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Coronavirus Forces Global VC Firms to Change Plans; Misra's Rise to the Top of SoftBank; K Health Funded to Replace Visiting Doctors
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Happy Thursday. A number of venture firms, particularly those with global footprints, are joining the list of companies whose operations are being disrupted by the coronavirus outbreak, Yuliya Chernova reports.
Some of the firms have had to change annual meetings of limited partners or make special arrangements for partners based overseas who were planning to travel to the U.S. With venture firms increasingly investing around the globe, it looks like we're only beginning to see the potential fallout in the industry from the coronavirus.
Meanwhile, startup K Health, which just raised funding, is using AI to help replace your doctor's visits through its app, Brian Gormley reports.
Plus, check out Bradley Hope and Jenny Strasburg's must-read story on SoftBank's Rajeev Misra and his sabotage campaign against two other SoftBank executives.
And now on to the news...
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Firms such as Sequoia Capital moved their annual meeting location, while Lightspeed Venture Partners, Matrix Partners asked their China teams to move out of the country ahead of U.S. visits. PHOTO: ROMEO GACAD/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES
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Coronavirus. Concerns over the coronavirus outbreak are starting to affect global venture-capital firms, mostly because of the adjustments they are making to the logistics of their meetings, WSJ Pro's Yuliya Chernova reports. Over the past decade, numerous U.S. venture firms increased their investments in China and other global locations. Now that international travel is fraught because of the Covid-19 virus, these venture firms are adapting to the complications.
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Sequoia Capital, for example, chose to move its planned annual meeting to Half Moon Bay, Calif., from its original location in New Delhi, a person familiar with the situation said. Menlo Park, Calif.-based Sequoia, which manages billions across regional funds including China-focused ones, typically gathers the far-flung team at the meeting. It’s unclear whether and how all of Sequoia’s China team and limited partners will be able to attend the meeting slated for the end of March, the person said.
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Menlo Park-based Lightspeed Venture Partners, meanwhile, which emphasizes its “global footprint” in its pitch to entrepreneurs on its website, is keeping its upcoming annual meeting as planned in San Francisco. But its China team has to leave two weeks early to clear U.S. restrictions on travel, according to partner Jeremy Liew.
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Matrix Partners has requested its affiliate team in China to spend weeks in Japan for precautionary reasons, a person familiar with its plans said, ahead of an annual meeting in March.
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Sabotage campaign. It was a career coup for Rajeev Misra. In 2017, the former banker, who had held a series of Wall Street jobs, was put in charge of one of the most formidable investing machines ever assembled, the Journal reports. His rise to the top of SoftBank Group Corp.’s $100 billion Vision Fund isn’t a traditional tale of corporate ladder-climbing. He succeeded, in part, by striking at two of his main rivals inside SoftBank with a dark-arts campaign of personal sabotage. The tactics included planting negative news stories about them, concocting a shareholder campaign to pressure SoftBank to fire them and even attempting to lure one of them into a “honey trap” of sexual
blackmail, according to people familiar with the matter and documents reviewed by the Journal.
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AI for health. With venture capitalists financing a range of new tactics for delivering primary-care services, K Health Inc. has raised $48 million to widen adoption of an app that uses artificial intelligence to replace initial doctor visits, WSJ Pro's Brian Gormely reports. Several venture-backed companies aim to make primary-care services more accessible and effective. They include One Medical, which offers same-day appointments and Iora Health Inc., which recently secured $126 million to boost a primary-care services model designed to prevent illnesses and lower costs. K Health seeks to streamline access to care through an app that uses AI to tell consumers how doctors diagnose
similar people with similar symptoms. K Health says it developed the product through a partnership with Maccabi Health Services, a health-maintenance organization in Israel, securing access to electronic medical records data for more than two million anonymized people over the last 20 years.
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Gaming deal. Investors in Roblox Corp. say it has the potential to become one of the world’s most popular online hangouts, the Journal reports. It is now valued at about $4 billion after closing a new funding round led by venture-capital giant Andreessen Horowitz, according to a person familiar with the matter. Roblox was last valued at more than $2.5 billion in September 2018. On Wednesday, Roblox said it raised $150 million and launched a tender offer to buy up to $350 million of common and preferred shares. Existing investors including Altos Ventures, Meritech Capital and Tiger Global Management also participated in the funding
round.
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Robot troubles. The technology company that developed Beam, a teleconference robot that broadcasts a user’s face on a fixed monitor, has filed for bankruptcy protection, saying the product was slow to catch on and the business incurred tens of millions of dollars in losses, WSJ Pro's Jonathan Randles reports.
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Scooter breaches. Hackers can break into electric scooters with relative ease, allowing them to invade privacy, steal data and even take control of the vehicles, researchers say, WSJ Pro's James Rundle reports. Thousands of scooters from Uber Technologies Inc., Bird Rides Inc. and others now zip around the streets of U.S. cities.
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Funds
Ubiquity Ventures is raising a $40 million second fund, according to a regulatory filing. Earlier this month, the software investor participated in a $7.6 million financing round for Android device deployment and application management provider Esper.io.
Exits
Salesforce.com Inc. has agreed to buy cloud and mobile software company Vlocity Inc. for about $1.33 billion, net of the value of shares currently owned by Salesforce. San Francisco-backed Vlocity has secured roughly $163 million in funding from investors including Salesforce Ventures, Sutter Hill Ventures, Accenture PLC, New York Life Insurance Co. and Bessemer Venture Partners.
E-scooter startup TIER Mobility will acquire e-mopeds and charging infrastructure from Coup Mobility, which until recently operated in Berlin, Paris and Madrid. Terms weren’t disclosed. Earlier this month, Berlin-based TIER added $40 million in Series B equity and debt funding from RTP Global and Novator, with earlier financing coming from Mubadala Capital, White Star Capital and Goodwater Capital.
Customer engagement startup Freshworks Inc. purchased AnsweriQ Inc., which provides customer service automation technology, for an undisclosed amount. In November, San Mateo, Calif.-based Freshworks raised a $150 million funding round led by Sequoia Capital, CapitalG and Accel that valued the company at $3.5 billion. With offices in Bellevue, Wash., and India, AnsweriQ was backed by investors including Madrona Venture Group and Kernal Labs.
Daimler AG-backed RepairSmith acquired fellow car repair and maintenance service provider CarDash for an undisclosed sum. CarDash launched out of Y Combinator in 2017 after raising $5.3 million in funding from Felicis Ventures, Index Ventures, NextGen Venture Partners, NextView Ventures and Afore Capital.
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Minute Media, a London-based digital publishing platform that operates a network of sports-media sites around the world, raised $40 million in new funding. Dawn Capital led the round, which included participation from existing investors.
Snapask, a Hong Kong-based tutoring app, completed a $35 million financing round led by Asia Partners and Intervest.
Aria CV Inc., a St. Paul, Minn.-based developer of medical devices to treat pulmonary arterial hypertension, picked up $31 million in Series B financing. Xeraya Capital led the round, and was joined by Longview Ventures, Catalyst Health Ventures, BioStar Ventures, Cedar Point Capital, Frontcourt Group and others. Jason Rushton, partner at Xeraya, joined the company’s board.
SquadLocker Inc., a Warwick, R.I.-based provider of online tools for teams and organizations to manage custom apparel and equipment purchasing, closed a $20 million Series C round. ABS Capital Partners led the investment, with General Partner Mike Avon joining the board. Investors including Causeway Media Partners also participated.
Dahmakan, a Malaysian food delivery startup, nabbed $18 million in Series B funding. New investors including White Star Capital, Rakuten Capital, Jafco Asia and GEC-KIP Fund were joined by previous backers Partech Partners and Y Combinator in the round.
LinkSquares Inc., a Boston-based provider of contract analytics software, raised $14.5 million in Series A funding led by Jump Capital. New investor First Ascent Ventures also contributed to the round, along with existing backers MassMutual Ventures and Hyperplane Venture Capital.
Ribbon Health, a New York-based health-care data platform, landed $10.3 million in Series A funding. Andreessen Horowitz led the round, with General Partner Julie Yoo joining the board. Y Combinator, BoxGroup and others also participated in the investment.
Hasura Inc., a San Francisco- and Bangalore-based app development technology provider, collected $9.9 million in Series A funding. Vertex Ventures US led the round, which saw participation from investors including SAP.iO Fund, Nexus Venture Partners and Strive VC.
Made Renovation, a San Francisco-based home renovation startup, was seeded with a $9 million investment. Base10 Partners led the round, with Founders Fund, Felicis Ventures and others also participating.
Strattic, a Jerusalem-based WordPress hosting startup, closed a $6.5 million seed round. SignalFire and TenOneTen Ventures led the investment, which included participation from Accel, Automattic, Seneca VC and Village Global VC. The company also named Zeev Suraski as chief technology officer.
Air Labs Inc., a New York-based workplace collaboration tool provider, was seeded with a $6 million investment. Lerer Hippeau Ventures led the round, which included participation from RedSea Ventures, Advancit Capital, WndrCo and others.
Alkymi, a New York-based startup that helps companies extract data from email and documents, fetched $5 million in seed financing. Canaan led the round, with General Partner Joydeep Bhattacharyya joining the company’s board. Work-Bench and SimCorp. also contributed to the funding.
Corrections & Amplifications
A New Money item in Wednesday’s edition of this newsletter incorrectly stated that Qualcomm was among the investors in Plume’s $85 million round of equity and debt. The investor was Qualcomm Ventures, which is the investment arm of Qualcomm Inc.
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A Tesla SUV crashed into a barrier in Mountain View, Calif., in March 2018. PHOTO: KTVU/ASSOCIATED PRESS
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Invite Media reduced assets before Google's $80M acquisition to avoid FTC approval, the kind of deal FTC is now examining. (Bloomberg)
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Y Combinator's Series A Guide. (Y Combinator)
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Food delivery wars: 3 takeaways from the UberEats, Postmates, Grubhub, DoorDash ecosystem. (Sarah Tavel)
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Should robots have a face? (New York Times)
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Things I learned from five years in climate tech. (Evan Meagher)
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Particle lays off 10% of staff and co-founder departs after raising $81M. (TechCrunch)
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