. No outside word yet about what happened, though the New York Times notes notes the a “long-running turnaround plan that [Mattrick] set in motion at Zynga had yet to take flight.” Mattrick, a longtime Electronic Arts executive who later ran Microsoft’s Xbox business, walks away roughly $15 million richer for leaving the company, notes VentureBeat. Meanwhile, the market doesn’t love the news of Pincus’s return.

The institutional investor HarvourVest Partners is opening an office in Toronto, and it just hired Senia Rapisarda, a former vice president at BDC, as a principal to help run it. The firm notes that it has a long history of investing in Canadian companies through primary and secondary investments; this is its first Canadian office, though.

Anthony Watson, the former CIO of Nike, has joined the San Francisco-based fiat-to-bitcoin exchange BitReserve as president and COO. Bitreserve was founded last year by CNET cofounder Halsey Minor. Fortune has much more here.

—–

Job Listings

Bank of America Merrill Lynch is looking to hire an associate of venture capital coverage for its Palo Alto, Ca.-based tech investment banking division.

—–

Essential Reads

Yahoo is planning a big reorganization that will bring Tumblr more closely into the company. More here.

Google is planning a service to connect users with plumbers, electricians, roofers and other home-service providers, reports the WSJ. The development comes eight months after Google Capital led a $100 million investment in the local services site Thumbtack. (Thumbtack CEO Marco Zappacosta is speaking at our event next month. We’ll ask him about it!)

Genius (formerly Rap Genius) now enables users to annotate any web page. More here.

—–

Detours

Futuristic subway stations.

The return of sad sack “Louie.”

What’s going on with Tiger Woods?

—–

Retail Therapy

Hu$tle.

Hi, good morning, everyone! Thanks to those of you bought tickets yesterday for our fast-approaching event next month in San Francisco. We’re looking forwarding to seeing you soon.:) Thanks again, too, to our top sponsors Personal Capital and Amazon Web Services.

(For East Coast readers who might be wondering: We’re back to figuring out Boston in June. We’ll let you know more as we do.)

—–

Top News in the A.M.

Russian hackers accessed sensitive White House information last year, including real-time (non-classified) details of president’s schedule. More here.

Google appears to be developing a teleconferencing tool called GMeet.

Twitter is experimenting with more search filtering options.

—–

First Data Waves Its Flag in Silicon Valley

Soon after Frank Bisignano joined the payment processing giant First Data as CEO two years ago, Bisignano — who was formerly co-chief operating officer of JPMorgan Chase — set his sights on beefing up the company’s corporate venture firm. Among his first steps: appointing Pete Donat, a longtime VP at First Data (and a VP at both Visa and MasterCard before that), to lead a four-person team that now assesses startups and alerts different unit heads within the 23,000-person company to technologies that might benefit them.

“Frank really wanted to put extra emphasis on innovation in Silicon Valley,” says Donat, “so we hired a team out here, and we’ve been increasingly active over the last year.”

“Active” is somewhat subjective. The team saw 300 companies last year and invested in six – not exactly the blistering pace one might expect from the company, which has been owned by KKR since 2007.

Then again, First Data — which has struggled to find new areas of growth in recent years — is in the middle of a turnaround that involved a $3.5 billion private placement in the company last year, including more capital from KKR.

Some of the capital freed by that investment is now streaming into startups that the company hopes will help it develop more products. Among them is Booker, a four-year-old, New York-based online booking platform that helps small businesses sell their services online. “It’s a really cool company with lots of great potential and synergies that fit with First Data and our merchant clients,” says Donat.(First Data participated in Booker’s $35 million Series C round last month.)

That private placement should also help First Data when it comes to acquisitions, which are clearly of interest to the company. Over the last two-and-a-half years, First Data has acquired three startups: the cloud-based payment software developer Clover Network; Perka, a digital rewards-program designer; and the mobile-gift-card company Gyft. It also created Insightics, a business unit it developed with the analytics company Palantir Technologies to glean more insights into customer spending from its merchant customers’ credit-card records.

As for startups looking to get on First Data’s radar, approaching as a partner seems to be the best course. Donat says his team finds most of its investment opportunities from people who “knock on our door and say, ‘I need one of your capabilities.’” When the team does “go outbound,” he continues, “we go out with a short shopping list and the likelihood of a us doing a deal goes up.”

Asked if his group might adjust its pace to invest more actively, Donat says 2015 might see “slightly” more deals from the group, but that he doesn’t expect things to “change dramatically. Once we [back] a deal, we want to ensure that we’re supporting that company. We probably overinvest in the amount of time we spend, helping [founders use First Data] to grow their revenue.”

Either way, Donat notes, First Data is “very committed” to its venture arm and “very committed to growing its presence in the Bay Area.”

Indeed, he says that when he opened First Data’s office in Palo Alto in early 2013, there were three people in the office. Today, he says, between Gyft, Clover, Insightics, and a separate digital commerce unit, the office is home to more than 100 employees.

—–

New Fundings

IIX, a four-year-old, Palo Alto, Ca.-based Internet infrastructure company, has raised $20 million in fresh funding from TriplePoint Capital. The company also acquired smaller rival IX Reach for undisclosed terms. According to Crunchbase, IIX has raised roughly $36 million altogether, including from New Enterprise Associates.

Alzheon, a two-year-old, Framingham, Ma.-based clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company focused on brain health, memory and aging, has raised $10 million in Series A funding led by Ally Bridge Group, with participation from other (unnamed) new and earlier investors.

DealStruck, a two-year-old, Carlsbad, Ca.-based online lending platform that caters to small businesses, has raised $58.3 million — $8.3 million in venture funding from Trinity Ventures, and a $50 million credit facility from Brevet Capital. The company had previously raised an undisclosed amount of seed funding from Peterson Ventures and Blackbird Ventures.

Euclises Pharmaceuticals, a four-year-old, St. Louis, Mo.-based company that’s developing pain and cancer medications, has added $700,000 to its Series A round, bringing its total haul to $2 million. Investors include BioGenerator, Cultivation Capital and St. Louis Arch Angels.

FirstFuel Software, a 3.5-year-old, Lexington, Ma.-based company whose software helps electric utilities manage energy use and businesses reduce energy bills, has raised $23 million in Series C funding led by Next World Capital, with participation from Electranova Capital, and earlier investors Battery Ventures, Rockport Capital, Nth Power and E. ON. The company has now raised roughly $44 million altogether, shows Crunchbase.

Folloze, a 1.5-year-old, Palo Alto, Ca.-based prospect engagement platform for B2B sales and marketing, has raised $3.3 million in seed funding led by New Enterprise Associates, Cervin Ventures and TriplePoint Ventures, with participation from unnamed angel investors.

FreeAgent, an eight-year-old, Edinburgh, Scotland-based online accounting and money management tool for freelancers and small businesses, has raised $5 million in debt financing from SaaS Capital. The company had previously raised an undisclosed amount of money from investors, including Lightbank, The Accelerator Group, and IRIS Software Group in the U.K.

Haystack TV, a two-year-old, Redwood City, Ca.-based personalized video news service, has raised $1.7 million in seed funding, including from Endeavor Global founder Peter Kellner, Flycast Networks cofounder Larry Braitman, and Stanford’s StartX Fund. TechCrunch has more here.

Kyriba, a 15-year-old, San Diego, Ca-based company whose software helps treasury departments plan for market volatility, regulation and more, has raised $21 million in Series C funding from HSBC, with the participation of earlier backers BRED Banque Populaire, Daher Capital, Iris Capital, and Upfront Ventures.

MobiKwik, a 5.5-year-old, Gurgaon, India-based mobile wallet company, has raised $25 million in new funding from the hedge fund Tree Line Asia Master Fund, Cisco Investments, American Express Ventures, and Sequoia Capital. Forbes has more here.

NSONE, a two-year-old, New York-based DNS and traffic management company, has raised $5.35 million in Series A funding co-led by Flybridge Capital Partners and Sigma Prime Ventures, with participation from Founder Collective and Center Electric.

Palerra, a two-year-old, Santa Clara, Ca.-based cloud-security company, has raised $17 million in Series B funding led by new investor August Capital, with participation from earlier backers Engineering Capital, Norwest Venture Partners and Wing Venture Capital. The company has now raised $25 million to date.

Patch of Land, a two-year-old, L.A.-based crowdfunding platform for real-estate financing, has raised $23.6 million in Series A funding led by SF Capital Group, with participation from individual investors. According to Crunchbase, the company had raised $1.2 million in seed funding in 2013.

Point.io, a two-year-old, Boston and Philadelphia-based company whose software platform aims to get mainstream enterprises into the API economy quickly and cheaply, has raised $4 million in Series B funding from unnamed strategic customers, Philadelphia “institutions,” and high net worth individuals. The company, which has now raised about $6.3 million altogether, has no traditional institutional investors, it says.

RealtyShares, a two-year-old, San Francisco-based online marketplace for real estate investing, has raised $10 million in Series A funding led by Menlo Ventures, with participation from earlier backer General Catalyst Partners. The company previously raised two rounds of seed funding, including a $1.9 million round last year.

RefME, a months-old, London-based book-barcode scanning app that speeds up the task of creating, formatting and managing citations, references lists and bibliographies, has raised $5 million in funding led by GEMS Global, a subsidiary of the education company Varkey Group. TechCrunch has more here.

Sharecare, a 5.5-year-old, Atlanta, Ga.-based company whose Q&A platform allows people to ask and learn about health and wellness issues, has raised $20 million in funding from Wellington Management. The company has now raised $160 million altogether, including from Heritage Group, TomorrowVentures, Galen Partners, and New Evolution Ventures.

Soha Systems, a two-year-old, Sunnyvale, Calif.-based cloud security startup, has raised $9.8 million in funding from Andreessen Horowitz, Cervin Ventures, Menlo Ventures and Moment Ventures. More here.

Temando, a nearly six-year-old, Brisbane, Australia-based supply chain startup, has raised $50 million in Series B funding from Neopost S.A. The company had earlier raised $6 million in funding, including from Ellerston Capital.

TriPlay, a 10-year-old, New York-based developer of cloud services that enable people to consume music and other media across different devices, has raised $11 million from funds managed by Fortress Investment Group, as well as earlier backer Kenges Rakishev. The company has raised $16 million altogether, according to Crunchbase.

Vidme, a 16-month-old, L.A.-based online video sharing platform that has emerged as the go-to video platform on Reddit, has raised $3.2 million in new funding from Upfront Ventures, First Round Capital, Initialized (a fund from Reddit cofounder Alexis Ohanian), SV Angel, Lowercase Capital, Mucker Capital, and Launchpad Capital. Variety has more here.

Yeloha, a new, Boston-based peer-to-peer solar-sharing network created by the Israeli company Generaytor, has raised $3.5 million in Series A funding led by Carmel Ventures. Venture Capital Dispatch has more here.

—–

Exits

Informatica said yesterday that it will go private in a deal valued at about $5.3 billion. The enterprise data integration vendor is being acquired by the private equity firm Permira, and the Canadian Pension Plan Investment Board, for $48.75 a share. (The development is very good for venture-backed MuleSoft, argues Business Insider.)

Reserve, the San Francisco-based restaurant reservation company that launched this past fall, has acquired two fellow startups in the dining space: Zurvu, a New York-based startup that also manages online restaurant reservations; and HAIL, an L.A.-based startup whose app helps diners split the check. TechCrunch has more here.

Singapore Telecommunications is acquiring Trustwave, a Chicago-based managed-security services specialist, in a deal valued at $810 million. Morningstar has more here.

Sprinklr, the social media management firm, has acquired GetSatisfaction, an online community platform used to connect customers and companies. Terms of the deal aren’t being disclosed. GetSatisfaction had raised nearly $21 million from investors, shows Crunchbase. Its backers include InterWest Partners, Azure Capital Partners, O’Reilly AlphaTech Ventures, and First Round Capital. More here.

—–

People

“I’m going to end up with a lot more money than I feel like I’m entitled to given how hard I work,” Slack founder and CEO Stewart Butterfield tells Inc. in a candid interview. More here.

Billionaire investor Mark Cuban on why he’s betting on specific ed tech startups: “There are going to be a lot of universities that go out of business. I’m not talking about the Apollos and the University of Phoenix, but [traditional, brick-and-mortar] schools.” More here.

Orrick Herrington & Sutcliffe partner Lynn Hermle shares whether she thinks the Ellen Pao case — which she argued for Kleiner Perkins — will have the outsize impact on Silicon Valley that many expect: “It’s not going to happen. Cases don’t change industries. That’s not what they’re about; that’s not what they do.”

—–

Job Listings

Microsoft is hiring a senior tech evangelist who will work within its Microsoft Ventures group and engage with “thought leaders” in the venture industry. The job is in Redmond, Wa.

—–

Essential Reads

Uber now accounts for nearly half of all ground transportation business expenses at many companies in North America.

Ride, a two-year-old, New York-based service for organizing co-workers at the same company into carpooling groups, opened to U.S. businesses yesterday and launched a new app for Apple devices. The WSJ has the story about the company — which is majority owned by TPG Growth and employs Uber’s first technology chief, Oscar Salazar — here.

“Let’s just get this out of the way: the Apple Watch, as I reviewed it for the past week and a half, is kind of slow. There’s no getting around it . . .”

—–

Detours

Rolls-Royce takes the first step in building . . . an SUV.

Seth Myers brings Jon Snow to a dinner party.

What is a species, really?

—-

Retail Therapy

Icon Trucks. [Heart flutter.] More here.

Hi, and happy Tuesday, everyone!

—–

Top News in the A.M.

Consumer and child advocacy groups are today asking the FCC to investigate Google’s new YouTube Kids application, arguing that the company is unfairly and deceptively targeting toddlers with advertising on tablets and smartphones. More here.

—–

A VC Adds a Thesis: “Wrist First”

Peter Relan, a veteran of Hewlett-Packard and Oracle, has spent the last decade nurturing young companies at his YouWeb incubator in Mountain View, Ca. At first, he focused on mobile social gaming companies, investing $2 million across a variety of startups and enjoying at least one big hit when OpenFeint, a social gaming network, was acquired in 2011 by the Japan-based Internet media company Gree for $104 million.

In 2013, Relan raised a separate $10 million from wealthy individuals for a sub-brand of YouWeb called 9+, an incubator and accelerator that focuses on marketplaces, wearables, and so-called Internet of Things technologies.

A number of highly promising companies are again emerging from the outfit, insists Relan, including the online video gaming company Hammer & Chisel, launched by OpenFeint founder Jason Citron. (It has raised $12 million in funding from 9+, IDG Ventures, Accel Partners, Benchmark, and Tencent.)

Relan also points to GotIt, a seed-funded photo-based on-demand marketplace that’s begun talking with investors about a Series A, and the “connected kitchen” startup Camellia Labs, founded by former Salesforce senior engineering manager Guarav Chawla. (“Everybody in Silicon Valley who’s in the design business is stumbling over themselves, trying to be the product design shop for [Chawla],” says Relan.)

Still, what’s capturing much of Relan’s attention these days, he says, are “wrist-first” technologies — apps developed expressly for smartwatches, which he expects will represent a huge opportunity over the next couple of years as the Apple Watch streams into the marketplace.

One of his bets, for example, is on a nascent company called Awear, whose app enables users to send and receive SMS messages with a couple of clicks. It doesn’t sound terribly revolutionary, but it represents a “10x” leap in terms of speed, says Relan, who notes that it’s a lot easier to tap a watch than “fish a phone out of your pocket or handbag, then unlock it, open the right app, and respond.” (Awear first launched on the Pebble smartwatch and 10 percent of Pebble customers have downloaded the app, says Relan.)

Relan thinks the possibilities extend far beyond communications, too. “Think of games that are easy to play in one or two clicks. Or the B2B app that notifies an executive that he received 400 orders during an important meeting. Or an app that can deliver an EKG to your doctor with the tap of a button.”

Smartwatches may have low computing power, he notes, but smartwatches combined with the power of the cloud begin to look pretty compelling.

More, says Relan, he has seen this movie before.

“When the iPhone was just being introduced [and we began focusing on mobile social gaming], the hard-core gamers laughed at us. They said, ‘[The phone] is tiny. It has no keyboard, no controls.’ But I said it would be 10 times more convenient to play, and now mobile social gaming is multibillion-dollar industry.”

“Whenever a new platform succeeds, it’s because it improves [on the status quo] by at least a factor of 10,” Relan continues. The Apple Watch might not be 10 times better than the smartphone, but he fully expects it to let users do things 10 times faster — and that’s enough to get him excited about what’s next.

—–

New Fundings

AssetAvenue, a 1.5-year-old, L.A.-based online peer-to-peer platform focused on the commercial real estate market, has raised $11 million in Series A funding led by DCM, with participation from earlier backers Matrix Partners, NetEase, and Prosper Marketplace CEO Ron Suber. The company has now raised at least $15 million to date, shows Crunchbase.

CoreOS, a two-year-old, San Francisco-based company that builds a lightweight version of the operating system Linux, helping reduce the amount of hardware needed to run applications in big data centers, has raised $12 million in funding led by Google Ventures, with participation by Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Fuel Capital and Accel Partners. The company has now raised $20 million altogether. TechCrunch hasmore here.

Custora, a four-year-old, New York-based predictive analytics company that helps brands anticipate and influence their customers’ spending, has raised $6.5 million in fresh funding led by Foundation Capital, with participation from Greycroft Partners and Valhalla Partners. The company, a Y Combinator alum, had earlier raised $1 million in seed funding. Venture Capital Dispatch has the story here.

D3O, a 14-year-old, U.K.-based developer of shock-absorbing smart materials that are used in products across the motorcycle, sport, footwear, electronics, military and work-wear sectors, has raised $19 million in funding led by Beringea, with participation from Entrepreneurs Fund.

Livongo Health, a year-old, Chicago-based digital health company whose cloud-enabled glucose meter helps people (and their family, friends, and physicians) manage their diabetes, has raised $20 million in funding from Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, DFJ, and earlier backer General Catalyst Partners. The company had previously raised $10 million, including from Slow Ventures.

Natera, an 11-year-old, San Carlos, Ca.-based company whose technology diagnoses genetic diseases with a noninvasive DNA test, has raised $55.5 million led by new investor Sofinnova Ventures, with participation from Capital Research and Management, Franklin Templeton Investments, Jennison Associates, RA Capital Management, HealthCor Partners, and OrbiMed Advisors. The company has now raised $154.1 million, according to Crunchbase.

OYO Rooms, a two-year-old, Bangalore, India-based platform for low-cost, standardized hospitality bookings throughout SouthEast Asia, has raised $25 million in funding from Lightspeed Venture Partners, Sequoia Capital and Greenoaks Capital Management. More here.

Placester, a five-year-old, Boston-based marketing-automation platform that gives real-estate agents and brokers tools to build websites and mobile sites for $10 per month, has raised $15 million in new funding led by New Enterprise Associates, with participation from previous investor Romulus Capital. The company has now raised $22 million altogether.

Quikr, a seven-year-old, Mumbai, India-based classified ads site that helps people find and sell products and services, has raised $150 million in new funding from Steadview Capital, as well as earlier investors Tiger Global Management and Investment AB Kinnevik. The company has now raised $350 million altogether. TechCrunch has more here.

RebelMouse, a three-year-old, New York-based content publishing platform, has raised $16 million in Series B funding from previous investors Softbank Capital and Oak Investment Partners, with additional participation from Buddy Media cofounder Mike Lazerow. The round quietly closed earlier this year, TechCrunch reported yesterday. The company has now raised $18.8 million altogether.

RedSeal, an 11-year-old, Sunnyvale, Ca.-based cybersecurity company, has raised $17 million in Series C funding from Tyco International, MATH Venture Partners, DRW Venture Partners, and Pallasite Ventures, along with earlier backers Icon Ventures, Leapfrog, Olympic Ventures, Sutter Hill Ventures and Venrock. Ray Rothrock, a former Venrock partner and former chair of the National Venture Capital Association, came out of retirement last year to relaunch the then-troubled company. Silicon Valley Business Journal has more here.

True North Therapeutics, a two-year-old, South San Francisco, Ca.-based biotechnology company that’s developing therapies for rare hematologic, renal, and neurological diseases, has raised $35 million in Series B funding led by OrbiMed, with the participation of earlier investors Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, MPM Capital, SR One, and Baxter Ventures.

WaterSmart Software, a six-year-old, San Francisco-based software company that helps utilities better understand and use the information they glean from millions of water meters, has raised $7 million in Series B funding from an unnamed family office, with participation from earlier backers Apsara Capital, DFJ, Physic Ventures and The Westly Group. The company has now raised $13.9 million altogether. Venture Capital Dispatch has more here.

—–

New Funds

Google’s former Android boss, Andy Rubin, has launched a new firm called Playground Global that plans to help hardware entrepreneurs with “distribution, manufacturing, financing and ways to integrate their devices with remote computing resources” in exchange for equity in their companies, reports the WSJ. (It will not make direct investments.) The outfit has raised $48 million from investors, including Google, Hewlett-Packard, Hon Hai Precision Industry, Tencent Holdings, Seagate Technology, and Redpoint Ventures, a venture-capital firm where Rubin will also be spending one day a week as a venture partner. The WSJ has much more here.

—–

IPOs

Cidara Therapeutics, a three-year-old, San Diego-based company that’s developing therapies for fungal infections, announced terms for its IPO yesterday, revealing plans to raise $60 million by offering 4 million shares at a price range of $14 to $16.

—–

Exits

Boundless, a four-year-old, Boston-based online textbook publishing startup, has been acquired by online education company Valore for undisclosed terms. Boundless had raised roughly $10 million in funding from Venrock, NextView Ventures, Kepha Partners, Founder Collective and SV Angel. Boston Business Journal has more here.

OttoCat, an Oakland, Ca.-based startup that was founded in 2012 to organize the App Store into lots of categories and make finding good apps easier, was quietly acquired by Apple “some time ago,” reports TechCrunch. In fact, adds its report, the company might have been acquired as long ago as 2013. (It’s still something, right?)

—–

People

Institutional Venture Partners has made a couple of hires that we’d forgotten to mention yesterday: Roseanne Wincek joins the late-stage growth firm as a VP from Canaan Partners, where she was a principal. The firm has also hired Alexander Lim, who joins as an associate; Lim previously worked in the tech investment banking group at Credit Suisse.

Matt Murphy, a general partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers who recently became known as the person who gave Ellen Pao her walking papers, is leaving the venture firm after 16 years to pursue a new opportunity, he says. Murphy — who was moved from Kleiner’s early-stage group to its growth investing team in 2013 — tells the WSJ that he’s taking his inspiration from several friends and former colleagues who’ve launched their own “smaller, more focused funds” in recent years, including Chi-Hua Chien, who recently cofounded Goodwater Capital, and Aileen Lee, who founded Cowboy Ventures in 2013. More here.

—–

Job Listings

Capital One Ventures is looking to hire an associate in New York.

—–

Essential Reads

Microsoft is working on its own Apple Pay.

—–

Detours

Ray Rice’s redemption campaign.

Planes without pilots.

Child spa.

How to supercharge your iPhone in only five minutes.

—–

Retail Therapy

It’s a flashlight. It’s a flask. It’s, erm, the flasklight!

A smart stove knob from Pinterest’s former head of engineering. (We’d use one of these.)

Hi, everyone! Welcome back. Hope you had a terrific break. (Pst, web visitors, this is a little easier to read than what you see below.)

—–

Top News in the A.M.

Twitter and YouTube have been blocked again in Turkey.

—–

Hummer Winblad Reboots

Like many venture firms founded before the last tech boom, the San Francisco-based outfit Hummer Winblad Venture Partners seemed, for a time, to be staring death in the face owing to the market’s implosion, uneven returns, and a drawn-out lawsuit with two major record labels over its 2000 investment in the now defunct file-swapping service Napster.

The 26-year-old firm made it through the to the other side, though, and today, it’s in remarkably good shape, newly rebranding itself as HWVP and, this morning, launching a snazzy new site to mark the occasion.

The changes are more than cosmetic. HWVP is, like other firms of its vintage, a lot smaller than it used to be. The firm once employed a deep bench of managing directors and associates. Now it employs three managing directors: Mitchell Kertzman, a serial CEO (Liberate Technologies, Sybase, Powersoft Corp.) who joined the firm 12 years ago; Lars Leckie, who joined the firm a decade ago and was promoted to managing director in 2011; and Steven Kishi, who has spent the last 20 years bouncing between Hummer Winblad and various operating roles. (Most recently, Kishi was VP of product management at the cloud services company Altiscale.)

Even firm cofounders John Hummer and Ann Winblad are no longer “managing directors” but are listed at the new site instead as “founding partners.”

The amount of capital that HWVP has to invest is far less, too. The firm closed its sixth fund with $201 million in late 2007, down from the $424 million it had raised for its fifth fund in 2000.

Leckie suggests the firm will look to close its next fund with between $105 million and $150 million. (Leckie declines to discuss HWVP’s specific fundraising plans, but he offers that he believes that “small, focused funds do the best by their investors,” saying he thinks that “$35 million to $50 million” per partner is ideal.)

The firm’s prospects would seem pretty promising. Though forced to retrench, HWVP has never veered from its core thesis of investing in enterprise software companies. And while it missed the consumer wave as a result, its bets look pretty prescient right now. For example, the firm was the first investor in the 11-year-old, SaaS-based sales platform InsideSales, which last month raised $60 million at a valuation north of $1 billion. (The company has raised $200 million altogether.)

That bet alone will “return our [sixth] fund,” says Leckie, who says that HWVP owns “two times what everyone else owns” of the company.

HWVP is also among the earliest investors in Five9, MuleSoft, and Birst, among others. Five9, a San Ramon, Ca.-based call center company, went public last year. (Its market cap is $272 million, as of this writing.) MuleSoft, the San Francisco-based integration platform for connecting enterprise applications in the cloud, has raised well over $100 million from investors, closing its last round of $50 million last year at a post-money valuation of $800 million. Meanwhile, Birst, a San Francisco-based business intelligence and analytics business, just raised $65 million in Series F funding last month, bringing its total funding to $156 million. (Leckie declined to discuss its valuation.)

Of course, mark-ups are one thing. Actual exits are another. It remains to be seen whether HWVP will see the profits it’s expecting, particularly given the widening gap between the number of richly valued late-stage, still-private companies and those going public.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Leckie is highly optimistic about the firm’s odds. “We’re having a kick ass first quarter,” he tells StrictlyVC. “Valuations will fall where they fall. But it is a very good time to be quietly investing in enterprise and SaaS infrastructure.”

Luckily for HWVP, it’s been doing it for years.

—–

New Fundings

Caribou Biosciences, a four-year-old, Berkeley, Ca.-based biotech startup focused on precise gene editing, has raised $11 million in Series A funding from the Swiss drug giant Novartis, along with Fidelity Biosciences, Novartis, Mission Bay Capital, 5 Prime Ventures, and an undisclosed strategic partner. Xconomy has more here.

DraftKings, the four-year-old, Boston-based online fantasy sports business that lets fans play with real money, is raising $250 million fromWalt Disney Co. at a roughly $900 million valuation, reports the WSJ. In return, DraftKings has committed to spend more than $500 million in advertising on ESPN’s platforms in coming years, says the report. The company had previously raised roughly $75 million from investors, including The Raine Group, Redpoint Ventures, GGV Capital and Atlas Venture.

Educents, a two-year-old, Oakland, Ca.-based online marketplace for educational products, has raised $2.9 million in seed funding led bySoftTech VC, with participation from Crosslink Capital, Deep Fork Capital, Kapor Capital and Learn Capital. Individual backers, including angel investor Joanne Wilson, also joined the round.

Mojix, an 11-year-old, L.A.-based developer of wide area sensor networks, has raised $14 million in Series D funding led by OMERS Ventures, with participation from Mercury Ventures and earlier backers Oak Investment Partners, Red Rock Ventures, and InnoCal Venture Capital.

PicnicHealth, a nine-month-old, San Francisco-based company whose subscription-based service helps chronically ill patients track and store their medical records, has raised $2 million in seed funding, including from The Social+Capital Partnership, Great Oaks Venture Capital, Slow Ventures, Standford’s StartX Fund, and a long list of individual investors, including Y Combinator partner Paul Buchheit and former Facebook executive Sam Lessin. TechCrunch has more here.

SeatGeek, a nearly six-year-old, New York-based ticket search engine that aggregates listings for live sports, concert, and theater events, has raised $62 million in Series C funding led by Technology Crossover Ventures, with participation from earlier backers Accel Partners, Causeway Media Partners, Mousse Partners and QueensBridge Venture Partners. The company has now raised at least $103 million to date, shows Crunchbase.

Shyp, the two-year-old, San Francisco-based shipping service whose users can photograph items they want to ship, after which the service picks up the items, packs them, and delivers them, has raised roughly $50 million at a valuation of $250 million, reports TechCrunch. According to the outlet’s sources, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers may be leading the round. To date, the company has raised $12.1 million, including from Homebrew, Winklevoss Capital, and SherpaVentures.

Swiggy, an eight-month-old, Bangalore, India-based food ordering and delivery app, has reportedly raised $2 million in funding from Accel Partners and SAIF Partners.

Upstart, a three-year-old, Palo Alto, Ca.-based lending platform that provides loans to individuals based on variety of less traditional signals, has tightened its relationship with Victory Park Capital, the Chicago-based asset management firm. Last summer, Victory Park announced it would invest $100 million in Upstart loans over a two-year period; this morning, the companies are announcing that Victory Park will increase its investment in Upstart loans to $500 million.

VarageSale, a 2.5-year-old, Toronto, Ontario-based online marketplace that’s focused around local communities and competes with Craigslist, has raised $34 million in funding from Sequoia Capital and Lightspeed Venture Partners. Bloomberg has more here.

Zebra Medical Vision, a year-old, Israel-based startup building a database of anonymous medical images, has raised $8 million in funding led by Khosla Ventures. Venture Capital Dispatch has more here.

ZenPayroll, a three-year-old, San Francisco-based company whose cloud-based software system automates tax calculations and payroll payments for small and mid-size businesses, has raised $60 million in Series B funding led by Google Capital. Other participants in the round include Emergence Capital Partners, Ribbit Capital, General Catalyst Partners, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, and Google Ventures. The company has now raised $86.1 million altogether.

Zenefits, the two-year-old, San Francisco-based HR and benefits software provider, is beginning conversations with investors about a new financing round that could value the company at more than $3 billion, reports The Information. The company raised its most recent round last summer — $66.5 million in Series B funding from Andreessen Horowitz and Institutional Venture Partners — at a $500 million pre-money valuation. (Zenefits founder and CEO Parker Conrad will be the first speaker at StrictlyVC’s event next month. Tickets are available here.)

—–

New Fundings

Freestyle Capital, a six-year-old, San Francisco-based early-stage venture firm, has closed its third fund with $57 million. The firm, founded by serial entrepreneurs and longtime business partners Josh Felser and Dave Samuel, have also named Jenny Lefcourt as their third partner, roughly a year after Lefcourt joined the firm as an investor. She previously cofounded WeddingChannel.com, acquired by TheKnot in 2006; the wedding photo company Bella Pictures, acquired by a St. Louis-based photography service called CPI; and an e-commerce company, Markkit. Freestyle says it plans to use the fund to invest in up to 14 companies a year. It has now raised $126 million altogether.

Founder’s Co-op, a seven-year-old, Seattle-based seed-stage venture fund founded by longtime business partners Andy Sack and Chris DeVore, has raised a new, $20 million fund, up from its last, $8 million, fund closed in 2012. Investors include the Oregon Growth Board. Geekwire has more here.

—–

IPOs

Collegium Pharmaceutical, a 13-year-old, Canton, Ma.-based pain therapeutics company that has developed an opioid pain medication designed to deter abuse, has filed to go public — just one month after raising $50 million in funding. That last outside round was led by TPG Biotech. The company has raised $77.5 million altogether. According to its S-1, its biggest shareholders include Longitude Capital Partners, which owns 22.4 percent of the company; Skyline Venture Partners, which owns 20 percent; Frazier Healthcare, which owns 12.4; TPG, which owns 8.7 percent; Boston Millennia Partners, which owns 7.8 percent; and RA Capital Management, which owns 6.1 percent.

Infraredx, a 17-year-old, Burlington, Ma.-based ultrasound diagnostic company that filed to go public last December and hoped to raise as much as $55 million in its offering, has withdrawn those plans, citing “unfavorable market conditions.”

Virtu Financial, an electronic trading firm that’s partly owned by Silver Lake Partners, said it expects to raise up to $314 million in an IPO. It planned to go public roughly a year ago but postponed that attempt amid a furor over high-frequency trading fueled by Michael Lewis’s book Flash Boys. Reuters has more here.

—–

Exits

Buttercoin, a two-year-old, Palo Alto, Ca.-based bitcoin exchange startup, is shutting down, saying it was unable to raise follow-on funding owing to a “dip in bitcoin interest among Silicon Valley investors.” TechCrunch has the story here. Buttercoin had raised at least $1.3 million, including from Y Combinator, Google Ventures, Floodgate, Initialized Capital, and Rothenberg Ventures.

OnLive, a 7.5-year-old, Mountain View, Ca.-based streaming games company that was long troubled, is shutting down its service and selling its patents to Sony. Ars Technica has the story here. OnLive, founded by serial entrepreneur Steve Perlman, had raised at least $56.5 million from investors over the years, shows Crunchbase. Backers included HTC Corp, Time Warner, Autodesk, Maverick Capital, and Lauder Partners.

—–

People

Meet Jay Edelson, the class-action lawyer who Silicon Valley loves to hate.

Lazlo Block, the head of people operations at Google, on why 399 out of every 400 people who apply for jobs at the company do not make the cut.

According to the SEC, longtime friends Ifty Ahmed and Amit Kanodia illegally profited from insider trading on news of a proposed acquisition of Cooper Tire and Rubber Company by Apollo Tyres. Ahmed is a general partner at Oak Investment Partners, where he has reportedly just been placed on leave of absence. Kanodia is a managing partner at Lincoln Ventures.

“You have this needle that you have to thread, and sometimes it feels like there’s no hole in the needle,” says Reddit‘s interim CEO Ellen Pao in her first interview since the conclusion of her case against Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. “From what I’ve heard from women, they do feel like there’s no way to win.”

Jim Tananbaum, the venture capitalist whom Bloomberg dubbed “the Google bus of Burning Man,” has resigned from the festival’s board of directors. More here.

—–

Job Listings

Madrona Venture Group, the Seattle-based early stage VC firm, is looking to add an associate to its team. Email resumes to david (at) madrona (dot) com.

—–

Data

The mobile ad market is set to surpass $100 billion next year, according toeMarketer.

Gulp. According to new data out from Thomson Reuters and the National Venture Capital Association, just 17 venture-backed IPOs raised $1.4 billion during the first quarter of this year, a 54 percent decrease, by number of offerings, from the first quarter of 2014 and a 58 percent drop in terms of dollars. Only two of those offerings were information technology companies, including the biggest IPO of the quarter, Box, the cloud platform services company. Two others were non-tech related. The rest were life sciences companies.

—–

Essential Reads

Remember that Pinterest-specific fund that Andreessen Horowitz recently raised? It’s one of many one-off funds that VCs are forming to take direct stakes in single startups. The WSJ has more here.

America remains deeply ambivalent about using new medical treatments to live radically longer lives. That’s not stopping tech titans from chasing them anyway.

Meerkat, the live broadcasting app, isn’t alone is seeing its popularity plunge. The explosive usage of its Twitter-owned competitor, Periscope, is petering out, too.

—–

Detours

An office transformed by Post-It notes.

The salary required to be “middle class” in each state.

—–

Retail Therapy

McLaren’s latest creation.

Hi, happy Thursday!

Two quick programming items. A very persuasive seven-year-old dragged us off to an amusement park for all of yesterday. (We do not have a feature story is what we are saying.) Stay tuned; we have great stuff coming next week.

Also, note that we aren’t publishing tomorrow for Good Friday and Passover.

Hope you have a wonderful holiday weekend, everyone!

—–

Top News in the A.M.

The EU is reportedly laying the groundwork for antitrust charges against Google.

Stanford just expanded its family aid packages, making tuition free to students whose families earn less than $125,000 per year.

Airbnb is now available in Cuba.

—–

New Fundings

Bica Studios, a two-year-old, Lisbon, Portugal-based gaming studio, has raised an undisclosed amount of seed funding led by Portugal Ventures. More here.

CodeFights, a year-old, San Francisco-based startup that turns testing one’s programming skills into a game, has raised $2.4 million in seed funding from a long list of investors, including Felicis Ventures, Sutter Hill Ventures, and Quora CEO Adam D’Angelo. TechCrunch has more here.

Dianping, a 12-year-old, Shanghai, China-based restaurant review and group-buying service that’s often likened to both Yelp and Groupon, has officially closed on $850 million from investors, including smartphone maker Xiaomi, at a $4 billion valuation. (China-based press outlets had reported on the round earlier in the month, without noting Xiaomi’s involvement or the company’s valuation.) The company has now raised $1 billion altogether, including from FountainVest Partners, Temasek Holdings, Qiming Ventures, and Lightspeed Venture Partners, shows Crunchbase. The WSJ has more here.

Duriana, a two-year-old, Singapore-based mobile marketplace that allows users to buy and sell items, has raised $2.5 million in Series A funding led by Beenos Asia, with participation from Alps Ventures. The company has now raised $3.3 million to date. DealStreetAsia has the story here.

Ello, the two-year-old, Burlington, Vt.-based ad-free social network, has raised $5 million in funding led by its earlier backers Foundry Group, TechStars, and FreshTracks Capital. The company has now raised $11 million altogether. (If you’re curious about its money-making strategy, it says it’s stealing a page from the gaming industry and developing a freemium model that will allow users to sign in for multiple accounts, invert the site’s color scheme, and so on, for nominal dollar amounts.) The Observer has the story.

Fyusion, a two-year-old, San Francisco-based developer of a new mobile photo app platform, has raised $13 million in Series B funding led by New Enterprise Associates and The University of Tokyo Edge Capital, with participation from angel investors. The company has now raised roughly $16.5 million altogether, shows Crunchbase. More here.

Honor, an eight-month-old, San Francisco-based company with big ambitions to help the elderly to live independently longer — via screened health-care professionals, an appliance that acts as a reminder about appointments and more, and an app that makes it easier for remote family members to keep tabs on what’s happening — has raised $20 million in Series A funding led by Andreessen Horowitz. Other participants include Kapor Capital, Ron Johnson, Max Levchin, Max Ventilla, Senator Bob Kerrey, Jeremy Stoppelman, Andrew Conrad, Jessica Alba and Cash Warren. The company was founded by veteran co- founders, including Seth Sternberg (Meebo), Cameron Ring (Plaxo), and Sandy Jen (Meebo). Forbes has more here.

Hudl, a nine-year-old, Lincoln, Ne.-based company whose platform and software provides video analysis and coaching tools for sports teams around the country, has raised $72.5 million in funding led by Accel Partners. Previously, the company had raised just $3 million in seed funding. TechCrunch has much more here.

HyTrust, a seven-year-old, Mountain View, Ca.-based cloud security automation company, just raised $25 million in Series D funding led by Accelerate-IT Ventures, with participation from Vanedge Capital, Trident Capital, Epic Ventures, Granite Ventures, Cisco, Fortinet, Intel and VMware. The company also secured up to $8 million in venture debt and credit facilities. HyTrust has raised $84.5 million in equity to date, shows Crunchbase.

Ola, the four-year-old, Bangalore, India-based taxi hailing service, is reportedly about to announce $400 million in financing led by DST Global, with participation from Accel Partners and the New York-based hedge fund Falcon Edge. Times of India has more here. Ola’s earlier backers, including Tiger Global Management, Matrix Partners, and Steadview Capital, are also reportedly joining the round.

Oscar, the two-year-old, New York-based health insurance startup, is in talks to raise a new round of venture funding at a valuation of “significantly more than $1 billion,” according to Bloomberg. Oscar has already raised $150 million from investors, including Khosla Ventures, General Catalyst Partners, Founders Fund and Thrive Capital (whose cofounder, Joshua Kushner, also cofounded Oscar).

Quartet Health, a year-old, New York-based health IT company whose platform allows medical and behavioral health clinicians to work collaboratively on shared treatment goals, has raised $7 million in new funding led by Oak HC/FT, with participation from Shulman Ventures, Fidelity Biosciences, Polaris Partners and numerous individual investors.

ReadyPulse, a 4.5-year-old, San Carlos, Ca.-based company that helps digital marketers find so-called brand ambassadors across social media, has raised $5 million in Series A funding led by Walden Venture Capital and Rally Ventures. The company has now raised $7 million altogether, including from Divergent Ventures.

Reformation, a 5.5-year-old, L.A.-based eco-friendly clothing company, has raised $12 million in Series A funding led by Stripes Group and 14W, with numerous individuals participating, including fashion model Karlie Kloss.

SupportPay, a four-year-old, Santa Monica, Ca.-based child-support payment app, has raised $1.5 million in seed funding from a New York-based venture firm called T5 Capital Partners, with participation from earlier backers. The company has raised $2.8 million to date.

Tapingo, a three-year-old, San Francisco-based mobile ordering technology for campuses and campus dining, has raised $22 million in Series B funding led by Qualcomm Ventures, with participation from DCM Ventures, Kinzon Capital, and earlier backers Khosla Ventures and Carmel Ventures. The company has now raised $36 million altogether.

Via, a three-year-old, New York-based startup that offers SUV rides to groups of passengers with compatible destinations (in New York but soon to be elsewhere), has raised $27 million in new funding led by Pitango Venture Capital, with participation from Hearst Ventures, Ervington Investments, and 83North. Via has now raised $37 million altogether. VentureBeat has more here.

ZappRx, a three-year-old, Cambridge, Ma.-based company that automates the prescription refilling process, has raised $5.6 million in Series A funding from return investors Atlas Venture and SR One.

—–

New Funds

Correlation Ventures, the four-year-old, San Diego-based venture firm that says it uses predictive analytics in its investment decisions, is raising a second fund, shows an SEC filing that states the first sale has yet to occur. The firm is targeting $170 million. Correlation closed its debut fund with $165 million in early 2012.

Index Ventures, the 19-year-old venture firm, with offices in Geneva, London, and San Francisco, has just raised $706 million for a new growth fund, according to an SEC filing. Last year Index, which focuses on both tech and life sciences companies, closed a $542 million fund for early-stage startups. VentureBeat has more here.

Lux Capital, the 15-year-old venture firm, with offices in New York and Menlo Park, Ca. , has closed its fourth fund with $350 million to invest in early-stage science and technology ventures. The fund was meaningfully oversubscribed from the firm’s initial target of $245 million, the firm says. Dealbook has much more here.

—–

IPOs

GoDaddy’s IPO by the numbers.

—–

Exits

Blekko, an eight-year-old, Redwood Shores, Ca.-based web search engine and social news platform, has been acquired by IBM for undisclosed terms. The company had raised roughly $60 million from investors, including SoftTech VC, Baseline Ventures, PivotNorth Capital, U.S. Venture Partners, CMEA Capital, and Yandex. Silicon Angle has more here.

Chango, a seven-year-old, Toronto-based programmatic ad platform, has been acquired by the publicly traded, L.A.-based ad company Rubicon Project for a reported $122 million. According to Crunchbase, Chango had raised $18.6 million from investors, including iNovia Capital, Rho Canada, Metamorphic Ventures, Extreme Venture Partners, and Mantella Venture Partners. More here.

Embrane, a five-year-old, Santa Clara, Ca.-based startup with an architecture for virtualized network appliances, has been acquired for undisclosed terms by Cisco, which was an investor in the company. Altogether, says Crunchbase, Embrane had raised $32 million, including from Lightspeed Venture Partners, New Enterprise Associates, and Presidio Ventures.

Two of the many investors in Flipkart, one of India’s largest e-commerce companies, have reportedly cashed out of their investments. Helion Venture Partners has sold its entire stake to secondary buyers; meanwhile IDG Ventures has sold part of its holdings, says DealCurry.More here.

Lacoon Mobile Security, a four-year-old, San Francisco-based mobile threat management platform, has been acquired by Check Point Software Technologies for undisclosed terms that earlier reports pegged at $80 million. Lacoon had raised $8 million from Index Ventures and numerous individual investors.

Moment.me, a three-year-old, New York-based company that recently pivoted to build mobile websites for events, has been acquired by publicly traded site builder Wix for $10 million, reports TechCrunch. According to Crunchbase, Moment.me had raised $3.2 million from Blumberg Capital and SingTel Innov8.

Refresh.io, a startup and iOS app of the same name that surfaces insights about people in your networks right before you meet them, has been acquired by LinkedIn for undisclosed terms. (TechCrunch is calling it a talent and technology acquisition.) Crunchbase shows the company had raised $10 million from investors, including Haystack, Foundation Capital, CRV, and Redpoint Ventures.

TenXer, a 3.5-year-old, San Francisco-based startup whose productivity tool helps programmers analyze their performance, has been acquired by Twitter for undisclosed terms. The company had raised $4.7 million from investors, including Webb Investment Network, Khosla Ventures, Radar Partners, and True Ventures. VentureBeat has more here.

Toopher, a 3.5-year-old, Austin, Tx.-based two-factor authentication startup, has been acquired by Salesforce for undisclosed terms. The company had raised roughly $3 million, shows Crunchbase. Its venture backers include Alsop Louie Partners and Corsa Ventures. VentureBeat has the story here.

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People

A growing list of Silicon Valley CEOs, VCs and other leaders have signed a statement demanding that states considering so-called religious freedom legislation also pass laws banning discrimination against people who are gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender. In an interview with Recode, entrepreneur Max Levchin, who is leading the effort, hints that states that don’t act may have more to worry about than a statement. “I am asking all CEOs to evaluate their relationships and investments in states that do not specifically protect LGBT people from discrimination.”

Motionloft founder Jon Mills — who was accused of defrauding investors and spending their money for his lavish personal use — has been found guilty on two counts of wire fraud, and ordered to serve 24 months in jail, reports TechCrunch. Mills was also ordered to cough up $6,000 in fines and to pay restitution to his victims in the amount of $572,039. More here.

Nebula, a four-year-old, Mountain View, Ca.-based company that promised its customers the ability to easily build a massive private computing cloud from hundreds or thousands of inexpensive computers, has gone out of business. Nebula had raised nearly $40 million from investors, including Webb Investment Network, Comcast Ventures, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, and Highland Capital Partners. Business Insider has the story here.

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Happenings

StrictlyVC’s next INSIDER event is suddenly just six weeks away. Information is here. Tickets are here. Space is limited. Much thanks to our terrific sponsors, Amazon Web Services, Personal Capital, and Galvanize for helping us put together what’s going to be a great night.

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Essential Reads

JD.com, among China’s largest e-commerce companies, is branching out into crowdfunding for startups. The site isn’t the first startup crowdfunding site in China, but with its resources, it claims to already be the largest.

The inside story of the Apple Watch: the people who made it, why it’s important, and just how much Apple has riding on it.

Meerkat, the live broadcasting startup, better have another trick up its sleeve. A week after snatching up $14 million in funding, the company’s popularity is suddenly plunging.

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Detours

The 19 hottest property markets in the world.

Norwegians, soaring through the air at 60 miles per hour on their skis.

Entertainer Chris Rock is taking a selfie every time he gets pulled over by police.

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Retail Therapy

This chainless, folding, electric bike is cool. Maybe not quite as cool as its promotional video suggests(!), but pretty cool.

Happy Wednesday, dear readers! We were planning an April Fools’ prank, but we’ve run out of time and, speaking frankly, the story we were writing was not terribly hilarious. Put another way: no column today.:)

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Top New in the A.M.

President Obama just signed an executive order establishing the first sanctions program to impose penalties on individuals overseas who engage in destructive attacks or commercial espionage in cyberspace. More here.

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New Fundings

17zuoye, an eight-year-old, Shanghai, China-based online learning platform for parents, teachers, and students K-12, has raised $100 million in Series D financing led by H Capital, according to China Money Network. Temasek Holdings, DST Global, and Shunwei Capital also participated in the round. According to Crunchbase, the company has now raised at least $135 million altogether.

Advanced Practice Strategies, a 20-year-old, Boston-based e-learning and talent management platform provider for clinicians, has raised $12 million in Series C funding led by River Cities Capital Funds, with participation from Ascension Ventures.

AppsDaily, a seven-year-old, Mumbai, India-based mobile app development and distribution company, has raised $16 million in Series C funding led by Zodius Technology Fund, with participation from earlier backers ru-Net, Kalaari Capital and Qualcomm Ventures. The company had previously raised $6 million, according to the outlet e27.

aTyr Pharma, a 10-year-old, San Diego-based biotherapeutics company that discovers and develops protein biologics for human therapeutics, has raised $76 million in Series E funding led by Sofinnova Ventures and an undisclosed large institutional investor in the biotechnology industry. Other new investors taking part in the round include funds and accounts advised by T. Rowe Price Associates, Federated Investors, Deerfield, Rock Springs Capital Management, EcoR1 Capital, Sphera Global Healthcare, and two additional undisclosed institutional investors.

Beequick, a ten-month-old, Beijing, China-based startup that currently provides one-hour delivery of fresh produce and other products from community convenience stores, has raised $20 million in Series B funding led by Hillhouse Capital, according to China Money Network. Earlier backer Sequoia Capital also participated in the round, which reportedly values the young company at $200 million. The company has raised $40 million to date.

CafeX, a two-year-old, New York-based company whose technology helps enable contextual real-time communication experiences within enterprise applications, has raised $21 million in Series B funding from Intel Capital and a subsidiary of USAA, with return backing by Illuminate Ventures and other angel investors. The company has now raised at least $31.5 million, shows Crunchbase.

Didi Dache and Kuaidi Dache, the three-year-old, China-based taxi-hailing companies that merged in February (though they remain separately operated), are selling $600 million worth of common shares to an investor consortium led by Coatue Management in a transaction that values the combined companies at $8.75 billion. The WSJ has more here. Coatue is reportedly putting in about $250 million, while the investment firm Farallon Capital Management invests roughly another $75 million. Unnamed institutional and individual investors are acquiring the rest of the stakes. The deal is interesting for numerous reasons, not least because it represents Coatue’s third China-based deal in the last month. The hedge fund’s other recent bets include the online travel information and service platform Mafengwo and the online used car auction company Youxinpai. (Coatue hired Tony Zhang from DCM Ventures last year to gain a foothold in China, notes the WSJ.)

Genshuixue, a year-old, China-based online education startup, has raised $50 million in Series A funding at valuation of $250 million led by Hillhouse Capital. Tech in Asia has more here.

Instabrand, a two-year-old, L.A.-based start-up that helps strike deals between advertisers and individuals with large social media followings, has raised $2.5 million in funding led by TI Capital, which is funded by a Santa Monica-based family. The L.A. Times has the story here.

Noom, a 7.5-year-old, New York-based company whose smartphone apps promote healthy living, has raised $16.2 million in Series B funding led byInterVest, a Seoul, Korea-based venture capital firm. Other investors in the round include LB Investment; Hanmi IT, a subsidiary company of Hanmi Pharmaceutical Co.; RRE Ventures; TransLink Capital; andQualcomm Ventures. The company has raised at least $24 million to date, shows Crunchbase.

PeerNova, a year-old, San Jose, Ca.-based blockchain technology specialist, has raised $5 million in funding from the retail company Overstock as part of its second tranche of Series A financing. Formed through a merger of the cloud mining contract company CloudHashing and ASIC hardware designer HighBitcoin, PeerNova raised $8.6 million in funding in December led by Mosiak Partners, with participation from angel investor Steve Case, FireEye founder Ashar Aziz, veteran investor Pierre Lamond, Crypto Currency Partners and others. Coindesk has the story here.

Signal, a year-old, London-based company that specializes in media monitoring and market intelligence, has raised $1.8 million in seed funding led by Frontline Ventures, with participation from Samos Investments,Reed Ventures and individual investors. The Irish Times has more here.

TripHobo, a three-year-old, Pune, India-based repository of user-generated travel itineraries, has raised $3 million in Series B funding led by Mayfield, with participation from earlier investor Kalaari Capital. The company has now raised roughly $5.5 million altogether, shows Crunchbase.

Yuantiku, a three-year-old, Beijing-based online education platform, has raised $60 million in Series D funding led by CMC Capital Partners and New Horizon Capital, with participation from Matrix Partners China and IDG Capital Partners. The company has raised $84.2 million to date, shows Crunchbase. China Money Network has more here.

Zhan.com, a four-year-old, Shanghai, China-based online education firm (yes, another China-based online education deal), has raised $29 million in Series B financing led by GGV Capital and Shunwei Capital.

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New Funds

Chrysalix, the 14-year-old, Vancouver, B.C.-based venture firm, is approaching a first close on Chrysalix Energy LP IV, reports peHUB. The firm hopes to raise between $150 million and $250 million for the fund.

Comcast, the 52-year-old, Philadelphia-headquartered broadcasting and cable giant, is launching a new, growth-stage investment group to be headed by Comcast‘s CFO, Michael Angelakis, who will leave his current post to lead it. Angelakis’s team will reportedly have up to $4.1 billion to invest. It isn’t yet clear how closely it will work with Comcast Ventures, the company’s venture capital arm. More here.

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo has struck a deal with lawmakers to include a $100 million venture capital fund in the state budget, according to Bloomberg. The fund will be used to support startups engaged in biotechnology and advanced materials.

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IPOs

Etsy, the 10-year-old, Brooklyn-based crafts marketplace, thinks it’s worth $1.78 billion. After filing its S1 in early March, the company announced yesterday that it would launch its IPO roadshow today, offering 16.67 million shares at an initial offering price of between $14 and $16 per share. Business Insider has the story here.

GoDaddy, the 18-year-old, Scottsdale, Az.-based online service that helps people and businesses set up web sites, just debuted on the New York Stock Exchange this morning, after raising $440 million in its initial public offering. GoDaddy wound up pricing its shares at $20, above an earlier targeted range of $17 to $19 a share. At its IPO price, the company has a market value of more than $3 billion (though as of this writing, the stock is trading at $26). Stay tuned!

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Exits

Trada, a seven-year-old, Boulder, Co.based company that crowdsourced search-engine ad purchasing, has shut down its operations, saying it was unable to pay its creditors. The company reportedly employed nearly 100 people at one point. According to Crunchbase, Trada raised at least $19 million from investors, including Foundry Group and Google Ventures. Denver Business Journal has the story.

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People

CEOs who made their fortune before age 30.

Fiksu, a 6.5-year-old, Boston-based mobile marketing technology company that last year said it had surpassed $100 million in annual revenue, has laid off about 10 percent of its workforce as part of a reorganization, and CFO Ken Goldman — brought aboard less than a year ago to help it prepare for a possible IPO — has left. BetaBoston has the story here.

Roger McNamee, cofounder of Elevation Partners, told CNBC yesterday that the lack of women at the top of venture capital firms is “tragic.” One of the problems, McNamee offered, is that many people in engineering “his age” likely never interacted much with women in a professional setting. “You almost need a generational change to get past that fear of treating women as real people,” he said.

Entrepreneur Sean Parker and investor Ron Conway are throwing their weight behind a new think tank in Washington that aims to craft centrist proposals to stimulate the economy and press Congress to enact them. It’s called the Economic Innovation Group and it launched yesterday after a reported 18 months of behind-the-scenes preparation. Politico has more here.

Behind that Forbes cover story on investor Chris Sacca (video).

—–

Data

The folks at Silk analyzed Angel.co, CrunchBase and LinkedIn to build a nifty picture of the drone startup landscape, breaking the companies down by field, location, and fundraising.

—–

Essential Reads

The anonymous messaging app Yik Yak is testing a photo feature. The company says it will moderate and approve all photos, which sounds like a nightmare but would prevent photos that feature faces — or worse — to make it into users’ feeds.

—–

Detours

Cool pies.

Pawculus Rift.

The man who makes Hollywood’s smallest sounds.

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Retail Therapy

Now this manifesto, we can get behind.

 

Hi, all, happy Tuesday! (Web visitors, here’s an easer-to-read version of today’s email.)

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Top News in the A.M.

Charter Communications, the fourth-largest cable provider in the U.S., has just agreed to purchase the sixth-largest U.S. provider, Bright House Networks, for $10.4 billion. If approved, says Charter, the deal will create the second biggest cable operator by customer volume.

Two federal agents were charged yesterday for diverting valuable bitcoin into their personal accounts during their investigation of the black-market site Silk Road. As shocking, one is accused of acting as as a paid informant for Silk Road’s recently convicted administrator, Ross Ulbricht.

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Andreessen Horowitz Bets Big on Tanium — Again

Tanium, an eight-year-old, Emeryville, Ca.-based company founded by father and son David and Orion Hindawi, has landed $52 million from Andreessen Horowitz less than a year after raising $90 million from the Sand Hill Road firm.

Somewhat amazingly, it hasn’t touched a penny of it, either, says Orion Hindawi, the company’s CTO.

In fact, Tanium — whose security and systems management software can deliver all kinds of information about every machine and device running on a corporate network within seconds – has been profitable since 2012, says Hindawi, and it’s growing fast. Last year, it increased its total billings by 400 percent and grew its employee base from 25 to 175. (It plans to employ between 500 and 600 people by year end.)

So why raise so much? Two reasons, says Hindawi. The company is seeing an “immense amount of opportunity” that it wants to “even more aggressively” pursue — particularly in international markets like Japan, England, and Australia, where its business has begun to take off.

Tanium has also mapped out how much it needs to survive for three years without revenue in the case of a “black swan” event. “I like real cushions,” says Hindawi, who cofounded an earlier company with his father called BigFix that launched in 1999. BigFix survived the dot com boom and bust, eventually selling to IBM in 2010 for a reported $400 million. But the downturn also made Hindawi acutely aware of how challenging it is to survive lousy market conditions.

Not that he needs to worry this time around, seemingly.

Andreessen Horowitz is so taken by Tanium’s technology that despite its enormous investment in the company, it owns “substantially less than 25 percent,” says Hindawi.

Perhaps it’s no wonder that Hindawi thinks highly of Andreessen Horowitz, too. He points to the expertise of of Andreessen partner and former Microsoft executive Steven Sinofksy, who sits on Tanium’s board. (“Usually, I’ve dealt with VCs who didn’t have direct knowledge of our space,” Hindawi says.)

He also cites Andreessen Horowitz’s “executive briefing center,” a low-flying, 50-person unit that focuses narrowly on bringing in customers to the firm’s enterprise portfolio companies.

It’s “one of the most amazing things I’ve ever seen,” says Hindawi, who says that half of Tanium’s customers have come from its own pipeline. The other half, he says, have come through Andreessen Horowitz.

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New Fundings

Augure, a 13-year-old, Paris-based company whose marketing software helps its clients better connect with so-called influencers, has raised $16.1 million in Series E funding from previous backers Serena Capital, Ventech, OTC Agregator, and Amundi private equity funds, along with two new investors: Seventure Partners and Bpifrance International. Rude Baguette has more here.

Drifty, a three-year-old, Madison, Wi.-based company that helps web developers build native mobile applications that can then be published to the major app stores, has raised $2.6 million in new funding led by Lightbank, with participation from Founder Collective and earlier backer Arthur Ventures, which provided Drifty with $1 million in seed funding last year. TechCrunch has the story here.

DroneDeploy, a two-year-old, San Francisco-based smart drone management system, has raised $9 million in Series A funding led by Emergence Capital, with participation from earlier backers SoftTech VC, Data Collective and AngelPad. The company has now raised $11 million altogether. More here.

Enbala Power Networks, a 12-year-old, Vancouver, B.C. -based developer of distributed energy resource management software, has raised $11 million in new funding led by GE Ventures and Edison Energy, a subsidiary of Edison International. Earlier investors also joined the round, including Export Development Canada, EnerTech Capital Partners, Sorfina Capital and Chrysalix EVC. The company has now raised roughly $27 million to date, shows Crunchbase.

GlassesUSA, a six-year-old, New York-based online retailer specializing in prescription eyewear, has raised $12.5 million in new funding led by Viola Private Equity. Geektime has more here.

GoFormz, a three-year-old, San Diego-based company that turns paper forms into “smart” mobile forms, has raised $3 million in Series A funding from Cloud Apps Capital Partners and Floodgate. More here.

KeepTrax, a 1.5-year-old, Dallas-based company that leverages GPS and mobile device sensors to convert physical location visits into digital “pins” for a variety of use cases, has raised $1 million in seed funding led by Naya Ventures.

Laundrapp, a year-old, London-based on-demand laundry startup, has raised $5.9 million in new funding from a group of investors including Michael Spencer, founder of interdealer broker ICAP. More here.

Novan, a seven-year-old, Raleigh, N.C.-based company that’s developing deliverable nitric oxide for dermatological purposes, has raised $50 million from the publicly traded company Malin Corporation, with participation from Novan’s existing private investors through the Research Triangle area of North Carolina. The company has now raised roughly $85 million altogether, shows Crunchbase.

PlayVox, a three-year-old, San Francisco-based company whose engagement software aims to make it more fun for call center workers to achieve their goals, has raised $1.5 million from a corporate venture investor in Colombia called FCP Innovacion. (PlayVox founder, Oscar Giraldo, is a systems engineer from Colombia.) The company has now raised $2.2 million to date. Venture Capital Dispatch has more here.

ProsperWorks, a four-year-old, San Mateo, Ca.-based company that sells its customer relationship management software to companies that use Google Apps, has raised $7.5 million in Series A funding led by True Ventures, with participation from earlier backers Bloomberg Beta and Crunchfund. The company has now raised $10 million altogether. Silicon Angle has more here.

Raptr, an eight-year-old, Mountain View, Ca.-based social platform that automatically updates a person’s gaming status in real-time, has raised $14 million in Series D funding led by earlier backer Accel Partners, with participation from AMD Ventures and other previous investors DAG Ventures and Tenaya Capital. The company has now raised $41 million altogether. This latest round values it at $170 million, VentureWire reports.More here.

SmartNews, a 2.5-year-old, Tokyo-based news recommendation and reading app, has raised $10 million in funding from earlier backers, including the games company GREE, Globis Capital Partners, Atomico,Mixi and Social Venture Partners. To date, SmartNews has raised $50 million. More here.

Sprinklr, a 5.5-year-old, New York-based maker of social media management software, has raised $46 million in Series E funding from earlier backers Intel Capital, Battery Ventures, and Iconiq Capital. The company has now raised $123.5 million altogether, shows Crunchbase.

Spruce, a two-year-old, San Francisco-based telemedicine company that’s focused on connecting people with board-certified dermatologists whenever they need them, has raised $15 million in Series A funding from earlier backers Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Google Ventures, Baseline Ventures and Cowboy Ventures. The company has now raised $17 million altogether. StrictlyVC talked with Spruce last year.

Thrasos Therapeutics, a 13-year-old, Montreal-based biotech startup focused on kidney disease, has raised $16.5 million in Series D funding co-led by BDC Capital and SR One, with participation from earlier backersAdvanced Technology Ventures, Fonds de solidarite FTQ, Lumira Capital, MP Healthcare Venture Management, Pappas Ventures, and SW Co.

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IPOs

CoLucid Pharmaceuticals, a 10-year-old, Durham, N.C.-based company focusing on therapies for central nervous system disorders, has filed plans to raise up to $86.25 million in an IPO. The company has raised roughly $56 million in funding across four rounds, including from Novo Ventures, Auriga Partners, Pappas Ventures, Domain Associates, Care Capital, Triathlon Medical Venture Partners, and Pearl Street Venture Funds.

Renaissance Capital just released its IPO review of the first quarter. In a nutshell, the market “slowed dramatically” owing to a variety of factors. You can download the specifics here.

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Exits

ReadyForZero, a nearly five-year-old, San Francisco-based Y Combinator-backed company that helps consumers better manage their personal debit and credit using online financial software, has been acquired by the online lending platform Avant, itself a Y Combinator alum. Financial terms are not being disclosed. Avant, a 2.5-year-old, Chicago-based company has raised roughly $333 million in equity and another billion dollars in debt, says TechCrunch. According to Crunchbase, ReadyForZero had raised $4.8 million in funding from Citi Ventures, Polaris Ventures, 500 Startups, and others.

RupeePower, a four-year-old, Gurgaon, India-based marketplace for loans, credit card and other personal finance product offers, has been acquired for undisclosed terms by India’s Snapdeal, the e-commerce giant. Snapdeal plans to use the acquisition to launch a financial services marketplace. TechCrunch has more here.

—–

People

Move over Tiger Global Management. Legendary hedge fund manager Steve Cohen is getting into the venture business. According to Bloomberg, Point72 Asset Management, the firm that manages his fortune, has started a venture capital unit called Honeycomb Ventures and it aims to back still-private growth-stage technology companies.

A first look at Facebook‘s new mothership, into which 2,800 employees will soon move.

Lynn Hermle, a star partner with Orrick, Herringto & Sutcliffe, talks with the Recorder about the Kleiner Perkins trial and what was going through her mind at various times. “I thought there was a universe between what happened in the courtroom and what the media said happened,” says Hermle of the case’s media coverage. “Like one of those Venn diagrams that don’t connect in any way.”

Yesterday, Tesla CEO Elon Musk tweeted that his company will unveil a new product — “not a car” —on April 30. Most bets are on a Tesla home battery that would be for use in people’s houses and which Musk said last month is coming “fairly soon.” Company watchers are meanwhile having fun speculating about other possibilities.

—–

Essential Reads

Introducing Amazon “dash.”

Microsoft’s brand-new tablet could be a MacBook Air killer. It hopes.

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Detours

The 25 most expensive homes for sale in San Francisco right now.

The Passover menu is getting a foodie update.

Popular chicken recipes.

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Retail Therapy

Balloon lamps.

Yellow submarines.