Menlo Ventures just raised a new $500 million fund to invest in Series B and C roundsMenlo Ventures, the 43-year-old venture firm with offices in Menlo Park and San Francisco, is currently investing a $450 million fund to invest primarily in early-stage consumer, enterprise and frontier technologies that it closed in 2017. Now, it has a $500 million later-stage fund, too, the firm is announcing this morning. Dubbed by its “inflection” fund, the fund looks like the second “opportunities” type fund for the firm, which had closed its first later-stage effort with $250 million in 2016. That said, its mandate appears broader than to simply back Menlo’s own breakout portfolio companies. Instead the fund will be investing between $20 million and $40 million in any promising companies that are seeing at least $5 million in annual recurring revenue, growth of 100 percent year over year, early signs of retention, and are operating in areas like cloud infrastructure, fintech, marketplaces, mobility, and SaaS (and targeting both consumers and enterprises). [ Tech Crunch ] Scoop: Keith Rabois leaving Khosla Ventures for Founders FundVenture capitalist Keith Rabois is leaving Khosla Ventures in order to join Founders Fund as a partner, Axios has learned. Why it matters: Rabois is responsible for Khosla's 2014 investment in digital payments company Stripe at a $1.7 billion valuation (now valued at $22.5 billion) and also founded Khosla portfolio company OpenDoor (now valued at $3.7 billion). This is a reunion of sorts for Rabois with Founders Fund's Peter Thiel. The pair got to know each other while undergrads at Stanford, and they later worked together at both PayPal and Thiel's Clarium Capital. [ AXIOS ] The man who co-founded Bleacher Report is leaving the sports siteOne of the internet’s biggest sports properties is getting a new boss. Dave Finocchio — who co-founded Bleacher Report in 2005, sold it to Turner Sports in 2012, left and then came back to run the site in 2016 — is leaving again. He’ll be replaced by Howard Mittman, a longtime Conde Nast executive who joined the sports site as chief revenue officer in 2017. [ Re/Code ] Product Hunt Radio A weekly podcast with the people creating and exploring the future. Tune in every week with Ryan Hoover and Abadesi Osunsade as they're joined by founders, investors, journalists, and makers to discuss the latest in tech. [ Product Hunt ] On-demand logistics startup Lalamove raises $300M for Asia growth and becomes a unicornLalamove, a Hong Kong-based on-demand logistics startup, has closed a $300 million Series D round as it seeks expansion across Asia. In doing so, the company has officially entered the unicorn club. Founded in 2013 by Stanford graduate Shing Chow, Lalamove provides logistics and delivery services in a similar style to ride-hailing apps like Uber but it is primarily focused on business and corporate customers. That gives it more favorable economics and a
more loyal customer base than its consumer-focused peers, who face discount wars to woo fickle consumers. [ Tech Crunch ] Phage Therapies Company BiomX Raises $32 MillionIsraeli phage therapies company BiomX Ltd. has announced on Wednesday the completion of a $32 million series B funding round. Existing investors including OrbiMed, Johnson & Johnson Innovation, Takeda Ventures, Inc., and 8VC participated in the round. New investors included RM Global Partners LLC and South Korea’s Chong Kun Dang Pharmaceutical Corp. [ Calcalis Tech ] German insurance giant Allianz increases its VC fund to $1.1 billionAllianz X, the venture capital arm attached to German insurance giant Allianz, has increased the size of its fund to €1 billion, around $1.1 billion, according to an announcement made today. The fund was initially €430 million, or around $490 million, when it launched in 2016. This new injection comes directly from parent Allianz SE, the 124-year-old insurer that did €130 billion ($150 billion) in revenue last year, and it makes Allianz X one of the largest active startup investment vehicles in Europe. While it is anchored in Europe, the fund’s investment thesis and focus is very much a global one, with a focus on verticals including fintech, health, mobility, data and cybersecurity. [ Tech Crunch ] Database Software Developer Redis Labs Raises $60 Million to Scale Up OperationsDatabase software developer Redis Labs Inc. has raised a $60 million series E round led by private equity firm Francisco Partners Management LLC, the company announced Tuesday. Existing investors Goldman Sachs, Bain Capital Ventures, Viola Ventures, and Dell Technologies Capital also participated. The investment brings Redis' total funding raised to date to $146 million. The company plans to use the funding to scale up its global operations. [ Calcalis Tech ] Revenue Growth Benchmarking for Startups (Updated for 2018 IPOs)Last year I published a post on revenue growth rate benchmarking. Based on popular demand, I’m updating the post to include data from 2018. The updated data reflects historical revenue from 191 IPOs, including 31 new IPOs from last year. For this update, I’m presenting the data in a new format that allows for more granular benchmarking. Previously, the revenue was presented in ranges, but this iteration allows you to see percentile growth rates based on your company’s exact revenue. [ Medium ] GN acquires Altia Systems for $125M to add video to its advanced audio solutionsSome interesting M&A is afoot in the world of hardware and software that’s aiming to improve the quality of audio and video communications over digital networks. GN Group — the Danish company that broke new ground in mobile when it inked deals first with Apple and then Google to stream audio from their phones directly to smart, connected hearing aids — is expanding from audio to video, and from Europe to Silicon Valley. Today, the company announced that it would acquire Altia Systems, a startup out of Cupertino that makes a “surround” videoconferencing device and software called the PanaCast (we reviewed it once) designed to replicate the panoramic, immersive experience of vision that we have as humans. [ Tech Crunch ] Financial Security Startup NsKnox Raises $15 MillionFinancial security startup nsKnox Technologies Ltd. has raised a $15 million funding round, the company announced Tuesday. The round was led by Israeli early-stage venture fund Viola Ventures and Microsoft’s venture fund, M12. Founded in 2016 by Alon Cohen, who previously founded Nasdaq-listed CyberArk Software Ltd., nsKnox develops corporate payment protection technology that allows companies to validate payment authenticity, verify sender and receiver, and defend against cyber-fraud and manipulation attempts. The company is based in both Boston and Tel Aviv. [ Calcalis Tech ] Redis Labs raises a $60M Series E roundRedis Labs, a startup that offers commercial services around the Redis in-memory data store (and which counts Redis creator and lead developer Salvatore Sanfilippo among its employees), today announced that it has raised a $60 million Series E funding round led by private equity firm Francisco Partners. [ Tech Crunch ] Dutch medical AI startup Aidence raises €10 millionAmsterdam-founded medical imaging AI startup Aidence has landed a €10 million funding round led by INKEF Capital and Rabo Ventures, alongside existing investors Northzone, HenQ, and Health Innovations. This investment brings Aidence’s total funding to date to €12.5 million. [ Tech.eu ] Made.com founder Ning Li launches cosmetics startup TypologyMeet Typology, a new Paris-based startup that designs and sells directly to consumer quality skincare and cosmetics products. The startup has been founded by Made.com co-founder Ning Li and is officially launching today. [ Tech Crunch ] Timing and why we’re all VCsTiming is the single most valuable skill of the modern economy, but I would argue its’s the least understood and also the least practiced. Capitalism is fundamentally about timing, since market competition is about finding opportunities before others. When should you start a company? What company should you start? When should a VC invest? When should you join a company? When should you switch industries? When should you back a candidate for public office? [
Pitchbook ] Israeli fintech security startup nsKnox raises $15 millionTel Aviv-based corporate payment protection startup nsKnox has landed a $15 million funding round led by Viola Ventures and M12, Microsoft’s venture fund, with participation from Discount Capital and previous seed investors. [ Tech.eu ] Palo Alto Networks to acquire Demisto for $560MPalo Alto Networks announced today that it intends to acquire security startup Demisto for $560 million. The company sees a tool that can help enhance the Palo Alto security portfolio by adding a higher level of automation. “The addition of Demisto’s orchestration and automation technologies will accelerate Palo Alto Networks Application Framework strategy and serve as a critical step forward in the company’s aim to deliver immediate threat prevention and response for security teams,” the company explained in a statement. [ Tech Crunch ] Berlin-based startup German Autolabs raises €7 million for Chris, its AI voice assistant for carsBerlin-based deep tech startup German Autolabs recently created Chris, the world’s first voice AI enabled digital assistant for in-car usage. The startup has now announced a funding round of €7 million, led by new investors nbr Tech Ventures, VC Fonds Technologie Berlin, and coparion, along with existing investor Target Partners. Start-Up Law - Raising Money from Venture Capital Firms and the Legal Fundamentals to KnowStart-ups grow or fail based on their ability to raise capital! There are many great ideas but without funding, there is very little opportunity to grow their business out of the idea stage. In this video, we discuss multiple ways for start-ups to raise capital! We also talk about the incredibly important legal documents such as the Term Sheet, Loan Note, Letter of Intent, and Convertible Debt. Kairos gets a $4 million lifeline for its facial recognition softwareKairos, the facial recognition startup that found itself in turmoil following the ouster of founder and then-CEO Brian Brackeen last October, has raised $4 million in funding from E. Jay Saunders, CEO of Domus Semo Sancus. This brings Kairos’s total funding to $17 million. [ Tech Crunch ] Ahead of Election, Venture Capitalist Izhar Shay Joins Israeli Centrist PartyIzhar Shay, a managing general partner at venture capital fund Canaan Partners Israel is the number 12 candidate for the Israel Resilience party, headed by former Israeli military chief of staff Benny Gantz, Gantz announced in a press conference in Tel Aviv Tuesday. [ Calcalis Tech ] Macquarie Capital Venture Studio adds three new companies to infrastructure tech portfolioMacquarie Capital Venture Studio, the infrastructure-focused accelerator affiliated with the nearly $500 billion-dollar investment firm Macquarie Group, has added three companies to its portfolio. The companies, AirMap, Envoy Technologies and Teralytic, provide services in airspace management for drones, electric vehicle sharing services and soil analysis, respectively. [ Tech Crunch ] Google and Facebook have become “antithetical to democracy,” says The Age of Surveillance Capitalism author Shoshana ZuboffBeginning with Google’s development of targeted online ads, the most successful companies in the world have been powered by “surveillance capitalism” — a term coined by the guest on the latest episode of Recode Decode, Shoshana Zuboff. “All of the economic imperatives now that define surveillance capitalism are aimed at, how do we get better and better prediction products?” Zuboff told Recode’s Kara Swisher. “How do we win the most lucrative prediction products, so that not only are we predicting the future, but really increasingly, our prediction products are equal to observation.” [ Re/Code ] |