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Zenefits CEO David Sacks apologizes for parts of a 1996 book he co-wrote with Peter Thiel that called date rape ‘belated regret’

David Sacks, the CEO of Zenefits, has just spent the last year cleaning up messy regulatory controversies at his company, culminating in the successful launch of a new version of the human resources app platform last week. But today, the longtime entrepreneur is apologizing for another uglier controversy from 20 years ago, related to a book he co-authored with high-profile investor Peter Thiel called “The Diversity Myth: Multiculturalism and Political Intolerance on Campus.” It was related to their time as students at Stanford University. [ Recode ]

Early stage VC holds up (even as late stage plunges)

Venture capital investment has slowed in the third quarter, but estimates reliant on data available at quarters’ end overstate the extent of early stage declines. According to projected funding totals from Crunchbase, early stage investment in U.S. startups held up at historically high levels in the third quarter. Seed, venture capital and strategic investors are on pace to invest $8.8 billion (reported to date $7.7 billion) in seed and early stage rounds in the third quarter. That’s about on par with a projected $9 billion in Q2 and $9.1 billion in Q3 of 2015. [ Tech Crunch ]

Clarifai raises $30M to give developers visual search capabilities

Matt Zeiler grew up in a Canadian farming community — but fast forward a few decades and he’s now running a startup that’s looking to bring the same kinds of visual search tools that Pinterest and Google have to other companies and developers. That company is Clarifai, a New York-based startup that offers developers the ability to tag metadata to photos in such a way that the company algorithmically learns what kinds of objects are in photos. With that, Clarifai developers can train algorithms to be able to search for those objects, or input their own photos in order to find similar objects. The company said today that it has raised $30 million. [ Tech Crunch ]

Is Silicon Valley Taking Menswear More Seriously?

As men increasingly rival women in the amount of money they spend on clothes, the tech scene is accommodating the man who wants to dress like Kanye, Bieber, or even President Barack Obama—but on a millennial’s budget. Menswear sales grew 13% from 2010 to 2015, versus 9% in womenswear for the same period in the U.S., according to Euromonitor International. By 2020, worldwide annual menswear sales are predicted to reach $457 billion and womenswear, $698 billion. [ Fast Company ]

Uber Self-Driving Truck Packed With Budweiser Makes First Delivery in Colorado

The ride-hailing giant teamed up with AB InBev to transport beer in an autonomous vehicle, which they say is the world’s first such commercial delivery. A tractor trailer full of beer drove itself down Colorado's I-25 last week with nobody behind the wheel. Uber Technologies Inc. and Anheuser-Busch InBev NV teamed up on the delivery, which they said is the first time a self-driving truck had been used to make a commercial shipment. [ Bloomberg ]

LATEST FUNDING

Property classifieds site Zameen raises fresh funding; now valued at $83 million

Malaysia-based Frontier Digital Ventures, which invests in online classifieds businesses in frontier markets, has announced that it will be ploughing a further US$2.1 million into Zameen, a Pakistan-based property portal.A brief on Reuters says new shares are being offered to existing shareholders, which also include Vostok New Ventures and some undisclosed names. [ Tech In Asia ]

Paxata raises $33.5 million to further develop machine learning for information management

Paxata today announced it has raised $33.5 million to bolster the machine learning and semantic analysis foundations of its enterprise information platform. Led by Intel Capital, today’s investment is Paxata‘s fourth funding round and brings its total capital raised to $61.5 million. Paxata’s platform provides a self-service, visual approach for information management to large corporations. “We target the one billion people in the enterprise who know how to use Microsoft Excel and want to use data to make business decisions,” said Nenshad Bardoliwalla, cofounder and chief product officer of Paxata, at the Intel Capital Global Summit. [ Venture Beat ]

InContext Solutions raises $15.2M to bring retail experiences into VR

Virtual reality offers businesses the ability to see consumer habits in digital environments before committing the resources to actually building out those environments in the real world. For InContext Solutions, a major market opportunity that they’ve been able to isolate is giving retailers the opportunity to test and explore new in-store retail concepts inside virtual reality. [ Tech Crunch ]

Nozomi Networks Secures $7.5 Million in Series A Funding to Protect Critical Infrastructure

Nozomi Networks, the pioneer in cybersecurity and operational visibility for industrial control systems (ICS), today announced it has completed a $7.5 million Series A round of financing. GGV Capital and Lux Capital co-led the investment round with participation from existing investor Planven Investments SA. Glenn Solomon, Managing Partner at GGV Capital, and Bilal Zuberi, Partner at Lux Capital, will join the board of directors as part of the financing. [ Globe News Wire ]

Here’s Why One VC Poured Money Into a Marijuana Delivery Startup

As David Chao walks into the glass conference room, there’s nothing unusual about him as an investor. He’s tall, middle-aged with dark hair and clutching the expected techie accessory: a smartphone. But there’s one unusual detail about Chao: He’s a medical marijuana user. Chao first gave cannabis a try a couple of years ago, after a cycle of painful stomach and lung problems he couldn’t relieve through traditional medicine. One day, as they sat around playing video games, pal Blake Krikorian, a co-founder of Sling Media who recently died of a heart attack, suggested Chao look into alternative treatments such as medical marijuana. [ Fortune ]

Honeycomb, a TV and video ad management startup from Adstream founders, scores £3M Series A

Honeycomb, a TV and video ad management platform founded by James Carpenter and Richard Carter, who both previously founded Adstream, has raised £3 million in Series A funding. It follows a £1 million “friends and family” round in May this year. Leading the Series A is U.K. and U.S.-based VC Beringea, along with a number of individuals from the worlds of television and advertising. The latter includes David Bell (a senior adviser to AOL and Verizon, and former Senior Advisor to Google), Richard Jameson (the former CFO of brand services company Tag-worldwide), and John Spearman (Chairman of visual effects company Framestore). [ Tech Crunch ]

LATEST EXITS

ACCO Brands Corporation To Acquire Esselte Group Holdings AB

ACCO Brands Corporation one of the world's largest designers, marketers and manufacturers of branded business, academic and consumer products, today announced that it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Esselte Group Holdings AB ("Esselte"), a leading European office products company, from private equity firm J.W. Childs for $333 million in cash.1 Esselte's 2015 sales were $458 million with adjusted EBITDA of $60 million.1 ACCO Brands plans to combine Esselte with its existing European operations, creating a pan-European leader in branded business products. [ PR News wire ]

U.S. IPO Week Ahead: China's ZTO Express Delivers Largest IPO Of 2016 In A 6-Deal Week

Six companies are on the US IPO calendar to raise $2.2 billion in the week ahead, or $2.6 billion including a large SPAC. October is set to surpass September as the year's most active month for IPOs. Filing activity has slowed heading into November, as expected.

2 big IPOs: ZTO Express combines strong sales ($1.2B), growth (+70%) and margins (25% EBIT); Acushnet sells the world's leading golf brands, Titleist and FootJoy
2 high-growth tech: Silver Lake SaaS BlackLine and Sequoia-backed chip maker Quantenna
2 biotechs: Hedge fund-backed Myovant Sciences and NEA/Novartis-backed Ra Pharmaceuticals. [ Seek in galpha ]

FUND RAISED

Francisco Partners closes tech fund at $600 mln

Francisco Partners Management LP has raised $600 million for its fund focused on smaller tech deals. The Agility Fund is planning on making $50 million investments in middle market tech companies
PRESS RELEASE
SAN FRANCISCO–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Francisco Partners Management, L.P., a leading technology private equity investment firm, announced the closing of the Agility Fund, a $600 million fund targeting smaller technology deals. [ PE Hub ]

Initialized Capital Closes $115M Third Fund

Initialized Capital, a San Francisco, CA-based early stage venture capital firm, closed its $115m third fund. Initialized III will invests $500K to $1M in early stage tech companies just starting out, when they have zero to 10 employees. It is sector agnostic. The firm – which has already managed two funds totalling over $45m and has over $160M in assets under management – is led by Managing Partner Garry Tan, General Partners Alexis Ohanian and Alina Libova, Operating Partner/Marketing Kim-Mai Cutler, Part-time Partner Austin Chang VP of Finance Marinda Luk and Director of Operations Tara Perillo. [ Finsmes ]