Happy Friday, everyone! Hope you have a most wonderful weekend and we’ll see you back here in a few days.:) (Psst, web visitors, here’s an easier-to-read version of this morning’s newsletter.)

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Top News in the A.M.

The Dow Jones Industrial average is about to welcome Apple, and to say good-bye to AT&T.

A host of the biggest companies in the world, including Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google, have filed an amicus brief in the U.S. Supreme Court stating that all couples should share the right to marry.

Do not forget: Today, it’s Take Your Action Figure to Work Day, according to someone named Randall Ham.

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Ben Thompson on What Xiaomi Gets Just Right

Ben Thompson, a Taipei, Taiwan-based writer with a sharp understanding of consumer tech, has attracted a loyal and growing base of readers to his one-man media company, Stratechery. Thompson has also become something of a thought leader in Silicon Valley over the last year, largely because of the perspective he enjoys from his perch halfway across the world.

Last night, at a San Francisco dinner hosted by the venture firm GGV Capital, Thompson — who’s in the U.S. for an Apple event this Monday — shared some of his thoughts with investors and entrepreneurs as they sipped wine and enjoyed a series of carefully prepared Cantonese dishes.

Among the topics raised was five-year-old Xiaomi, the fast-rising Chinese company that became the top player in China’s competitive smartphone market last summer, and the world’s third-largest phone maker. Thompson didn’t address the long-term prospects for Xiaomi, which raised $1.1 billion in funding at a stunning $45 billion valuation in December. But he did talk at some length about why he thinks it shouldn’t be underestimated. From his comments last night, edited lightly for clarity:

“Whether [I’m ‘long Xiaomi’] is a separate question from why I think the company is interesting.

Xiaomi is very highly valued right now, but they’re a company that a lot needs to go right for them to succeed. Then again, in 2012, if you said a lot would need to go right for them to get to X by 2015 — well, a lot did go right. They’ve executed very impressively to date.

Why they’re interesting as a company is that tech companies get so caught up in scale, and the efficiencies that come with them, that they tend to treat entire markets the same. Not Apple, which has demonstrated that you can definitely segment markets, [and not Xiaomi, which has done the same].

If you view the whole world as one market, you have this view that on one end, you have people who really love technology and will spend a lot on their phone, and you give them the highest-end sort of thing. And [you think that at the other end of the spectrum], you have someone who just doesn’t care, who walks into the AT&T store and buys whatever they’re told to buy and they get some crappy knock-off phone or whatever it might be.

But too many tech companies treat that [latter] person the same as the person in the developing country who is also buying a cheap phone. Yet they’re exactly the opposite. If you’re a young person and you’re interested in technology but you don’t have much money, you’re very different from someone who will just walk into a store [with no agenda]. What Xiaomi did was treat that person [like a sophisticated buyer]. ‘You want something that’s super customizable that you can dig into, and we’re going to meet you at a price point that’s approachable for you.’

It’s no wonder they just obliterated these other phone companies that are offering a knock-off of last year’s model at a low price. Like, which would you rather buy? A phone from a company that’s giving you what you want, or last year’s Samsung?

The low-income market is different, but it’s the same in that there are also geeks there who want something interesting and there are people who don’t care there.

I kind of feel like tech in general is too much in love with scale when often what’s interesting is at the margins — identifying a niche and serving it and figuring out how to scale it later. Too many companies think about scale from day one, and they end up making a mediocre product that tries to serve everyone and does it very poorly.”

New Fundings

Evidation Health, a new, Menlo Park, Ca.-based data and analytics company that aims to quantify and validate the savings created by digital health tools, has raised $6.2 million in Series A funding led by GE Ventures, with participation from Asset Management Ventures and Rock Health. Xconomy has more here.

Namely, a three-year-old, New York-based HR software company, has raised $11 million in funding led by Matrix Partners, with participation from earlier backers True Ventures, Lerer Hippeau Ventures, Greenspring Global Partners, and Vayner/RSE. The company has now raised $32.8 million altogether.

Nexus eWater, a 15-year-old, Canberra, Australia-based developer of a home water recycler, has raised $2.1 million in Series A funding led by Thomas Reeves Hitchner, a former GP with QuestMark Partners. Other participants in the round include ANU Connect Ventures, Sydney Angels, and the Sydney SideCar Fund.

Studypool, a year-old, Mountain View, Ca.-based online marketplace that connects students with tutors on a per question basis, has raised $1.2 million in seed funding led by Lerer Hippeau Ventures, with participation from 500 Startups, Great Oaks Venture Capital, and numerous individual investors, including Fabrice Grinda. TechCrunch has more here.

Swiftype, a three-year-old, San Francisco-based company that builds customizable search software for websites and apps, has raised $13 million in Series B funding led by earlier investor New Enterprise Associates. The company has now raised $22.2 million to date, including from Data Collective, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Ignition Partners and Y Combinator program.

Trucker Path, a 1.5-year-old, San Jose, Ca.-based startup whose mobile platform helps shippers find available spaces on trucks, has raised $1.5 million in early-stage funding from Renren, the Chinese social-networking company. The company has raised $3 million to date.

Visually, a four-year-old, San Jose, Ca.-based startup whose platform for data visualization and infographics connects designers with clients to create content, has raised $3.3 million in new funding led by Crosslink Ventures, with participation from 500 Startups, Mitch Kapor Foundation, and SoftTech VC. All were previous investors. The company has now raised $15.7 million altogether.

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New Funds

G20 Ventures, a new Boston-based venture firm founded by former Advanced Technology Ventures veterans Bob Hower and Bill Wiberg, has closed its debut fund with $63.3 million. Boston Business Journal has more here.

Sandwich Video, Silicon Valley’s favorite corporate video maker, has launched a new venture called Sandwich Fund. Created in concert with Detroit-based Ludlow Ventures, the idea is to front the full costs of a Sandwich Video, which typically costs $100,000, in exchange for $100,000 in equity. “It’s certainly not going to be every client that we do a video for — maybe 10 per year if everything goes well,” Sandwich founder Adam Lisagor tells Forbes. “But there’s going to be 10 companies where it’s a slam dunk.”

Speedinvest, a four-year-old, Austria-based venture firm focused on early-stage European startups, has held a first close on its second fund with 58 million euros ($63 million). Partner Marcel van der Heijden tells StrictlyVC the firm expects the fund to eventually close with more than $100 million — a pretty substantial step up from its 10 million euro debut fund. Among the firm’s four exits to date is Wikidocs, acquired by Atlassian last fall. Speedinvest has two partners in Silicon Valley: van der Heijden and Erik Bovee.

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IPOs

There have been 26 IPOs priced so far this year, a -38 percent change from last year.

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People

AltSchool, a budding network of schools backed by Andreessen Horowitz and others, has announced a slew of high-profile hires, including CTO Bharat Mediratta, who was previously Google’s Distinguished Engineer in charge of the Google homepage and search results experience; Michael Ginty, previously head of global security at Uber, who has been hired as AltSchool’s head of safety; Susan Yoon, who joins the company as its VP of finance from the ad tech company Rocket Fuel, where she was VP of corporate development; and Rajiv Bhatia, a former studio GM at Zynga who is now AltSchool’s VP of product. StrictlyVC talked with AltSchool founder (and former Googler) Max Ventilla in January about ballooning demand for AltSchool’s personalized learning approach.

Some key players in the gender discrimination case against Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers were cast in an unflattering light yesterday during testimony from an outside lawyer who was hired as an investigator by the firm. More here.

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Job Listings

The Omidyar Network is looking to fill a senior position to help with its impact investing. The job is in Washington, D.C.

Twitter is looking to add a manager to its newly formed “business insights” unit. The job is in San Francisco.

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Data

Dropbox’s most recent, reported valuation of $10 billion is irrational, argues CB Insights. Here’s its case against it.

Meanwhile, TechCrunch looks at the “trillion-dollar gold mine” that is alternative lending.

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Essential Reads

In a lab shut off from communication with the outside world, Apple has given some companies special early access to Apple Watch. More here.

“Shazam is already a verb. We want to expand the universe of what you can Shazam.”

In an Uber, as with a cab, it’s not always the driver who’s the threat.

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Detours

It’s true. This is a good ad.

Fifteen stunning entries from Smithsonian Magazine’s annual photo contest.

A dozen real-life places that may or may not be supervillian lairs.

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Retail Therapy

Design your dream Apple Watch.

Anonabox.

Happy Thursday, everyone! Hope it’s off to a great start.

Thanks, by the way, to the many of you who nabbed tickets yesterday to our second INSIDER Series event, coming up May 13 in San Francisco. It’s going to be great. If you happened to miss our announcement about it, the details are here and tickets are here.

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Top News in the A.M.

Just one week after the U.S. government voted to enforce net neutrality, the European Union is considering the opposite: permitting Internet providers to create a tiered Internet service with paid fast lanes.

Apple, which has seen stagnating iPad sales, will delay making a larger-screened version of the tablet, sources tell Bloomberg.

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At Zetta, a Next-Gen Partnership

It used to be that institutional investors wanted to see a long and fruitful relationship between VCs looking to create a new fund together. These “emerging managers” would need that established chemistry to take on entrenched firms, went the conventional wisdom.

If that thinking persists, LPs made an exception for Zetta Venture Partners, a San Francisco-based early-stage firm that specializes in data analytics startups and closed its debut fund with $60 million last month.

The firm pairs veteran venture investor Mark Gorenberg, long of Hummer Winblad Venture Partners, with Ash Fontana, a former banking analyst and entrepreneur who most recently worked at AngelList, where he launched online investing and created the first startup index fund to enable the platform’s users to invest in a basket of nascent startups.

The two “met through a friend” says Fontana, adding that “we live across the road from each other, too, as it turns out.”

Of course, there’s much more to the partnership, new as it is by traditional standards. The two have strong ideas about the future of data analytics for one thing, says Fontana. They also have highly complementary networks. Says Fontana, “Mark has fantastic deal flow with entrepreneurs like Josh James,” who cofounded the successful web analytics company Omniture before creating the business intelligence company Domo in late 2010. The company, which Gorenberg backed in 2011, has since raised $250 million from investors.

Fontana, meanwhile, has deal flow from the thousands of entrepreneurs he’s been interacting with at AngelList in recent years, he notes.

He also knows better than almost anyone how to sift through and capitalize on AngelList’s various products, including its jobs platform, which features more than 150,000 candidates, and its company search tool. (“Simply tagging your customers” on the platform can send a widespread message to interested parties and drive sales, Fontana says.)

As for whether the duo will elbow any of Zetta’s deals onto AngelList’s Syndicates platform for the purpose of gathering additional co-investors, that’s not necessarily likely right now, both say. “We’ll be more of a traditional fund focused on the analytics space,” says Gorenberg, “meaning we’ll mostly be the largest shareholder, though we’ll also be leaning toward the idea of syndicating with others. We want to play well with the industry.”

Gorenberg points to the Zetta portfolio company EventBoard in Salt Lake City, Ut., which is trying to reinvent the way meetings are run and facilities should be designed. Zetta led the two-year-old company’s $1.5 million seed round last year, but it brought plenty of other investors into the fold, including Josh James.

In another of its eight investments to date, Lucid, an 11-year-old, Oakland, Ca.-based company whose operating systems make commercial buildings more efficient, Formation 8 led the company’s Series B. That was just fine with Zetta, too. “They wanted an analytics-focused fund for the syndicate and invited us in,” says Gorenberg.

Gorenberg talks at length of the advantages of smaller, more focused fund, in fact, arguing they give VCs “exceptional” deal flow and allow them to add more value to companies than larger funds that are often “more reactive” to opportunities that come through the door.

Asked about the spate of data-focused funds already up and running — IA Ventures and Data Collective among them — Gorenberg says he doesn’t see them as a threat, nor think Zetta is perceived as one.

“This is such a massive space. There’s room for all three of us and more focused funds to do extremely well.”

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New Fundings

Aura Biosciences, an eight-year-old, Cambridge, Ma.-based developer of treatments of rare cancers of the eye, has raised $21 million in Series B funding led by Advent Life Sciences, with participation from Chiesi Ventures, Ysios Capital, and Alexandria Venture Investments. Earlier backers, including LI-COR Biosciences and former Genzyme CEO Henri Termeer, also joined the round. The company has now raised $34 million altogether, shows Crunchbase.

First Insight, an eight-year-old, Sewickley, Pa.-based predictive analytics platform that helps retailers and manufacturers identify winning new products and optimize their entry prices, has raised $14 million in Series B funding led by Updata Partners. The company has now raised $23.4 million altogether, shows Crunchable.

Geofeedia, a 3.5-year-old, Chicago-based company whose software enables location-based analysis of social media, has raised $3 million in Series A4 funding led by earlier backer Hyde Park Venture Partners, with participation of earlier individual investors, including former ExactTarget CMO Tim Kopp. The company has now raised $6.8 million altogether.

HoneyBook, a nearly two-year-old, San Francisco-based invite-only service for event professionals, has raised $22 million in Series B funding led by Norwest Venture Partners, with participation from Aleph and Hillsven. The company has now raised $32 million altogether.

Macrolide Pharmaceuticals, a year-old, Newton, Ma.-based company that’s developing antibiotics to treat life-threatening bacterial infections, has raised $22 million in Series A funding led by Novartis Venture Fund,Gurnet Point Capital, Roche Ventures, and SROne. BioPortfolio hasmore here.

OneDrop, a new, New York-based diabetes management platform, has raised $1 million in seed funding from investors Jason Calcanis and other angel backers. The company’s founder is Jeff Dachis, who earlier in his career cofounded the digital marketing company Razorfish. More here.

Refinery29, an 11-year-old, New York-based fashion and lifestyle site for women, is seeking up to $50 million in new funding, reports Fortune, which says the capital would mostly come from strategic investors, including existing shareholder Hearst Corporation. The company has raised roughly $30 million to date, shows Crunchbase. Its backers include Stripes Group, Lead Edge Capital, Floodgate, First Round Capital, and Lerer Hippeau Ventures.

Salesfusion, an eight-year-old, Atlanta, Ga.-based company that sells marketing-automation software, has raised $5 million from earlier backers. The company has now raised $18.5 million altogether, including from Hallett Capital, Noro-Moseley Partners, and BLH Venture Partners.

Stance, a 4.5-year-old, L.A.-based company that sells high-end socks through select retailers and plans to expand into undergarments, has raised $50 million in Series C funding led by August Capital and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, with participation from earlier backers Menlo Ventures, Shasta Ventures, Sherpa Ventures, Science, and Mercato Partners. The company had previously raised $36 million. Venture Capital Dispatch takes a nice look at the company — and the broader market in which it’s competing — here.

TerraLUX, a 12-year-old, Longmont, Co.-based company that installs light-emitting diode lamps in a variety of commercial settings, has raised $11 million in growth funding led by EnerTech Capital, with participation from Generation Investment Management, Crawley Ventures, Emerald Technology Ventures, GC&H Investments, and its founder, Anthony Catalano. The company has now raised $44.9 million to date, shows Crunchbase.

Tricida, a two-year-old, Menlo Park, Ca.-based company that’s focused on developing therapies for complications of kidney disease, has closed $30 million in Series B funding led by OrbiMed Advisors, with Limulus Venture Partners and Sibling Capital Ventures participating. All had backed the company previously. To date, Tricida has raised $44.5 million.

TriLumina, a four-year-old, Albuquerque, N.M.-based company that’s developing sensing technology for use by self-driving cars, has raised $8.5 million in Series A funding led by Stage 1 Ventures, with participation from earlier backers Cottonwood Technology Fund and Sun Mountain Capital. The company has raised $10 million to date.

Vanhawks, a 4.5-year-old, Toronto-based company that has developed a sleek, “connected,” carbon fibre bicycle, has raised $1.6 million from Real Ventures and various angel investors. The company had also raised more than $820,000 on Kickstarter last year.

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New Funds

SaaS Capital, a 2.5-year-old, Cincinnati, Oh.-based investment firm that provides debt financing to software-as-a-service companies, has closed its second fund with $58 million. Its debut fund closed at $22.5 million. GeekWire has more here.

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IPOs

Etsy, the 10-year-old, Brooklyn-based online marketplace that specializes in crafts and other items, has filed to go public. It’s become a “significant business,” notes the New York Times, with $195.6 million in sales last year, up 56 percent from the previous year, and nearly 700 employees, most of them based in Brooklyn. Etsy has raised roughly $100 million over the years. Some of its biggest outside shareholders include Accel Partners, which owns 27 percent of the company; Union Square Ventures, which own 15.2 percent; Index Ventures, which owns 12.8 percent; and Tiger Global Management, which owns 7.3 percent.

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Exits

AlchemyAPI, a 10-year-old, Denver-based artificial intelligence software company, has been acquired by IBM for undisclosed terms. The company looks to have raised just $2 million from an outside investor, Access Venture Partners, in 2013.

eXelate, an eight-year-old, New York-based data and technology company that helps digital advertisers better target online advertising, has been acquired by the measurement giant Nielsen for undisclosed terms that WSJ sources peg at $200 million. The company had raised $32 million in venture funding from investors, including Carmel Ventures, Menlo Ventures, NewSpring Capital, and Trident Capital.

FitStar, a nearly three-year-old, San Francisco-based personal training app with a small but high-profile user base, has been acquired by the fitness hardware maker Fitbit. Terms of the deal aren’t being disclosed. FitStar had raised $5 million from investors, including Mesa Ventures, Floodgate, Trinity Ventures, Google Ventures, and Advancit Capital.

Quandoo, a 2.5-year-old, Berlin-based restaurant reservation service that competes with OpenTable, is being acquired by Recruit, a 52-year-old, Japan-based conglomerate, for 27.11 billion yen ($219 million). Quandoo had raised $39.5 million from investors, including Piton Capital, HV Holtzbrinck Ventures, Sixt Family, and Texas Atlantic Capital. TechCrunch has more here.

SocketPlane, a year-old, Sunnyvale, Calif.-based software-defined networking startup that was seemingly bootstrapped, has been acquired by Docker, a San Francisco-based open-source engine for lightweight app deployment. Terms of the deal aren’t being disclosed. Docker has raised $55 million from investors, including Sequoia Capital, Benchmark, Greylock Partners, Insight Ventures, Trinity Ventures and Jerry Yang. GigaOm has more here.

Subspace, a two-year-old, Berkeley, Ca.-based company that helps employees securely collaborate from any device, has been acquired by Box. No financial terms were disclosed. More here.

SuppreMol, a 13-year-old, Munich-based biopharmaceutical company, has been acquired by Baxter International for about 200 million euros. The company had raised roughly $38 million from investors, including Bayern Kapital, BioMedPartners, Santo Holding, and FCP Biotech Holding.

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People

Microsoft cofounder Paul Allen said earlier this week that his luxury yacht and underseas exploration vessel, Octopus, has discovered the wreck of Japan’s biggest World War II battleship, Musashi, off the coast of the Philippines. More here. (Business Insider has more on the yacht itself here.)

Confluence Capital, a two-year-old, Minneapolis, Mn.-based early stage firm, has rebranded itself as Matchstick Ventures and also added a couple of new advisory board members. Seth Levine is a cofounder of Foundry Group. Joy Lindsay is the president of StarTec Investments and the newly created Sofia Fund.

When Wen Hsieh, a Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers partner, took the stand yesterday in the high-profile trial of former partner Ellen Pao, he “seemed to represent everything Ellen Pao was not,” writes The Recorder. More here.

Two former and four current Twitter execs, all women, announced a new investment group yesterday called #Angels. They’ll be investing together and apart, but lending their collective expertise in product development, partnerships, fundraising, acquisitions, internationalization, platforms, media, legal, corporate governance and policy to the startups they work with. (One catch: those companies can’t compete with or potentially be acquired by Twitter.) More here.

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Job Listings

Foursquare, the location-based recommendations and social networking company, is looking for a director of business development. The job is in New York.

Teledoc, a venture-backed telehealth services company, is looking for a director of business development. The job is also in New York.

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Essential Reads

The backstory of Meerkat, a side project that’s taking off — at least for now.

Aspiro, the dangerously unprofitable Swedish parent company of streaming services Tidal and WiMP, is seemingly trying to wring more money out of Jay Z, a month after the famed rapper put in a $56 million offer to buy the company. (To that, we say, good luck.)

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Detours

One twin exercises, the other doesn’t.

Hermit crabs upgrading their homes.

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Retail Therapy

Smartwatches for kids.

21.3-feet of total luxury. Oh, yeeeaaah.

Good Wednesday, dear readers.

We have some news!

We are so very excited to announced our next INSIDER Series event. Guest speakers include:

 Zenefits cofounder and CEO Parker Conrad;

Lightspeed Venture Partners partner Jeremy Liew;

Thumbtack cofounder and CEO Marco Zappacosta;

Sequoia Capital partner Bryan Schreier;

Pantera Capital Management founder Dan Morehead;

and seed-stage investor and venture advisor Semil Shah.

The evening event takes place Wednesday, May 13, at the beautiful Gallery Wendi Norris in San Francisco. We’ll also have yummy hors d’oeuvres and drinks for everyone.

Space is limited. You can learn more about the agenda here. For tickets, click here. If you’re interested in co-sponsoring the event, please let us know!

(We’re still hoping to get out to Boston in early June, too. Stay tuned for more details.)

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Top News in the A.M.

Japan says iie to Uber.

Tech companies are scrambling to fix a security flaw that left users of Apple and Google devices vulnerable to hacking when they visited supposedly secure Web sites.

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New Fundings

Alation, a 2.5-year-old, Redwood City, Ca.-based company whose enterprise software remains largely in stealth mode, has raised $9 million in funding led by Costanoa Venture Capital and Data Collective, with participation from Andreessen Horowitz, Bloomberg Beta, and General Catalyst Partners. VentureBeat has more here.

Bhakti Chai, an eight-year-old, Boulder, Co.-based maker of chai tea, has raised $3 million from Colorado Impact Fund, a fund that’s managed by an affiliate of Vestar Capital Partners.

Blueprint Medicines, a four-year-old, Cambridge, Ma.-based company that’s developing targeted cancer therapies (and has raised $115 million from investors toward that end), has formed a $265 million collaboration with publicly traded Alexion Pharmaceuticals. Boston Business Journal has more here.

BookKeeping Express, a 31-year-old, Tysons Corner, Va.-based company that sells web-based financial-reporting software, has raised $5.8 million in Series A funding led Paulson Investment Co.

Brite Semiconductor, a seven-year-old, Shanghai-based ASIC design services firm, has raised $8 million in Series C funding led by Norwest Venture Partners, Gobi Partners, and Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation. The company has now raised $30.6 million altogether.

ChipCare, a six-year-old, Toronto-based company that has developed a hand-held cell analyzer, just raised a $5 million Series A round led by Dallas-based Puffin Partners, with participation from Winfield Venture Group, Epic Capital and returning investors MaRS Innovation and Maple Leaf Angels.

CloudMine, a nearly five-year-old, Philadelphia, Pa. company whose technology helps businesses securely deploy mobile apps, has raised $5 million in Series A funding led by Safeguard Scientifics, with participation by Ben Franklin Technology Partners, DeSimone Group Investments, DreamIt Ventures, MentorTech Ventures, Mid-Atlantic Angel Group, Robin Hood Ventures, and individual investors.

Culture Amp, a four-year-old, Melbourne, Australia-based employee engagement software company, has secured $6.3 million in Series A funding led by Blackbird Ventures, Felicis Ventures and Index Ventures.

Daktari Diagnostics, a 6.-5-year-old, Cambridge, Ma.-based company that makes medical diagnostics products, has raised $15.5 million in Series D funding led by Eastern Capital and the Merck Global Health Innovation Fund, with participation from earlier backers Norwich Ventures and Partners Innovation Fund. The company has now raised $52.1 million altogether, shows Crunchbase.

Eccrine Systems, a two-year-old West Chester, Oh.-based company that uses disposable electronic patches to collect biomarker data, has raised $1.5 million in funding led by CincyTech.

Farfetch, a 7.5-year-old London-based online marketplace for high-end fashion retailers, has raised $86 million led by DST Global. Other investors in the round, which gives the company a valuation of $1 billion, include earlier backers Conde Nast and Vitruvian Partners. Farfetch has now raised $194.5 million altogether. TechCrunch has the story here.

Greenhouse Software, a three-year-old, New York-based recruitment optimization platform, has raised $13.6 million in Series B funding led by Benchmark, with participation from earlier backers Social+Capital Partnership, Felicis Ventures, and Resolution Ventures. The company has now raised roughly $25 million altogether.

Nextdoor, a 4.5-year-old, San Francisco-based private social network that lets members communicate with their neighbors, has raised $110 million in venture capital, including from Redpoint Ventures and Insight Venture Partners, reports the New York Times. The new investment values the company at about $1.1 billion, adds the Times’s report. Nextdoor has now raised roughly $210 million altogether.

Options Away, a nearly four-year-old, Chicago-based startup that allows consumers to lock-in flight prices before buying tickets, has raised $3.5 million in Series A funding led by OCA Ventures, with participation from Thayer Ventures, Pritzker Group Venture Capital, and some individual investors. The company has now raised $5.6 million altogether.

PeachWorks, a 10-year-old, Southfield, Mi.-based company whose cloud-based technology helps restaurants track and manage their inventory, staff scheduling and more, has raised $4 million in Series A funding led by Allos Ventures, with participation from Arsenal Venture Partners, Huron River Ventures and Invest Detroit.

Pressly, a 3.5-year-old, Toronto-based publishing platform that automatically transforms online content into interactive web apps for tablet web browsers, has raised $2.1 million in funding led by Gibraltar Ventures, with participation from earlier backers iNovia Capital and OMERS Ventures. The company has now raised $3.6 million altogether.

Pulmokine, a 7.5-year-old, Rensselaer, N.Y.-based biopharmaceutical company whose lead drug candidate treats pulmonary arterial hypertension, has raised $1 million in seed funding from Broadview Ventures.

REscour, a two-year-old, Atlanta, Ga.-based commercial real estate data visualization and intelligence startup, has raised $1.3 million in seed funding led by Jason Calacanis’s Launch Fund and AngelList syndicate, along with TechSquare Labs. The round also included other individual investors.

Seven Lakes Technologies, a five-year-old, Westlake Village, Ca.-based enterprise software company focused on the oil and gas industry, has raised $20 million in Series A funding from Carrick Capital Partners.

Spredfast, a seven-year-old, Austin, Tx.-based company whose software helps marketers manage the companies’ brands, including across social media, has raised $24 million in growth funding from Silver Lake Waterman. (Silver Lake Waterman, if you’re curious, provides companies with “growth debt.”) The company has now raised $88.1 million altogether, including from Austin Ventures, InterWest Partners, Lead Edge Capital, and OpenView Venture Partners.

Tradiio, a year-old, Lisbon-based music discovery platform, has raised $975,000 in seed funding from Espirito Santo Ventures.

WorldStores, a 12-year-old, London-based online retailer and flash sales platform that sells furniture and other home products, has raised £25 million ($38.3 million) led by Goldman Sachs, with participation from earlier backers Balderton Capital, Serena Capital, and Advent Ventures.

YouMail, an eight-year-old, Irvine, Ca.-based company whose users download a so-called digital personal assistant that helps them better manage incoming phone calls, has raised $5.5 million in Series B funding from undisclosed investors. The company has now raised at least $20 million, shows Crunchbase.

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New Funds

Draper Triangle Ventures, the 16-year-old, Pittsburgh, Pa.-based early-stage venture firm, is hoping to raise $125 million for its newest fund and has raised $68.2 million toward that end, shows a new SEC filing.

Frontier Capital, a 16-year-old, Charlotte, N.C.-based investment firm focused on software and service companies, has closed its newest fund with $390 million. The firm closed its last fund with $250 million in 2012, according to VentureWire. The Charlotte Observer has more here.

MediaTek, Taiwan’s largest chip designer launched, has launched a venture group called MediaTek Ventures that’s aiming to invest $300 million across startups in China, Japan, North America and Europe. The company reportedly wants to compete more directly with the world’s biggest chip manufacturer, Qualcomm, which has its own active venture arm.

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Exits

Amplidata, a 6.5-year-old, Belgium-based maker of object storage software for public and private cloud data centers, has been acquired by HGST, a subsidiary of Western Digital (which had previous invested in Amplidata). Terms of the deal weren’t disclosed. According to Crunchbase, Amplidata had raised $44.1 million from investors, including Swisscom Ventures, Hummingbird Ventures, Endeavour Vision, and Intel Capital.

Consumr, a three-year-old, New York-based platform for ratings and reviews of consumer products, has been acquired by Purch, a 12-year-old, Ogden, Ut.- based digital content company with a portfolio of properties designed to ease complex buying decisions. Purch has raised $40.5 million from investors, including Highway 12 Ventures and Village Ventures; Consumr had raised roughly half a million dollars in seed funding from IA Ventures, MESA Ventures, and Lerer Hippeau Ventures. VentureBeat has more here.

deCarta, a 19-year-old, San Jose, Ca.-based mapping and search company, is being acquired by the ride-sharing company Uber for an unspecified amount, reports Mashable. The company had raised at least $56 million from investors, shows Crunchbase. Its backers include Cardinal Venture Capital, Mobius Venture Capital, Norwest Venture Partners, and Translink Capital.

Earth Class Mail, an 11-year-old, Beaverton, Or.-based startup that converts paper mail into electronic correspondences, has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy with a deal to sell its business to a company called Xenon Resources for $5 million. The company had raised at least $21.4 million, shows Crunchbase. Its backers include Ignition Partners and Keiretsu Forum. Geekwire has more here.

HotSpot Tax, a seven-year-old, Greenwood Village, Co.-based company that provides tax compliance solutions to the vacation rental industry, has been acquired by the venture-backed sales tax automation startup Avalara. GeekWire has more here.

—–

People

Forbes released its newest billionaires list earlier this week, naming Silicon Valley home to 23 new billionaires. Among them: Elizabeth Holmes, director of the Silicon Valley-based blood-testing firm Theranos; Uber cofounders Travis Kalanick and Garrett Camp; and Uber’s global head of operations, Ryan Graves. Two new billionaires a little farther south, in Venice, Ca.: Snapchat CEO Evan Spiegel — who at 24 is now the youngest billionaire on Forbes’s list — and his 25-year-old cofounder, Bobby Murphy.

In an interview at the Launch Festival earlier this week, early Twitter investor Chris Sacca said that he “can’t wait” for the industry’s inevitable crash. “I think this whole Valley has gotten way ahead of itself, and I’m excited for the crash, and for all the pretenders to clear out and for the people who are the die-hards, the builders, the people who have been hustling and selling candy in their high school cafeteria, who have been going door-to-door their whole lives, who are built for this game, I can’t wait until it’s just them again.”

In 2012, former Kleiner partner Ellen Pao alleged she had received a “demotion” when she wasn’t made a general partner at the firm that year, court documents revealed yesterday. “Unfortunately,” she’d written in a letter to her then-mentor, venture capitalist John Doerr, “it does not seem to be a coincidence that Trae and I — the two people who have made recent complaints of discrimination, harassment, and retaliation — have been kept off the committee and are relegated to more junior status.” Doerr, who spent more than five hours on the witness stand yesterday, defended his decision to give a key board seat to general partner Randy Komisar and not to promote Pao. He also said he “couldn’t remember” if he ever considered Pao to be like a “surrogate daughter,” as Pao referred to herself (and others at the firm apparently viewed her).

Markus Persson — creator of Minecraft, the best-selling computer game of all time — sold his company, Mojang, to Microsoft three months ago for $2.5 billion cash. Since then, he’s been spending money like a drunken sailor and trying to figure out exactly who he is. The results so far are “unimpressive,” reports Forbes in an exclusive interview with him.

—–

Data

Venture capitalists have been plowing money into human-friendly robots. Here is where some of it has gone.

—–

Essential Reads

Watch your back, Amazon. Alibaba is bringing its cloud computing services to the U.S.

Facebook is reportedly working on a competitor to Twitter mobile-advertising distributor MoPub.

—–

Detours

“I’m sorry to all the mothers I used to work with.”

Dancing paper cranes.

—–

Retail Therapy

Play your best hand with these, political mastermind.

Hi, everyone, happy Tuesday!

—–

Top News in the A.M.

The NASDAQ Composite index passed the 5,000 mark yesterday for the first time since the late ’90s technology boom.

—–

Ray Lane, Under Oath

Ray Lane, an emeritus partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, came across as a good guy yesterday during his testimony in the trial of former partner Ellen Pao, who is suing Kleiner for gender discrimination. But he didn’t do Kleiner any favors, at times seeming to blame himself for mistakes and, at others, undermining Kleiner attorney Lynn Hermle as she tried painting a picture of Pao as too inexperienced for a promotion.

Much of Lane’s testimony centered on his handling of the complaints of both Pao and Kleiner partner Trae Vassallo, both of whom turned to him before anyone else at the firm to discuss former partner Ajit Nazre.

Pao had a short-lived but intimate relationship with Nazre, which she confided in Lane in 2007 after hearing Lane remark to Nazre in her presence that it was nice to see him with his wife and children at the Ritz Carlton in Half Moon Bay. (Nazre, Pao told Lane, led her to believe that he had split up with his wife.)

Roughly four years after that exchange, Nazre showed up in a hotel doorway of Vassallo’s in his bathrobe during a work trip. Vassallo – married with children — also went to Lane before talking with anyone else at the firm.

In Lane’s testimony about both situations — which he said he viewed as “two very different incidents” — Lane came across as a well-meaning mentor who wasn’t necessarily equipped to handle the information he was being given.

In one 2007 exchange with Lane, for example, Pao wrote, “Thank you for your help in working through a difficult issue. It’s a really awkward situation. In the interest of moving forward and avoiding more unpleasantness, I’m willing to live with some disagreement over what happened if Ajit can be professional and collegial . . . I’m relieved to able able to put it behind me, glad that you were listening.”

Lane wrote back that, “I really believe ‘stuff happens’ and both of you are terrific people. . . . this should not be offset by common human behavior. No bridge were burned, mistakes were made, apologies offered, and it’s up to us to move forward, and not shoot ourselves in both feet.” He also encouraged Pao and Nazre to “talk about working together [and moving] forward . . . you both have enormous mutual respect, despite any personal liabilities.”

Lane’s initial advice to Vassallo similarly seemed to reflect the culture of a small firm unaccustomed to dealing with thorny personal issues. The day Vassallo told him about Nazre’s unwanted advances, said Lane, he suggested that she discuss the matter with the husband so that the couple could decide on a course of action together.

Lane explained that he thought whatever followed should be up to Vassallo and not Kleiner. Still, said Lane, he worried at the time about Vassallo’s safety – noting that “things could have gone another way, [Nazre] could have pushed his way in” to her hotel room – and expressed regret yesterday at not starting an investigation straightaway.

“It was my mistake,” he said of waiting until Vassallo wrote a formal complaint about Nazre to Lane and other Kleiner partners roughly one week after coming to Lane.

It wasn’t the only mistake Lane appeared to acknowledge making.

Asked by Pao’s attorney why Nazre was promoted to senior partner in 2008, despite Nazre’s relationship with Pao and, crucially, though Nazre lied to Lane when first confronted about it, Lane answered, “Good question.” He went on to explain that Nazre “quickly” confessed to his relationship with Pao, and that Nazre, in Lane’s view, was very knowledgeable about green tech and “an important part” of the firm’s team.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Kleiner’s attorney, Lynn Hermle, tried steering Lane to the larger point of whether or not Pao should have received the promotion that Pao is arguing she deserved. Toward that end, Hermle pulled up two emails relating to different CEOs who expressed displeasure in working with Pao.

One CEO had apparently resorted to ignoring Pao, who recognized she’d have to find another way to win him over and wrote to Lane of the executive: “Frank is hierarchy focused and not as comfortable dealing with me directly so I need to be more ‘velvet-gloved’ (note the number of times it took to get him to copy me on emails).”

Asked about the exchange, Lane described the CEO as a “difficult character” who is “more than 60 years of age” and “very set in his ways.”

Hermle also produced an email exchange involving Workday cofounder and co-CEO Aneel Bhusri, who’d been talking with Kleiner about a late-stage investment before Workday went public in 2012.

Wrote Bhusri to Lane, who forwarded his note to partner Ted Schlein: “Frankly, Ellen seems pretty clueless, can someone else take the lead?” Wrote Lane to Schlein, under Bhusri’s comment, “I kind of agree with him.” Schlein then responded: “She ran the names of folks by me, for diligence. I can’t say I paid too close attention so could be my fault.” Lane then responded to Schlein, “I will talk to [Bhusri] live tomorrow, but we have to put somebody else in or I will handle personally. I did the same as you, allowed Ellen to work it alone.”

Was this a “major problem?” Hermle asked Lane on the stand. “No,” said Lane. “I don’t think it was a major problem.” Added Lane, “I thought [Pao] wasn’t being sensitive that this was a company that was already valued at more than a billion dollars.” But the bigger issue, Lane suggested, was that Bhusri didn’t like Kleiner’s technical review of Workday, which involved talking with “just a few customers.”

Said Lane, “Mr. Bhusri disagreed with the approach. I thought the approach was fine.”

—–

New Fundings

Booker, a 4.5-year-old, New York-based platform for booking appointments, has raised $35 million in Series C funding led by Medina Capital. Other participants in the round included First Data, Jump Capital, and Signal Peak, as well as previous backers Bain Capital Ventures, Revolution Ventures and Grotech Ventures. The company has now raised $77 million altogether.

Cheyipai, a six-year-old, Beijing-based second-hand car trading platform, has raised $110 million in Series D funding led by the Chinese social networking company Renren, with participation from Sequoia Capital, Matrix China, Morningside Ventures and CITIC Capital. The company has now raised $185 million altogether, shows Crunchbase.

Clearbit, a nine-month-old, San Francisco-based startup that’s building business intelligence APIs to help with sales lead-scoring, among other things, has raised $1.5 million in seed funding from SVAngel, S2 Capital, First Round Capital, Box Group and Zetta Venture Partners. Clearbit had previously raised $500,000 in seed funding from numerous individuals, including AngelList cofounder Naval Ravikant. (Clearbit represents the first venture investment for Ash Fontana, AngelList’s former head of fundraising projects; he recently joined Zetta as a managing director.)

Jia, a 10-year-old, Shanghai-based home furnishings e-commerce platform, has raised $160 million in Series D funding from undisclosed investors, according to an official announcement on its Weibo account. China Money Network has much more here.

Linkable Networks, a four-year-old, Boston-based offers company capable of providing coupons at the individual product level, has raised $11.7 million in new funding led by Blue Chip Venture Company, with participation from angel investors and earlier backers CommonAngels Ventures and Kepha Partners. Linkable has now raised more than $40 million in funding. BetaBoston has more here.

Man Crates, a 2.5-year-old, Redwood City, Ca.-based startup offering unusual gifts for men, has raised $3.1 million in seed funding from Corazon Capital, OVO Fund, Rothenberg Ventures, Sovereign Capital and Tekton Ventures, among others, reports Venture Capital Dispatch.

Mersana Therapeutics, a 10-year-old, Cambridge, Ma.-based maker of antibody-drug conjugates, has raised $35 million in Series B-1 funding led by earlier backer New Enterprise Associates. New investors Rock Springs Capital and Elliott Sigal, the former head of R&D at Bristol-Myers Squibb, also participated, along with earlier investors Fidelity Biosciences and Pfizer Venture Investments. The company has now raised $110 million altogether, shows Crunchbase.

Parse.ly, a 6.5-year-old, New York-based company whose web analytics platform is used by digital publishers looking for audience insights, has raised new funding in the “mid six figures” from The New Republic Fund, reports Mashable. The New Republic Fund, formed last fall, is financed entirely by New Republic owner Chris Hughes.

RockYou, a nine-year-old, San Francisco-based interactive media company that owns and partners with dozens of game titles, has raised $23 million in fresh funding led by Columbia Capital. The company has now raised $172 million altogether, including from Partech Ventures, DCM, and SoftBank Capital.

Tempered Networks, a 2.5-year-old, Seattle-based company whose technology protects industrial control systems equipment, has raised $15 million in Series A funding led by Ignition Partners, with participation from IDG Ventures. The company has now raised $17 million to date.

ToutApp, a nearly four-year-old, San Francisco-based company that makes toolsets for salespeople, has raised $15 million in Series B funding led by Andreessen Horowitz, with participation from earlier backers Sigma West, Founder Collective, 500 Startups, and Launch Fund. The company has now raised $19.6 million to date.

—–

New Funds

Y Combinator will likely raise a fund that could be several billion dollars is size, say Business Insider’s sources. The idea: to compete with the hedge funds and mutual funds that have been pouring capital into its more mature portfolio companies like Airbnb. Y Combinator is in “very preliminary-stage discussions” says one BI source of discussions between the accelerator and investors.

—–

IPOs

RainDance Technologies, an 11-year-old, Billerica, Ma.-based company that makes genomics-research tools, has filed to go public. The company said it could raise up to $60 million in the offering. Its biggest outside shareholders include Alloy Ventures, which owns 13.3 percent of the company; Quaker BioVentures, which owns 18.5 percent; Mohr Davidow Ventures, which owns 34.4 percent; Acadia Woods Partners, which owns 8 percent; and NCD Management, which owns 6.1 percent.

Veracode, an 8.5-year-old, Burlington, Ma.-based cybersecurity company, is planning to go public in May, reports Fortune. Veracode has raised more than $110 million from investors, including Wellington Management, Atlas Venture, .406 Ventures, StarVest Partners, Cross Creek Advisors, Meritech Capital Partners, Polaris Partners, In-Q-Tel,Symantec, and Rovi Corp.

—–

Exits

Fab, the nearly four-year-old, New York-based e-commerce company, has officially sold to PCH, which isn’t disclosing final terms of the deal. More here.

Mavenir, a 9.5-year-old, Richardson, Tx.-based mobile infrastructure company, has been acquired by the Ottawa-based business communications company Mitel in a cash and stock deal worth $560 million. Mavenir had gone public in late 2013 after raising just more than $100 million from investors, including Austin Ventures, North Bridge Venture Partners and Alloy Ventures. The WSJ has more here.

Paydiant, a five-year-old, Wellesley, Ma.-based payments startup that licenses a technology platform used by big retail chains to create their own mobile wallet apps, has been acquired by PayPal, the eBay payment unit, for around $280 million. The company had raised roughly $35 million from investors, including Sands Capital Ventures, Stage 1 Ventures, North Bridge Growth Equity & Venture Partners, and General Catalyst Partners. Recode has more here.

Prismatic, a 4.5-year-old, San Francisco-based company whose app recommends news articles to users based on what their connections are enjoying, is on the block and Microsoft is the front runner to acquire it, reports TechCrunch. More here.

Square 1 Financial, the Durham, N.C.-based publicly traded venture capital-focused lender, is being acquired by L.A.-based PacWest Bancorp for about $790 million in stock.

—–

People

Mary Lou Jepsen, who spent the last three years running the Display Division at Google X, is joining Facebook-owned Oculus VR sometime this month, reports Recode. Jepsen reported directly to Google co-founder Sergey Brin.

Kirt McMaster, the CEO of Cyanogen, a startup that allows users to add new features and themes to their Android phones without compromising performance, has fighting words the mobile titans. “The tier one OEMs like Samsung are going to be the next generation Nokias in the next five years,” he tells Business Insider. “They’re going to be slaughtered. We think long term Apple itself will have problems because they’re just not good at competing at the low end.”

—–

Essential Reads

The sparkle in bitcoin: data security.

Twitter videos are now embeddable on websites.

A Goldman Sachs-backed messaging and social networking service is planning to roll out broadly to Wall Street this summer.

—–

Detours

The best tennis clubs in the U.S.

Fat? Sick? Blame your grandparents’ bad habits.

—–

Retail Therapy

Howdy.

Hi, everyone, welcome back. We don’t have a column today — busy morning — but hopefully you’ll find some useful intel below.:)

—–

Top News in the A.M.

Barry Silbert’s Bitcoin Investment Trust is poised to become the first publicly traded bitcoin fund, beating the Winklevoss Bitcoin Trust to the punch through a backdoor route to public listing. The WSJ has the story here.

Google‘s Sundar Pichai just confirmed that the company will become a wireless provider of sorts in the “coming months.” The Verge has more here.

—–

New Fundings

Airbnb, the 6.5-year-old, San Francisco-based company whose platform enables travelers to book the rooms and sometimes entire homes of people willing to rent them, is raising up to $1 billion in fresh funding at a $20 billion valuation, according to TechCrunch sources, who say $500,000 has already been raised. Airbnb has already raised roughly $800 million from investors across half a dozen previous rounds. Its backers include TPG Growth, T. Rowe Price, Dragoneer Investment Group, Founders Fund, Sequoia Capital, DST Global, Andreessen Horowitz, and General Catalyst Partners.

Atlas Obscura, a 5.5-year-old, Brooklyn-based site where people share images and stories from their travels around the world, has raised $2 million in seed funding from a long list of investors, including New York Times Co., Graham Holding Co., Bertelsmann Digital Media Investments, New Atlantic Ventures, Treemark Capital, John Battelle, Henry Blodget, Alexis Ohanian, and Kevin Ryan.

Chiasma, a 14-year-old, Newton, Ma.-based biopharma company that has developed an oral treatment for an endocrine disease called acromegaly, just raised $70 million from Rock Springs Capital, Sofinnova Ventures, and an undisclosed public investment fund, along with earlier backers MPM Capital, F2 Capital, 7 Med Health Ventures, Abingworth and ARCH Venture Partners. The company has now raised $176 million altogether, shows Crunchbase.

High Fidelity, a nearly two-year-old, San Francisco-based startup whose webcam technology creates characters that can interact in virtual worlds, has raised $11 million led by Vulcan Ventures. The company has now raised $17.5 million altogether. TechCrunch has more on the funding here. GigaOm talked with High Fidelity’s founder, serial entrepreneur Philip Rosedale, about the company last November. Video here.

Jampp, a 3.5-year-old, London-based mobile marketing company, has raised $7 million in Series A funding led by Highland Europe, with participation from Endeavor Catalyst, Innova and NXTP Labs. The company has raised $7.6 million altogether, shows Crunchbase.

Lyric Pharmaceuticals, a 1.5-year-old, San Francisco-based developer of gastrointestinal therapeutics, has raised $20.4 million in Series A funding co-led by Sante Ventures, Third Point Ventures, and earlier investor RiverVest Venture Partners. New investor Aperture Venture Partners also participated in the funding, according to a news release. The St. Louis Business Journal has more here.

Nasty Gal, the 8.5-year-old, L.A.-based fashion company known for its edgy aesthetic, is reportedly raising another $16 million in funding led by retail veteran Ron Johnson, with earlier backer Index Ventures participating. The company has now raised $65 million altogether. Venture Capital Dispatch has more here.

Outfittery, a nearly three-year-old, Berlin-based e-commerce startup that curates men’s outfits for its users, who pay for what they want to keep and send back the rest, has raised $20 million in new funding led by the Nordic venture firm Northzone. The company has now raised $37.8 million altogether, shows Crunchbase.

Peoplevox, a 6.5-year-old, London-based maker of warehouse management software for e-commerce companies, has raised $6 million in Series A funding led by Index Ventures, with participation from angel investors. More here.

TrulyMadly, an eight-month-old, New Delhi-based dating platform, has raised $5 million in funding from Helion Venture Partners and Kae Capital, reports DealCurry. The outlet notes that in India, online dating has been slow to gain traction owing to social issues, but it adds that things are changing quickly.

YesGraph, a 2.5-year-old, Palo Alto, Ca.-based company whose technology aims to make the process of inviting new users to join an app more intuitive (and less reliant on users’ entire list of contacts), has raised $1 million in seed funding led by Bloomberg Beta. More here.

Yikuaixiu, a 10-month-old, Beijing-based online-to-offline platform for automotive after-sales service like maintenance, has reportedly raised $12 million in Series A funding from Lightspeed China Partners.

—–

New Funds

Alibaba, the Chinese e-commerce giant, is setting aside 10 billion New Taiwan dollars ($316 million) to invest in entrepreneurs from Taiwan who launch and grow their businesses through Alibaba’s online platforms. The move follows Alibaba’s recently announced plans to similarly set aside 1 billion Hong Kong dollars ($129 million) to invest in Hong Kong-based startups. Venture Capital Dispatch has more here.

Finistere Ventures, a 10-year-old, San Diego-based venture firm that invests in food, energy and health-technology companies, has raised a $150 million fund called Finistere II, it announced late last week. The fund will focus on tech startups of various stages that promote food productivity, sustainability, and nutrition.

The Social+Capital Partnership, the four-year-old, Palo Alto, Ca.-based venture firm founded by former Facebook VP Chamath Palihapitiya, is looking to raise a new, $450 million fund, according to a new SEC filing. The firm’s two previous funds were $275 million and $325 million in size, respectively.

A new SolarCity fund that will help finance the installation of residential solar power systems, has raised $300 million from Google. According to both companies, the new fund will cover the upfront cost of solar panel installations for thousands of homeowners in 14 states; homeowners will either pay SolarCity for electricity produced by the solar panels or monthly rent for the panels if they are leasing. The L.A. Times has more here.

—–

IPOs

The number of IPOs on the AIM, London Stock Exchange’s junior market, reached an eight-year high last year with 75 transactions, a figure said to show that smaller companies are now looking to IPOs to fund growth as an alternative to getting acquired. More here.

—–

Exits

The publicly traded networking equipment company Aruba Networks has been acquired by Hewlett-Packard in a deal valued at $3 billion. More here.

Emerging Threats, a 12-year-old, Lafayette, In.-based cyber security research firm, has been acquired by publicly traded Proofpoint for roughly $40 million in cash and stock. The company had raised at least $2.4 million from investors, including HALO Capital Group and Elevate Ventures, shows Crunchbase.

In the latest merger of chip companies, NXP Semiconductors is acquiring its smaller peer, Freescale Semiconductor, in an $11.8 billion deal that creates a chipmaking giant for “industries as varied as automobiles and mobile payments,” reports the New York Times. More here.

TaxiForSure, a nearly four-year-old, Bangalore-based aggregator of car rentals and taxis in India, has been acquired by $200 in cash and stock by its bigger rival, Ola. TaxiForSure had raised $44 million from investors, including Helion Venture Partners, Bessemer Venture Partners, Accel India Ventures, and Blume Ventures. Like the recent merger of China-based rivals Didi Dache and Kuaidi Dache, the deal appears designed to create a larger, stronger India-based rival to Uber as the ride-sharing juggernaut looks for growth abroad.

TrialPay, a nine-year-old, Mountain View, Ca.-based e-commerce payment platform that offers targeted promotions, has been acquired by Visa for undisclosed financial terms. TrialPay had raised $55.8 million from a sizable list of investors, including Battery Ventures, DFJ, Baseline Ventures, Index Ventures, and Atomico.

—–

People

David Besbris, a longtime VP of engineering at Google who took over as head of the company’s Google+ product less than a year ago, has been replaced by Bradley Horowitz, a longtime VP of product for Google+, reports TechCrunch. Besbris took over Google+ after Vic Gundotra, who’d started and led the initiative, left the company. It isn’t clear if Horowitz is his “long-term or short-term replacement,” says TechCrunch.

Led by Penn State alums Matt Brezina and Adam Smith, who founded the startup Xobni and later sold it to Yahoo, a handful of early Y Combinator alums plans to provide $10,000 this summer to four or five teams from Penn State. They will also host weekly dinners for the startups, a la Y Combinator. TechCrunch has the story here.

Jenny Fielding, a managing director at startup accelerator Techstars, tells VentureWire she has been asked to run Barclays Accelerator, a program created by Barclays and Techstars that will welcome financial technology startups for the first time in New York over the summer. Fielding had spent several years at J.P. Morgan Chase and Morgan Stanley before launching her own mobile-company, Switch-Mobile (acquired by a New York-based company called Via One). More recently, she ran a digital growth fund for BBC Worldwide.

Hyper-entrepreneur Elon Musk‘s Hyperloop will soon move from concept to reality in California, according to Hyperloop Transportation Technologies, a year-old company that says it will build a functioning test track for the high-speed transport tube in California by 2019. More here.

—–

Jobs

Sanofi-Genzyme BioVentures is looking for an associate vice president. The job is in Cambridge, Ma.

—–

Data

Inspired by investor Semil Shah‘s quick and dirty research last month into which VC firms are best at spotting so-called unicorns early on (in consumer tech), CB Insights has mapped out exactly who backed what when.

—–

Essential Reads

On Friday, Uber revealed that up to 50,000 drivers’ names and license numbers may have been compromised in a data breach. The company has subpoenaed GitHub to find out who hacked its database.

—–

Detours

“House of Cards” season three: a binge review. (Read only if you have “binge” watched all 13 episodes!)

Kobe Bryant confronts a long—and possibly painful—goodbye.

Welcome to Caleb’s Humane Meats.

—–

Retail Therapy

A Go Pro-like camera, at a fraction of the price.

Sweet dreams for a young knight.