Good day. Back in March traffic to the website for digital estate-planning startup Trust & Will nearly doubled. As the pandemic set in, people rushed to resolve big decisions, such as who would look after their children should they die.

“It was the quickest time to purchase we’ve ever seen,” said Cody Barbo, co-founder and chief executive of the San Diego startup that sets up wills, guardianships, and trusts.

As with other businesses, the pandemic-related demand bump eased later in the year, Mr. Barbo said. Still, the company is on track to triple its revenue and number of customers this year, he said. It has served more than 160,000 customers to date. Trust & Will moved its fundraising ahead by a couple of quarters because of interest from venture firms, Mr. Barbo added, and just raised $15 million in a Series B round led by Jackson Square Ventures.

Interest in the end-of-life sector is growing among entrepreneurs and venture investors, he noted. “It’s a very lucrative industry that hasn’t been touched by innovation,” he said.

For Trust & Will, the pandemic hasn’t just increased venture and consumer demand. It has also led to more public support for state laws allowing fully electronic wills, Mr. Barbo said. Utah passed its e-will law this year, becoming the fifth state to have one on the books. That’s an example of how society’s struggle with Covid-19 is boosting all kinds of digitization efforts.

And now on to the news...

Home stretch. Airbnb Inc. unveiled paperwork for its initial public offering on Monday, showing the home-sharing giant turned a profit in the third quarter after the coronavirus pandemic forced it to overhaul its business and shed costs, The Wall Street Journal reports. The company’s revenue for the three months ended Sept. 30 fell 18% to $1.34 billion from the same period a year earlier, as the pandemic continued to hurt bookings. But deep cost cuts, combined with an uptick in revenue from previous quarters, still led it to post a profit of $219 million.

• Airbnb lost $697 million through the first nine months of the year, more than twice as much as it lost in the year-earlier period, underscoring the toll of the health crisis. Revenue dropped 32% over the nine-month period.
   
• Airbnb’s filing comes a few days after DoorDash Inc.’s IPO paperwork and amid a flood of startups that have made their debuts on the public markets in a year that has already broken records in terms of IPO dollars raised. Airbnb and DoorDash are both planning to debut in mid-December, which in most years is a fairly quiet window for the IPO market.

Duke Rohlen has led four medical-technology companies to mergers. Now  he has raised $100 million from KKR & Co. to bankroll a new portfolio of medical-device developers, WSJ Pro’s Brian Gormley reports.

• Medical devices have been a challenging field for startups because of the long process of developing a new product and securing regulatory authorization and insurance coverage.
   
• Mr. Rohlen has succeeded as an entrepreneur by finding companies that he believes have potential to create investment returns within four years. For example, he co-founded Spirox Inc. in 2013 and sold it to Entellus Medical Inc. in 2017.
   
• He is now leading Zeus Health LLC, which will use capital from KKR to provide medical-device companies with more growth options.

Funds

NextView Ventures has almost closed a $90 million fourth fund, according to a regulatory filing. The New York- and Boston-based firm recently participated in funding rounds for brand mobile-messaging startup Attentive and family-caregiver resource provider Carewell.

Courtside Ventures, which invests in the sports, digital media, fitness and gaming sectors, seeks to raise a $75 million second fund, a filing showed. Earlier this year, Courtside invested in mobile sport game developer Nifty Games Inc., Religion of Sports Media Inc. and fitness and amenities services provider TFLiving.

People

Copado, a DevOps platform for Salesforce, named Rip Gerber as president and chief business officer. He was previously chief marketing officer and chief innovation officer at Vlocity. In June, Copado raised a $26 million Series B round from Insight Partners, Salesforce Ventures, Lead Edge Capital, ISAI and Perpetual Investors.

GitLab, another DevOps platform, appointed Wendy Nice Barnes as chief people officer. She previously held positions at Palo Alto Networks, eHealth, Netflix and E*Trade. GitLab also named Merline Saintil to its board.

Exits

Wunderkind, which helps retailers identify unknown users on their websites without using cookies, is acquiring SmarterHQ Inc., a personalized ecommerce messaging provider. Terms weren’t disclosed. New York- and London-based Wunderkind, formerly known as BounceX, has raised $44 million to date from Battery Ventures, Primary Venture Partners, Cross Creek Advisors and Contour Venture Partners. With offices in Austin, Texas, and Indianapolis, SmarterHQ has secured over $42 million from investors including Battery Ventures and Simon Property Group.

Private investment platform Republic has made its third acquisition of the year with the purchase of local business investment platform NextSeed for an undisclosed amount. NextSeed is backed by investors including Rethink Capital Partners.

MindTickle Inc.,  a San Francisco-based provider of onboarding, micro-learning, skills development and coaching for sales teams, scored $100 million in equity and debt funding. Softbank Vision Fund 2 led the round, which included participation from Norwest Venture Partners, Canaan, NewView Capital and Qualcomm Ventures.

AliveCor Inc., a Mountain View, Calif.-based developer of digital technologies for heart conditions, raised $65 million in Series E funding led by existing investors Omron, Khosla Ventures, WP Global Partners, Qualcomm Ventures and Bold Capital Partners. AliveCor also appointed Toby Cosgrove, formerly president and chief executive of Cleveland Clinic, to its board of directors.

Hover Inc., a San Francisco-based app that creates an interactive 3D model of a property for home improvement and property insurance professionals, fetched a $60 million Series D round. Travelers, State Farm Ventures and Nationwide led the funding, which included contributions from Standard Industries, Menlo Ventures, GV, Alsop Louie Partners and Guidewire Software Inc.

ActivTrak Inc., an Austin, Texas-based workforce analytics and productivity management software provider, nabbed a $50 million Series B investment. Sapphire Ventures led the round, with participation from Elsewhere Partners. Nino Marakovic, chief executive and managing director at Sapphire Ventures, will join the board.

Nereid Therapeutics Inc., a Cambridge, Mass.-based drug discovery startup, launched with a $50 million Series A investment from Apple Tree Partners.

EdgeQ Inc., a Santa Clara, Calif.-based 5G systems-on-a-chip startup, launched from stealth with a $38.5 million Series A round from investors including Threshold Ventures, Fusion Fund and AME Cloud Ventures.

Harbr, a London-based enterprise data exchange company, also landed $38.5 million in Series A funding. New investors Dawn Capital and Tiger Global Management co-led the round, which included support from previous backers Boldstart Ventures, Crane Venture Partners, Backed and Seedcamp.

Chooch.ai, a San Francisco-based computer vision AI platform, secured $20 million in Series A financing. Vickers Venture Partners led the round, with additional participation from 212, Streamlined Ventures, Alumni Ventures Group, Waterman Ventures and others.

Ferroelectric Memory GmbH, a German developer of memory technology for artificial intelligence, Internet of Things, edge computing and data center applications, closed a $20 million Series B round. M Ventures and imec.xpand led the investment, with participation from SK Hynix, Robert Bosch Venture Capital, TEL Venture Capital and eCapital.

Zeotap, a Berlin-based customer intelligence platform, added $18.5 million in Series C funding from SignalFire, bringing the round total to $60.5 million. Chris Scoggins and Taylor Barada joined the board. Investors from the initial tranche back in July included Neue Capital, MathCapital and coparion.

Gretel.ai, a Poway, Calif.-based data privacy startup, raised $12 million in Series A financing led by Greylock.

Arrikto Inc., a machine-learning platform, snagged a $10 million Series A round. Unusual Ventures led the investment, with co-founder and Managing Partner John Vrionis joining the board.

• Tech war with U.S. turbocharges China’s chip-development resolve
   
• Parler makes play for conservatives angry at Facebook and Twitter
   
• Pandemic speeds Americans’ embrace of digital commerce
   
• GameStop’s new billionaire investor pushes for digital sales, fewer stores
   
• Personal technology review: The best gadgets, webcams and apps to improve your video calls

• Underperforming tech IPOs are on the rise (The Information)
   
• What happened to the deepfake threat to the election? (Wired)

This newsletter was compiled by Matthew Strozier and Zachary Cole.

WSJ Pro Venture Capital is a premium service of The Wall Street Journal. We cover venture capital and the global startup ecosystem. Share your tips, comments and questions: vcnews@wsj.com

The Team: Matthew Strozier, Tomio Geron, Yuliya Chernova, Brian Gormley and Marc Vartabedian.

Follow us on Twitter: @wsjvc, @tomiogeron, @ychernova, @BrianPGormley, @marcvarta.