Female Founders Fund Partners Discuss Fundraising, Melinda Gates, and Startup DiversityAnu Duggal founded Female Founders Fund (F3) back in 2014 when the venture landscape looked much different. She was an entrepreneur-turned-investor who had just sold her company and was thinking about her next move. “When I looked around, I saw a lot of women who were starting businesses,” she told Term Sheet. “I recognized that in the next 10 to 15 years, you’d start to see more and more interesting companies being built by women.” [ Fortune ] Adobe to acquire Magento for $1.68BAdobe announced today that it was acquiring Magento for $1.68 billion. Today the company sold for almost $1.7 billion. That’s a hefty increase in value since that 2011 purchase and a tidy five times return for Permira, which brought in Hillhouse Capital Group last year as a fellow investor. At the time, Hillhouse invested $250 million in Magento; presumably, it will see a nice return on its investment in just one year, too. [ Tech Crunch ] Parabola raises $2.2 million to simplify programming for employees stuck in Excel all dayParabola is a more visually-oriented way of designing a workflow where users can piece together a complex work problem in a kind of flowchart, piece by piece. Matrix Partners led the round, and was joined by investors including Merus Capital, AngelPad and Abstract Ventures. [ Tech Crunch ] Kushners’ Startup Cadre Seeking Saudi-Backed Softbank FundsCadre, a real estate technology startup co-founded and partly owned by White House senior adviser Jared Kushner, is discussing an investment of at least $100 million from a private fund that receives much of its capital from the governments of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, according to people familiar with the discussions. A top executive of Cadre, the people said, has met privately in recent months with representatives of the SoftBank Vision Fund, a technology investment vehicle that gets almost half of its $100 billion from the Saudi government’s Public Investment Fund. [ Bloomberg ] YouTeam is a marketplace for offshore developer talent Enter YouTeam, a U.K. startup and recent graduate of Y Combinator, which has created what it calls a marketplace for offshore talent. The company’s platform connects individual developers at agencies (and large companies that have spare developer capacity) with companies needing to add to their own development teams through outsourcing. In this way the aim is to bridge the gap between hiring an individual freelancer and the added vetting and accountability using an agency affords. [ Tech Crunch ] Inside the EU's €2.1B plan to jump-start European venture capitalThere's one thing clear from the EU's standpoint on venture capital: When it comes to funds, it's size that matters. This commitment was reinforced recently when the European Commission launched its VentureEU programme, an initiative designed to bolster the continent's venture scene by some €2.1 billion. It is not just about building up the amount of capital, however; it is also about the type of capital. Renaissance Venture Capital Fund closes fund III with $81M in new capitalE822: MistyRobotics Ian Bernstein (Sphero): new Misty II, on developing BB-8, future personal robotsPromo code TWIST listeners get $100 off Misty II before May 31. mistyrobotics.com/thisweekinstartups E822: Misty Robotics Founder Ian Bernstein (fmr Sphero) intros his programmable robot Misty II, shares insights from developing BB-8, inspiring next generation with STEM education & creating the future of personal robots The Airbnb effect: Fueling start-up ecosystems around the worldTattoos and khakis: Following Silicon Valley, companies relax dress codes as job candidates waneLift the Rock w/ LunamarkDrink-a-day startup Hooch raises $5M as it plans blockchain initiative Silicon Valley's gender gap: Here's where powerful women are moving fast to close itLift the Rock w/ Verikai & UpperRoom TechnologyThe VC FinTech series of Lift the Rock kicked off with Verikai and UpperRoom Technology. About the companies: Verikai helps financial companies predict consumer behavior on an individual basis through the use of alternative data and machine learning. They have the ability to predict an individual’s receptivity to financial products based on non-financial data. Coinbase: A bitcoin start-up spreading its bets to dominate cryptocurrency economyBeyond Silicon Valley, surprising threats emerge: City, state governments funding disruptive start-upsApplied AI Conference 2018 - Panel Discussion - Enterprise AI and the Future of WorkTencent leads $50M investment in NewsDog, an app vying to be India’s Toutiao How Food52 Strikes a Winning Balance Between Content and CommerceIn-home care coordination network Honor announces $50M Series CChina’s secret goal is to crush Silicon ValleySignalFx Raises $45m in Series D Funding |