Happy Friday, everyone! Today, we have something a little out of the ordinary: Lise Buyer of Class V Group, a consultancy for firms looking to go public, has written a column for us, authored with her colleague Leslie Pfrang. It’s a great guide for companies that are contemplating a run at the public market in 2015. Hope you enjoy it. (Web visitors, you can find an easier-to-read version of the column, along with the rest of today’s email, right here.)

Also, a quick reminder that we’re not publishing StrictlyVC next week. We hope you have a terrific holiday with loved ones, and we’ll see you back here on Monday, December 29.

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Top News in the A.M.

A BBC investigation has found poor treatment of workers in Chinese factories that make Apple products, including exhausted workers who were filmed falling asleep on their 12-hour shifts. One undercover reporter, working in a factory making parts for Apple computers, had to work 18 days in a row despite repeated requests for a day off. Another reporter was housed in a dormitory where 12 workers shared a cramped room. Apple says CEO Tim Cook is “deeply offended” by the allegations.

Whoa. Citigroup raised the valuation of Instagram this morning from $19 billion to $35 billion.

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Ready to Go Public? Really? You’re Sure?

It’s been a pretty terrific time in the IPO market this past year. According to Renaissance Capital, through December 15, there have been 271 IPOs in the U.S. in 2014, compared with 221 IPOs a year ago at this time, a volume increase of 23 percent. Thanks to Alibaba’s thunderlizard of a deal, the dollars raised by IPOs this year, $84.2 billion, exceeds last year’s total of $ 54.6 billion by 54 percent. Not bad.

Ah, but look deeper and you will see that actually, roses weren’t coming up everywhere. While 271 IPOs have been completed so far this year, conservative estimates suggest that more than 350 companies filed S-1s, a difference of nearly 30 percent. For every 3 deals that filed and went public this year, at least one did the training, filed an S-1 and didn’t make it to the starting line. Of course, we need to back out those companies that filed late in the year, targeting a 2015 transaction. If we aggressively estimate that 20 fit that pattern, we still have more than 50 that didn’t get the job done as planned. When you consider the time and expense required for an initial filing, that is a big number.

What’s the difference and what price “optionality”?

Bankers and others can be convincing when suggesting companies take advantage of the relatively new option to file confidentially: “Get on file now, then choose your timing later, but you’ll be ready.” Factually correct? Yes. Good for your business, your P&L, your employees or your IPO? Not so fast. Preparing for an IPO too soon is neither a cost free nor risk free option.

The ongoing and elevated expense, distraction, loss of momentum and sometimes embarrassment (Box anyone?) that accompany a premature “go” decision can easily outweigh any timing flexibility benefits.

OK, but IPOs do take a long time. How do we know when to start?

At January board meetings, following the “year in review” appraisals, many private company boards will have the “Is this the year to go?” conversation. (By “go,” we mean schedule a bake-off and hire bankers.) In advance of those meetings, we offer five questions every board should ponder before dropping the green flag:

1) Can your sales and financial teams accurately forecast results for the next few quarters? Did you nail your forecasts last quarter? If answering either of these is anything other than a rock solid “yes”, then take your time. Public investors show no mercy to companies that miss an early quarter. Worse still, the brickbats courtesy of angry investors will be but mere annoyances relative to the grenades your employees, customers and partners may lob through your door if you miss an early public quarter.

2) Do you have the right team in place? No really, are you sure you have the right team in place, not just for the IPO but also for the long term? Step back and take a cold, clear look. The team that helped you get this far may be gifted, battle-tested and composed of friends. That doesn’t mean it’s the team for a fast-growing public company. Public investors want to know that the C-suite in place for the IPO can scale the organization. Newly public companies juggle enough knives when adjusting to the market’s spotlight. There’s little bandwidth for concurrently integrating new senior leaders.

3) Is your business model stable and ready for public scrutiny? Admittedly, there are companies (like Twitter) where even 12 months post-IPO the model remain an enigma. We grant that if your business has north of 200 million active users, investors may cut you some slack. However, for most, a more stable model correlates to a larger crowd of investors rallying around your IPO’s order book. Are you hoping to migrate to a subscription model? Do you see significant price changes or regulatory updates on the near-term horizon? Launch that new model or absorb the changes before you step on the IPO court. In the eyes of investors, a foot-fault of your own making — or because someone else moved the lines in a way you could have predicted — will cripple your stock’s performance.

4) Are you ready for an intense audit? The reason most companies on the IPO trail get thrown off course is because their audits aren’t ready on schedule. Audits won’t be rushed. The drill-down scrutiny on every last decimal point is much more intense when your auditors know you’re preparing for an IPO. The size of your audit team and number of questions will often triple during this process.

5) Is your company really strong enough to support the valuation you expect? For this point, we will excuse readers at health-science companies, but for those selling products and services, size matters. Management teams tend to be optimistic. Bankers, reflecting experience, tend to be conservative. Your finance team may produce a model projecting revenues over the next two years of $X and $Y. By the time bankers have helped you “refine” them, your forecasts (for the sell side analysts) will likely be closer $.7X and $.8Y. Expect similar treatment (in the opposite direction) for your expense projections. It is those banker-adjusted numbers from which your initial valuation range will be determined. Do the exercise in-house to be sure the projected valuation, based off a hacked-up model, will be acceptable before hiring banks and kicking off a process. The more directly you face the conservative forecast reality, the better prepared you will be for the go/no go decision.

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New Fundings

Bustle, a 1.5-year-old, Brooklyn, N.Y.-based news, entertainment, lifestyle, and fashion site, has raised $15.5 million in Series C funding led by General Catalyst Partners. Other participants in the round include Time Warner Investments, Rothenberg Ventures, 500 Startups and The Social+Capital Fund. The company has now raised roughly $27 million to date.

Echodyne, a new, Bellevue, Wa.-based company that makes radar products based on metamaterials technology invented by Intellectual Ventures in collaboration with Duke University and the University of California at San Diego, has raised an undisclosed amount of funding led by Bill Gates and the Madrona Venture Group, with participation fromVulcan Capital, Lux Capital, The Kresge Foundation, and others. The company is the fourth spin-out of Intellectual Ventures.

Hampton Creek, a three-year-old, San Francisco-based company that’s committed to finding new ways of using plants in food products, has raised $90 million in Series C funding led by previous investors Horizons Ventures and Khosla Ventures, with participation from a long list of other investors, including Collaborative Fund, Founders Fund, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff and Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin. The company has now raised $120 million altogether. TechCrunch has much more here.

Mixpanel, a five-year-old, San Francisco-based advanced analytics platform that was originally incubated at Y Combinator, has raised $65 million in new funding from earlier backer Andreessen Horowitz, reportedly at a $865 million valuation. TechCrunch has more here. The company had previously raised around $12 million, including from Sequoia Capital, Bebo founder Michael Birch, and Affirm cofounder and CEO Max Levchin, among others.

Scioderm, a two-year-old, Durham, N.C.-based company in clinical studies with a topical therapy meant to treat the genetic skin disorder epidermolysis bullosa, has raised a $20 million Series B funding led by new investor Redmile Group, with participation from earlier backers Morgenthaler Ventures and Technology Partners.

Skytap, an eight-year-old, Seattle-based service that aims to help development and test teams in the enterprise work more efficiently, has raised $35 million in new funding led by Insight Venture Partners, with participation from earlier backers, including OpenView Venture Partners, Ignition Partners, Madrona Venture Group, and Washington Research Foundation. Skytap has now raised $64.5 million altogether.

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New Funds

Venture Investment Associates, a 21-year-old fund of funds group, has started raising a $150 million fund of funds that will back venture capital, growth equity and buyout funds, according to VentureWire. The firm recently closed a $50 million seed fund of funds. (StrictlyVC talked with managing director Chris Douvos about the latter last month.)

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IPOs

DraftKings, a 3.5-year-old, Boston-based daily fantasy sports business, is looking to go public in as little as two years, CEO Jason Robins tells The Street. DraftKings had raised $41 million in Series C funding led by Raine Group back in August; it has raised $76.4 million to date, shows Crunchbase.

Juno Therapeutics, a 13-month-old, Seattle-based biotechnology company, priced 11 million shares at $24 each in its IPO last night, for gross proceeds of $264 million. Shares for the company’s widely anticipated IPO begin trading today on Nasdaq under the ticker symbol JUNO.

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Exits

Zomato, a 6.5-year-old, New Delhi, India-based, Yelp-like service, has acquired Italian rival Cibando for undisclosed terms. Zomato, which now has a presence in 20 companies, has raised $113 million from investors. TechCrunch has more here.

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People

Billionaire Sean Parker has donated $24 million to Stanford to study severe allergic reactions and look for a cure. Parker after whom the Sean N. Parker Center for Allergy Research will be named, has reportedly been in the emergency room up to 14 times himself owing to a severe peanut allergy.

In the fall, 35-year-old Minecraft creator Markus “Notch” Persson sold his company to Microsoft for $2.5 billion. Now, he has outbid Beyonce and Jay Z on this $70 million pad in Beverly Hills.

Venrock partner Bryan Roberts, a life-sciences investor, has quietly racked up six major exits this year — four IPOs and two acquisitions with high price tags. Venture Capital Dispatch asks him how he pulled it off.

Entrepreneur-investor Peter Thiel says he’s taking human growth hormone pills in hopes of living to be 120 years old. More here.

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Happenings

StrictlyVC is hosting its very first “Insider” event on Thursday, February 12, from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. in the art gallery of Next World Capital in San Francisco. Featured speakers include AngelList Naval Ravikant, investor and entrepreneur Keith Rabois, Strava cofounder and CEO Mark Gainey, and Next World cofounder Craig Hanson. (There will also plenty of drinks, hors d’oeuvres, and networking to go around.) Half the tickets have sold already; get yours here.

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Essential Reads

Unilever has dropped its lawsuit against the three-year-old food makerHampton Creek. Unilever, which makes Hellman’s and Best Brands mayonnaise, had accused Hampton Creek of false advertising for calling its egg-free spread “mayo.” Hampton Creek said public support for its sustainable products likely prompted Unilever to abandon the suit.

New York magazine on Yahoo‘s Marissa Mayer and the so-called “glass cliff,” a term psychologists apply to the act of promoting women to board positions after a company has started faltering.

According to a new Bloomberg report, the hackers who broke into Sony’s Hollywood unit probably spent months collecting passwords and mapping the network before they committed a last act of vandalism, setting off a virus that wiped out data and crashed the system in 10 minutes.

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Detours

Incredible real-life castles from around the world.

The language of food.

Who said what? The 2014 news quiz!

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Retail Therapy

The ol’ Rambo Lambo. It could be yours.

Good Thursday morning, everyone! Semil Shah here, helping to run StrictlyVC through month’s end. Here’s a bit about me from yesterday’s newsletter, if you missed it.

If you’d like to chat about anything, you can usually find me on Twitter; I’m @semil.

If you’re looking for an easier-to-read version of this email, you can find it here.

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Top News in the A.M.

The hackers win. Yesterday afternoon, Sony Pictures Entertainment announced it will not be releasing the Seth Rogen-James Franco comedy “The Interview” in any form. It also removed any mention of “The Interview” from its official web site.

According to Variety, Sony spent $42 million making the movie and “tens of millions” promoting it. The decision follows threats of a 9/11-style attack on theaters that showed the film.

American officials now believe that North Korea was “centrally involved” in the hacking of Sony Pictures computers. Meanwhile, veteran security experts aren’t so sure.

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VC Andy Weissman on the DNA of Union Square Ventures

For the last four or so years, Andy Weissman has been a partner at New York-based Union Square Ventures. But like his colleagues, including Fred Wilson and Brad Burnham, Weissman has been investing since the dot.com boom and bust of the late ’90s. He first joined Soundview Ventures/Dawntreader Ventures in 1999, spending more than six years with the firm before cofounding Betaworks with John Borthwick in 2007. In 2011, when Betaworks began to focus less on creating an investing portfolio (which Weissman had managed) and more on becoming an operating company, he hopped over to Union Square Ventures.

We talked last week about his work, and what USV is doing to maintain its status as one of the most successful venture firms in the game today.

How has USV’s thesis around “engaged networks of users” factored into investing in mobile-first companies? It’s obviously hard to find apps on mobile, and distribution can feel gated.

Well, at some level our thesis is not monolithic but instead is by design flexible, debatable, and evolving. When we wrote this post [about our pursuit of large networks of engaged users, differentiated through user experience, and defensible through network effects], we tried to explain how each of those words in the thesis matter, and how they each are subject to conversation over time.

So, at another level, the thesis applies to mobile-first companies the same way it applies to any companies or sectors, from mobile to blockchain to marketplaces. That being said, when you have a device that is available in everyone’s pocket, is location aware, and so forth, all the other attributes of a mobile device and mobile apps, there are real questions about the strength of the network effects. Are they the same? Or stronger? Or even weaker? That’s a conversation we’ve been having.

Speaking of which, tell us more about Figure1 and the story of how you came to invest in the company.

Kind of funny. I read something somewhere about the company. And I searched on Twitter and found the names of some of the founders. So I reached out to them on Twitter. A year later, we participated in their Series A financing. One of the best things was that as we got to know them, we realized Figure1 was precisely the kind of company in a medical or healthcare related field that was consistent with our thesis. I just didn’t know that until afterwards.

USV often travels as a team to the Bay Area and other regions to meet companies. This seems different than the lone-wolf culture of other firms.

USV operates in particular way. It’s not necessarily the only way to operate, nor is it necessarily the best way, but it is our way. We are a small firm by design and structure (meaning team size and capital size). And our framework for decision-making is a a particular point of view about the Internet – the thesis. So at least two times a year, we all go to San Francisco and get to spend a little more intimate and collective time with the companies we’ve invested in and others that we want to get to know us better. It works well. That small collaborative nature is part of the DNA. So we move in packs sometimes.

On mobile, besides Twitter, where do you find yourself having the most conversations? What apps are you most social on and why?

Twitter, Tumblr, Groupme, Reddit — the usual suspects. I lurk a lot in Figure1 and K-Pop Amino [a social network for Korean pop songs, photos, news and Korean music videos], then some other, very niche communities. As my friend Brad Dickason wrote to me the other day, “Put any self-branded introvert in a room with someone else who shares their passion and an intense dialogue ensues.”

USV has been doing more seed rounds of late. Naming rounds these days seems more complicated than it’s worth. How has USV adjusted its strategy to meet today’s environment?

I think we view our DNA as early stage investors foremost, without regard necessarily for whether something would classically be called Seed or A or whatever. I don’t think we’ve really adjusted the strategy. There are periods when we seem engaged in companies that at the earliest stages require less capital, and periods when the don’t. Lately, there have been more of the former than the latter, but we’ve also done a few of what you’d consider classic “Series A.”

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New Fundings

Beautycounter, a 1.5-year-old, Santa Monica, Ca.-based company that sells non-toxic personal-care products, said that TPG Growth has made a strategic investment of undisclosed size in the company in exchange for a minority stake in its business. Reuters has more here.

Expect Labs, a three-year-old, San Francisco-based company whose speech recognition technology aims to predict the items you intend to search before you say them, has raised $13 million from new strategic investors, including Samsung Ventures, Intel Capital, Telefónica Digital and Liberty Global Ventures. Fenox Venture Capital, Westcott and Quest Venture Partners also joined the round. Venture Capital Dispatch has more here.

First Opinion, a two-year-old, San Francisco-based startup with a texting app that pairs doctors who want to work from home with people who have basic health questions, has raised $6 million in Series A funding led by Polaris Partners. Earlier backers also joined the round, including Felicis Ventures, Monashees Capital, Scrum Ventures and True Ventures. The company previously raised $2.6 million in seed funding, including from 500 Startups and Greylock Partners.

Flexus Biosciences, a 1.5-year-old, San Carlos, Ca.-based biopharmaceutical company that’s developing small-molecule cancer immunotherapies that target regulatory T cells, has raised $38 million in fresh funding from Celgene Corp., Column Group, and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers.

Inbox Messenger, a 1.5-year-old, New York-based mobile messaging application, has raised $3.9 million in seed funding from unnamed angel investors. The company has now raised $4.9 million, shows Crunchbase.

Open Garden, a nearly four-year-old, San Francisco-based mobile broadband network for Internet of Things devices, has raised $10.8 million in Series A funding led by August Capital, with Firebolt Ventures, Future Perfect Ventures, Kima Ventures, Tseung Kwan Ventures and Sherpalo participating. The company says the round closed in March and “remained undisclosed until now for competitive purposes.” The company has raised $12.8 million altogether.

P97 Networks, a two-year-old, Houston-based cloud-based mobile commerce and marketing platform for the convenience and fuel retailing industry, has raised $8 million in Series A funding led by Emerald Technology Ventures led the round, with participation from American Trading and Production Corp. and other unnamed new and existing investors,

Padlock Therapeutics, a year-old, Cambridge, Ma.-based company that’s developing therapies that remove molecular triggers behind autoimmune diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis, has raised $23 million in Series A led by Atlas Venture. Padlock was incubated as part of the Atlas Venture seed program.

PeerNova, an eight-month-old, Silicon Valley-based company that’s developing distributed trust systems based on blockchain technologies, has raised the first tranche of a Series A equity and debt funding round led by Mosiak Partners, with participation from Crypto Currency Partnersand individual investors.

Quanergy Systems, a two-year-old, Sunnyvale, Ca.-based company whose software and sensors capture and process 3-D mapping data in real time, has raised $30 million in Series A funding led by Rising Tide Fund, with participation from Wicklow Capital, Motus Ventures, and Wardenclyffe Partners. The company has now raised $34.5 million to date.

Rapid7, a 14-year-old, Boston-based maker of security risk management software, has raised $30 million in fresh funding from earlier backers Bain Capital Ventures and Technology Crossover Ventures. The company has now raised at least $89 million, shows Crunchbase.

RealConnex, a two-year-old, New York-based creator of an online marketplace for real estate services and investing, has emerged from beta with a $3.5 million Series A round led by Star Capital and Stratus Investments, Venture Capital Dispatch reports. As part of the funding, one of the lead investors, Star Capital, is also creating a $100 million fund, the RealConnex Opportunity 1 Fund, to finance projects on the platform. More here.

Redfin, the 10-year-old, Seattle-based online real estate search and brokerage service, has raised $71 million in Series G funding, including from Annox Capital, Brothers Brook, Glynn Capital Management, and Wellington Management, reports Inman News. The company has now raised $167.8 million to date.

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New Funds

Avalon Ventures, a 31-year-old, La Jolla, Ca.-based early-stage venture firm, will be looking to raise a new, $250 million fund next year, the firm tells VentureWire. Its last fund, Avalon Ventures X, closed on $200 million in 2012.

High Peaks Venture Partners, the 10-year-old, New York-based early-stage venture firm, is looking to raise up to $60 million for its third fund, shows an SEC filing that states the firm has raised $11.2 million so far.

Khosla Ventures, the 10-year-old, Menlo Park, Ca.-based venture firm, is raising a new $400 million seed fund, according to an SEC filing flagged by TechCrunch.

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Exits

RainStor, a 10-year-old, San Francisco-based startup specializing in online big-data archiving on Hadoop, has been acquired by publicly traded Teradata Corp. for undisclosed terms. RainStore had raised at least $26 million from investors, shows Crunchbase. Its backers included Credit Suisse and Storm Ventures.

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People

First Round Capital just posted its holiday video, “All About Burn Rate.”

More semi-embarrassing emails leaked as part of the Sony hacking were published yesterday. Among them, a note from Insight Venture Partners cofounder Jerry Murdoch to Snapchat founder Evan Spiegel around the time that Snapchat turned down Facebook’s $3 billion acquisition offer last year. “I am happy to hear that Zuck came back and you wisely turned him down again!,” writes Murdoch to Spiegel. “Ha that must have been painful for him! He is too cheap to really pay up for the thing that is killing his core.” Business Insider has more here.

Snapchat CEO Evan Spiegel wrote a year ago that Facebook would soon see a reversal of its fortunes, shows a separate email exchange with Snapchat board member and Sony executive Michael Lynton that has surfaced in the Sony hack. Wrote Spiegel, “Facebook has continued to perform in the market despite declining user engagement and pullback of brand advertising dollars — largely due to mobile advertising performance – especially App Install advertisements. This is a huge red flag because it indicates that sustainable brand dollars have not yet moved to Facebook mobile platform and mobile revenue growth has been driven by technology companies (many of which are VC funded) . . . This props up Facebook share price . . . When the market for tech stocks cools, Facebook market cap will plummet, access to capital for unproven businesses will become inaccessible, and ad spend on user acquisition will rapidly decrease – compounding problems for Facebook and driving stock even lower. Instagram may be only saving grace if they are able to ramp advertising product fast enough.”

The seven-year-old online dating platform Zoosk has shaken up management has postponed plans to go public. Chief Executive Shayan Zadeh and President Alex Mehr are stepping down, though both will remain on the company’s board. Kelly Steckelberg, who has worked for the company for four years, including as its CFO and COO, will become CEO. Zoosk had filed to go public in April. It has raised roughly $60 million from investors over the years, including Bessemer Venture Partners and Crosslink Capital.

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Data

Renaissance Capital just released its 2014 US IPO annual review. You can view the whole report here.

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Essential Reads

Jawbone‘s missing Christmas.

Graphene: Fast, strong, cheap, and unusuable.

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Detours

Kids’ movies feature more onscreen deaths than films for grownups, says a surprising paper published this week.

I am an artisanal attorney.

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Retail Therapy

Sushi socks.

The “Blackberry Classic” smartphone. Really.

Hi, happy Wednesday, everyone! Semil Shah here, helping to run StrictlyVC through month’s end. Some of you know me; for those who don’t, I’m currently working as a venture advisor to two funds, Bullpen Capital and GGV Capital; I have a seed fund, Haystack; and I thoroughly enjoy talking with smart investors, which I’ll be doing here over the next few days and the last week of December. (StrictlyVC won’t be publishing next week.)

If you’d like to chat about anything, you can usually find me on Twitter; I’m @semil.

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Top News in the A.M.

Snapchat is more ambitious than you might have thought. TechCrunch last night discovered three acquisitions made by the messaging giant, per leaked Sony emails between Sony Entertainment CEO Michael Lynton and Snapchat board member (and Benchmark general partner) Mitch Lasky. According to those exchanges, reports TechCrunch, “Snapchat bought a QR scanning and iBeacon startup called Scan.me for $14 million in cash, $3 million in restricted stock units, and $33 million in Class B common Snapchat stock. It also acquired Vergence Labs, maker of an eyeglass video camera, for $11 million in cash and $4 million in stock.” Snapchat also shelled out $10 million in cash and $20 million in stock and bonuses for AddLive, which handles the back end of Snapchat’s video chat. The exchanges also suggest that Snapchat is interested in starting a record label and promoting the artists through Snapchat. Much more here.

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VC Patrick Gallagher on Where CrunchFund is Shopping Now

When college friends Patrick Gallagher and Michael Arrington came together in 2011 to start CrunchFund, Arrington — who’d founded the media property TechCrunch in 2005 — brought contacts, startup smarts, and a talent for drumming up attention to the table. Gallagher brought his own sizable network and institutional investing know-how, having been a partner with VantagePoint Ventures and, before that, an investor at Morgan Stanley Venture Partners.

The mix appears to work. The pair have funded hundreds of companies to date, including Uber and Airbnb. They’re also investing a second fund that closed earlier this year, having reportedly closed on about $30 million, or roughly the amount of their debut fund.

This week, I asked Gallagher about that second fund via email. We also talked about Arrington, who made Seattle his primary residence back in 2010, a year before he sold TechCrunch to AOL. Our conversation follows:

When most people think of “CrunchFund,” they think of Mike Arrington. How often is Mike in the Valley these days, and how have you observed him change as he transitioned from a writer and blogger to a full-time investor?

These days, Mike spends at least half his time in the Valley, where around 70 percent of our investments are.

When we started CrunchFund, one of the things that really resonated with Mike was the ability to meet with and interact with entrepreneurs at the earliest stages of a company’s life. Those were the types of companies he initially wrote about when he started TechCrunch and what he enjoys the most. Mike has always had a good sense for consumer start-ups but when you’re writing about a company, the opportunity cost is primarily your time to write the article. When you make an investment, the opportunity cost is much higher in terms of dollars and time. The biggest change I’ve seen in Mike since he became a full-time investor is his investment evaluation process. He now spends significantly more time trying out products and getting to know the company founders before he’s ready to sponsor an investment.

CrunchFund’s smaller bet in Uber’s [$37 million, December 2011] Series B round is now of epic status. Walk us through how that deal came together. Was the partnership divided about making such an investment as a seed firm?

CrunchFund is primarily a seed and early stage fund, but we allocate up to 20 percent of our fund for later-stage investments in companies we think can still generate venture level returns, and these have included Uber, Airbnb, Square, Skybox Imaging, Bluefly, Redfin, and a few others.

Mike had written about Uber when it had first launched and had been friends with the company’s CEO, Travis [Kalanick], since 2006. We were both loyal users of the service, and when we found out that the company was raising its Series B, we asked if we could invest a small amount, and they graciously gave us an allocation.

Tell readers more about what you focus on as an investor, including the B2B side and infrastructure side. I think founders want to know more about CrunchFund’s appetite for startups.

I started my career in the venture business in 1997 at Morgan Stanley Venture Partners. We were the venture arm of this massive financial services firm that spent over $1 billion on IT, so I’ve spent most of my career investing in enterprise-facing companies and I spend the majority of my time focused on them at CrunchFund. About 40 percent of our investments are enterprise-facing companies, including Digital Ocean, Mesosphere, Branding Brand, Abacus Labs, Feed.fm, Rocketrip, Layer and many others. I see a ton of innovation in the enterprise, from the infrastructure inside the datacenter to the software people are using to manage their businesses day to day.

I’m also a big believer in companies that sell to [small and mid-size businesses]. I was on the board of Constant Contact through its IPO and have seen firsthand that you can build a large business selling to this segment.

For enterprise infrastructure deals, which don’t feature as many “party” rounds as do consumer deals, how does a smaller fund like CrunchFund make a dent when all the big firms want to max their ownership?

CrunchFund typically invests $100,000 to $250,000 as an initial investment, and we normally don’t lead deals, so it’s pretty easy for us to fit into most rounds. We’re additive to any investor syndicate, and we focus on providing specific help with media and PR positioning and
and introductions for larger follow-on rounds of financing through our network. We also open up our networks for things like business development, recruiting, and customer introductions. For us, because our fund size is still relatively small, investments in this range are meaningful.

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New Fundings

FarmLogs, a two-year-old, Ann Arbor, Mi.-based agricultural tech startup (and Y Combinator alum) that helps U.S. farms analyze data to increase their fields’ profitability, has raised $10 million in Series B funding from new investors SV Angel and Y Combinator President Sam Altman, along with earlier backers Drive Capital, Huron River Ventures, and Hyde Park Venture Partners. The company has now raised $15 million altogether.

Freight Farms, a 4.5-year-old, Boston-based start that has developed a portable commercial farming system (it sells shipping containers that grow vegetables using hydroponics), has raised $3.7 million led by Spark Capital. It marks the venture firm’s first agriculture-related investment. Freight Farms has now raised $4.9 million altogether, including from Morningside Venture Investments, LaunchCapital and Rothenberg Ventures. BostInno has more here.

Mattermark, the nearly two-year-old, San Francisco-based business intelligence site, has raised $6.5 million in Series A funding led by Foundry Group, with participation from earlier investors. TechCrunch has more here.

NowThis Media, a two-year-old, New York City-based video news startup, has raised $6 million in Series C funding led by Oak Investment Partners, with participation from new investor Axel Springer, as well as earlier backers NBC Universal News Group, SoftBank Capital and Lerer Hippeau Ventures. The company has raised $15.6 million altogether.

Phononic Devices, a 6.5-year-old, Durham, N.C.-based semiconductor-based heating and cooling company, has raised $44.5 million in Series D funding led by earlier backer Eastwood Capital. The company has now raised a total of $87.5 million.

Predilytics, a 3.5-year-old, Manchester, N.H.-based company whose software helps health plans and other medical groups use data to improve their care and operations, has raised $10 million in Series C funding, including from new investors Qualcomm Ventures and Foundation Medical Partners and earlier backers Highland Capital Partners and Flybridge Capital Partners. The company has raised $20.5 million to date, shows Crunchbase.

Quantenna Communications, an eight-old, Fremont, Ca.-based high-speed wireless silicon company, has raised $22 million in new funding led by Centerview Capital Technology, Vivint and NTT Group. Earlier investors also participated, including Sequoia Capital, DAG Ventures, Rusnano, Sigma Partners and Venrock. The company has raised roughly $166 million to date, shows Crunchbase.

Serviz, a year-old, L.A.-based app and website that lets users order up appliance repair, carpet cleaning, and other home services, has just raised $12.5 million in Series B funding led by PointGuard Ventures. Existing investors Andy Sheehan, Jeff Stibel of Stibel Investments, and numerous other individuals also joined the round. The company has now raised $20 million.

The Skimm, a 2.5-year-old, New York-based daily email newsletter that simplifies headlines for busy professionals, has raised $6.25 million in new funding from investors, including from earlier backer RRE Ventures and new backers Greycroft Partners, comedian Chelsea Handler and former Ticketmaster CEO Irving Azoff. The company has now raised $7.8 million altogether.

Star2Star, a nine-year-old, Sarasota, Fl.-based company whose software unifies communications for businesses, combining voice, video conferencing, and instant messaging, has raised $30 million in a round led by NewSpring Growth Capital, with participation from PPM America Capital Partners, which is a NewSpring limited partner. Venture Capital Dispatch has the story here.

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New Funds

Northzone, the 18-year-old, Stockholm-based venture capital firm, has closed its seventh fund with 250 million euros ($312.6 million). One of the firm’s newest bets is on Dots, a New York-based mobile gaming studio that was just spun out of Betaworks. One of its highest-profile bets is on Spotify, the popular streaming music service.

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IPOs

Juno Therapeutics, the year-old, Seattle-based biotech, boosted its IPO range to $21 to $23 per share yesterday as it prepares to become a publicly traded company. Last week, it had set its IPO range at between $15 and $18 per share.

OnDeck Capital, the online service providing small business loans, has already jumped more than 30 percent this morning in its market debut. More here.

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Exits

PeerIndex, a five-year-old, London-based social media analytics company, has been acquired by its better-funded peer Brandwatch for undisclosed terms. According to Crunchbase, PeerIndex had raised $3.8 million from investors, including Meridian Venture Partners. Brandwatch has raised $31.7 million altogether, including from Highland Capital Partners Europe and Nauta Capital.

TrueX Media, a seven-year-old, L.A.-based online ad tech company, has been acquired for upwards of $200 million by 21st Century Fox, reports VentureWire. TrueX had raised roughly $50 million from investors, including Redpoint Ventures, Jafco Ventures, Norwest Venture Partners, and Pinnacle Ventures.

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People

Last Friday, at an M.I.T. event, 500 Startups founder Dave McClure and Chris Lynch of Atlas Venture had a spirited disagreement over the value of accelerator programs. ““My view,” said Lynch, “is lazy VCs go to demo day and they bid up deals and they overpay for them and that doesn’t help the entrepreneur and it doesn’t help them, and most importantly it doesn’t help the ultimate investor.” The WSJ has more here.

Joel Sng has joined Formation 8 as a partner in Singapore. Sng founded a business incubator in Singapore and has reportedly backed a number of fast-growing companies, including Xiaomi, Coursera, Airbnb, and Palantir Technologies. He came to know Formation 8 when it set up a business development outpost in his incubator’s offices. He has also made at least one co-investment with Formation 8, in the startup Grabit, which makes electroadhesion-based gripping products for material handling applications. Three-year-old Formation 8 recently raised its second fund, closing on $500 million. Reuters has more here.

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Job Listings

Capital One Ventures is looking to hire both a principal in San Francisco and an associate in New York.

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Data

Google Ventures hearts health care, notes the Wall Street Journal, reporting that one-third of the money Google Ventures invested in 2014 went to health care and life-sciences companies, up from 9 percent each of the prior two years. Google also slowed its investments in consumer Internet startups this year, committing just 8 percent of its capital to related companies, down from 66 percent last year.

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Essential Reads

What happened when Marissa Mayer tried to be Steve Jobs.

Ben Thompson on the state of consumer technology right now.

Twitter and Foursquare are planning to partner together in 2015 to power location in tweets, says Business Insider.

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Detours

Mars may harbor life after all.

How headlines change the way we think.

The Sony Hack isn’t merely embarrassing; it’s growing increasingly costly, with the potential to wipe out half of Sony Pictures Entertainment’s 2013 profits.

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Retail Therapy

Basketballs crafted from “from Italian tumbled leather and other premium leathers embossed with patterns of alligator, ostrich, python, stingray, and more.” Hah, hah. Ho. That is a good one.

Happy Tuesday, everyone! Thanks very much to those of you signed up yesterday for our inaugural StrictlyVC event, being held on Thursday, February 12th in San Francisco. We’re really excited to host you. (If you missed yesterday’s email, announcing what’s happening, check out our Eventbrite page here.)

In other very good news for readers, Semil Shah — who ran the show here for a couple of weeks this past August — will be taking over StrictlyVC again for the rest of this week and for the week of Dec. 29th. (We’re shutting down the works next week.)

Shah is currently working as a venture advisor to two funds, Bullpen Capital, which focuses on post-seed rounds, and GGV Capital, a cross-border U.S.-Asia fund. He’s also a former TechCrunch columnist and has some terrific content lined up for readers, including interviews with Andy Weissman of Union Square Ventures, Michael Dearing of Harrison Metal, and Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss of Winklevoss Capital, so stay tuned!

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Top News in the A.M.

Samsung is now in talks to launch an Apple Pay competitor.

Uber has written back to Senator Al Franken and he’s not entirely satisfied with its note.

WeWork Companies, a 4.5-year-old company that rents office space, then turns it into shared office space (much of it used by tech startups), has raised $355 million at a stunning $5 billion valuation co-led by T. Rowe Price Associates, clients of Wellington Management, and Goldman Sachs Group. Earlier backers J.P. Morgan Chase & Co., Harvard Management Co., and Benchmark also participated. The WSJ has much more here.

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(Other) New Fundings

Adyen, an eight-year-old, Amsterdam-based multichannel payments company that serves as a middleman between merchants and Facebook, Spotify, Airbnb and many other companies that accept credit cards and various currencies, has raised $250 million in funding. General Atlantic led the round, with participation from earlier backers Temasek, Index Ventures and Felicis Ventures. The company has now raised $266 million altogether. The WSJ has more here.

Annexon Bioscience, a four-year-old, Redwood City, Ca.-based company that’s developing drugs to treat neurodegenerative and autoimmune disorders, has raised $34 million in Series A funding led by Novartis Venture Funds, with participating investors Satter Investment Management, and Clarus Ventures. Annexon spun out of Stanford. The San Francisco Business Times has more here.

Boxbee, a three-year-old, San Francisco-based storage service that provides users with plastic containers that are filled and then picked up and stored by the company, has raised $5 million in Series A funding led by Metamorphic Ventures, with participation from earlier backers. The company has now raised $7.3 million altogether, including from AngelPad, Floodgate Capital, Google Ventures, 500 Startups, Techstars, Ludlow Ventures and individual investors.

Clever, a 2.5-year-old, San Francisco-based education software company that enables schools to quickly sign up and access numerous education apps, all from a single online dashboard, has raised $30 million in new funding led by Lightspeed Venture Partners, with participation from earlier backer Sequoia Capital and new backers GSV Capital and Peter Thiel. The company has now raised roughly $43 million altogether.

Dots, a 1.5-year-old, New York-based mobile-gaming company, has raised $10 million in funding from Tencent Holdings, Greycroft Partners, Crunchfund, and Northzone. The company’s two games, “Dots,” and “TwoDots,” have reportedly been downloaded a combined 45 million times.

Foko, a 1.5-year-old, Quebec-based photo sharing and messaging service for corporate workforces, has raised $2 million in seed funding from BDC Capital, Real Ventures and individual investors. The company had previously raised $450,000 in seed funding from individual investors.

Housing.com, a 2.5-year-old, Mumbai, India-based online home and rental property portal, has raised $90 million in new funding led bySoftBank Capital, with participation from participation from Falcon Edge Capital and other, undisclosed investors. The company has now raised roughly $140 million altogether, shows Crunchbase. TechCrunch has more here.

Hubba, a two-year-old, Toronto-based company whose online data sharing platform enables retailers to exchange product information, has raised $3.1 million in seed funding from Brightspark, The Social+Capital Partnership, and numerous angel investors.

Infinity Levels, a 1.5-year-old, Bangkok-based gaming startup that originally focused on dating apps, has raised $500,000 in funding from the corporate venture group InVent.

Merchbar, a months-old app that sells official band merchandise (including shirts and vinyl) via a smartphone app and web site, has raised $1 million in seed funding from 500 Startups, Maiden Lane, Structure Capital, Universal Music Group, and numerous individual investors, including WordPress founder Matt Mullenweg, and KISSmetrics co-founder Hiten Shah.

Miyabaobei, a Chinese site that sells formula, clothes, and other items for babies and toddlers, has raised $60 million in Series C funding from H Capital, with participation from returning investors Sequoia Capital and ZhenFund. The company has now raised roughly $100 million altogether,reports TechCrunch.

Neurio Technology, a nine-year-old, Vancouver-based company that was formerly known as Energy Aware Technology and whose in-home technology monitors users’ energy usage, has raised 1.5 million Canadian dollars ($1.3 million) in seed funding from BDC Capital.

OneLogin, a five-year-old, San Francisco-based company whose cloud-based identity and access management software helps companies secure all their users apps on all devices, has raised $25 million in Series C funding led by Scale Venture Partners, with participation from earlier backers CRV and The Social+Capital Partnership. The company has now raised $42.7 million altogether.

SurveyMonkey, the 15-year-old, Palo Alto, Ca.-based online survey platform, has raised $250 million in equity financing, some of which is being used to help employees cash out of some of their equity. New investors include T. Rowe Price, Morgan Stanley Investment Management, and Baillie Gifford & Co.; earlier backers participating in the new funding include Google Capital and Tiger Global Management. SurveyMonkey has raised more than $1.2 billion in debt and equity to date.

Talkspace, a 2.5-year-old, New York-based company that runs a marketplace through which therapists can connect with new clients, book appointments, and deliver therapy remotedly, has added $1 million in seed funding from Metamorphic Ventures. Earlier this year, the company raised $2.5 million in seed funding from Metamorphic, SoftBank Capital, and Spark Capital.

Tendril, a 10-year-old, Boulder, Co.-based company that provides a cloud platform to energy service providers for their energy management applications, has raised $20 million from the publicly traded solar panel maker SunPower. The company has now raised $131.2 million over the years.

Virtuos, a 10-year-old, Shanghai, China-based game developer that specializes in 3D art, has raised an undisclosed amount of Series B funding from Shanghai-based Xuhui Venture Capital. The company says it’s one of the largest providers of offshore production services to the game and movie industries.

Yangche Diandian, a 10-month-old, Hangzhou, China-based company whose mobile app platform connect users with car wash, maintenance and repair services, has raised $30 million Series B funding led by GGV Capital. China Money Network has more here.

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New Funds

Upfront Ventures, the 18-year-old, Santa Monica, Ca.-based early stage venture firm, has closed on $280 million for its fifth fund, considerably more than the $250 million it stated it was targeting in a November SEC filing. The firm, which was formerly known as GRP Partners and specializes in digital media, retail, and consumer-facing tech startups, closed its most recent fund with $200 million in 2013. Venture Capital Dispatch has much more here.

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IPOs

OnDeck Capital, the seven-year-old, New York-based online lender, will price later today and begin trading tomorrow. Investor’s Business Daily has more here.

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Exits

The networking company Riverbed Technology has agreed to be acquired for $3.6 billion after being unable to shake a challenge from activist investor Elliot Management, led by Paul Singer. Its new owner will be the private equity firm Thoma Bravo, which is being joined by a Canadian teachers’ pension group. The San Jose Mercury News has morehere.

Skyera, a four-year-old, San Jose, Ca.-based enterprise storage company, has been acquired by the Western Digital Corp. subsidiary HGST in an all-cash deal whose terms aren’t being disclosed. Skyera had raised $51.6 million from investors, including Dell Ventures and the venture arm of Western Digital.

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People

Serial entrepreneur and early Etsy investor Caterina Fake is leaving her role as chairwoman of Etsy’s board, telling VentureBeat that she has mixed feeling about the move but that she’ll still “hang out with Etsy employees, wear Etsy clothes, eat from Etsy dishes, play an Etsy guitar, and wash my hair with Etsy shampoo.” Etsy CEO Chad Dickerson is taking over the role.

Investor Vinod Khosla, speaking at an event in Bangalore, India on Friday, told attendees, “Technology is my only religion. It’s the only thing I subscribe to as a belief system in life.” (Incidentally, Khosla has yet to reopen a private road leading to Martins Beach in San Mateo County one week after a judge ordered him to do so. “It’s clear he’s going to take this all the way to the Supreme Court,” said Joe Cotchett, an attorney for the Surfrider Foundation, which sued Khosla over his 2010 decision to bar public access to the beach.)

Did Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer host a raucous holiday party over the weekend that entailed several days of loud construction, a backyard ice-skating rink, and music that was pumped up as midnight approached? An apparent neighbor says she did. (H/T: Katie Benner.)

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Job Listings

Johnson & Johnson Innovation, a division of Johnson & Johnson, is looking for a director of new ventures at its new life sciences incubator. The job is in Houston.

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Data

CB Insights has just published its 2015 tech IPO pipeline report. You can get a solid overview of its findings, as well as request a free copy of the full report, here.

Crunchbase takes a look at the C.I.A.’s 15-year-old venture arm In-Q-Tel, which has now quietly backed four billion-dollar-plus companies to date: Cloudera, Pure Storage, MongoDB, and Palantir Technologies. More here.

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Essential Reads

Unicorns vs. Dragons.” The first features a rich valuation; the second returns a fund.

China has newly allowed insurance companies to invest in venture capital funds. Reuters has more here.

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Detours

The global conflicts to watch in 2015.

New York magazine’s investing “boy genius” made it all up.

CIA agents assess: How real is “Homeland”?

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Retail Therapy

Butter. It costs [cough] $49 a pound but chef Thomas Keller reportedly swears by it.

Truly incredibeards.