Ex-Reddit Boss Ellen Pao Wages War Against Peter Thiel Over His Donations to Trump
Ex-Reddit boss and Silicon Valley social justice warrior Ellen Pao has become embroiled in a feud with PayPal founder Peter Thiel over his donations to Donald Trump’s campaign. In a blog post titled “Peter Thiel, YC and Hard Decisions,”
Pao attacks Thiel over his $1.25 million donation to Trump, and announces that her company is cutting ties with him and thus Y Combinator, a powerful startup factory. [ Heat Street ]
Related Story : Shame on Y Combinator
Hillary Clinton gets a Snapchat interview, but Donald Trump doesn’t want one
Young people don’t watch a ton of TV. But they do use Snapchat. One candidate, Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, has figured that out. Clinton will appear on Snapchat’s TV-style politics show, “Good Luck America,” on Tuesday, answering questions from Snapchat’s head of news Peter Hamby about “what she was like as a young person, early career aspirations, and how she spent Friday and Saturday nights in college,” the company said in an email release Monday. [ Recode ]
Twitter trolls were part of the reason why Salesforce walked away from a deal
Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff finally killed all rumors of a potential Twitter acquisition on Friday when he told the Financial Times that it's "not the right fit" for his company. Benioff said a lot of things, like that Twitter's price, and work culture, contributed to his decision to walk away from a deal. Part of it also likely had to do with the pressure from investors, as Salesforce stock plummeted after it was reported to be interested in buying Twitter. [ Business Insider ]
Why Crowdfunding Is a Great First Step to Starting a Business
Danae Ringelmann, co-founder of Indiegogo, explains why crowdfunding is the best method of testing a product's potential for success. [ Inc. ]
Hillary Clinton's campaign considered Apple CEO Tim Cook for vice president
A stolen email leaked by WikiLeaks shows that Apple CEO Tim Cook was on a short list for vice president. John Podesta, the chairman of Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign, sent an email in March discussing a "first cut of people to consider for VP," Gizmodo spotted on Tuesday. [ Business Insider ]
LATEST FUNDING
Meet Prelude Fertility, The $200 Million Startup That Wants To Stop The Biological Clock
EVEN AMONG THE HYPERACTIVE OVERACHIEVING TECHIES in his cohort, Martin Varsavsky stands out. He’s built more successful businesses–six–than all but the most prolific serial entrepreneurs. He’s also fathered more children–six as well–than all but the most prolific dads. Yet at 56 Varsavsky, one of the most recognizable figures in Europe’s tech scene, is going for something of a “lucky seven.” Twice. After moving to the United States from Spain two years ago, he set to work launching another company. And his wife, Nina, is expecting another child in January, their third together. “We call him Seven for now,” Varsavsky quips. The two sevens are inextricably linked. His new startup, Prelude Fertility, whose story is being told here for the first time, has a bold plan to turn the infertility industry on its head. Varsavsky isn’t just Prelude’s founder–Seven, his upcoming child, will be the first “Prelude baby.” [ Forbes ]
FirstCry raises $34mn funding, consolidates business with Mahindra Retail
The $12 billion baby and kids market in India, which is largely unorganised, is going through some consolidation. Two of the leading players in the segment, FirstCry.com (BrainBees Solutions Pvt Ltd) and Mahindra Retail (BabyOye), have consolidated their business activities to create a dominant presence for themselves. The Board of Directors of the two companies have approved this strategic move. Mahindra Group acquired BabyOye in February 2015. As a part of the deal, Mahindra Retail and FirstCry have consolidated their operations, with Mahindra Retail selling its franchise business to FirstCry and operating all company stores under a FirstCry master franchisee agreement. The merged entity will conduct its business under the brand name FirstCry.com- A FirstCry Mahindra Venture. Additionally, FirstCry has raised $34 million in fresh equity capital from the Mahindra Group, Adveq (a Large Pvt Equity Fund) and Kris Gopalakrishnan. with participation from all existing shareholders. [ Your Story ]
Zipwhip nabs $9M from Microsoft + others to let landlines send and receive SMS texts
Consumers have made a big shift to using mobile phones as their primary, and often sole, telephone, but as they have done so, they’ve also created something of a rift in the business world: many of the companies that count those consumers as customers are still using landlines — 275 million businesses in the U.S. alone — resulting in a feature gulf between how the two can communicate with each other in real time: it’s either a voice call, or nothing. However, a startup based out of Seattle is hoping to bridge that gap. Zipwhip, which has built a platform to let people with mobile phones send text messages to businesses that call them from landline phones, is today announcing that it has raised $9 million in funding. The Series B was led by local VC Voyager Capital, with participation also from strategic backers Microsoft Ventures, regional telecom GCI, and Inteliquent, an interconnection partner for communications service providers. [ Tech Crunch ]
KodaCloud Bags $10M in Series A
KodaCloud Inc., the first company to offer enterprise customers with Cloud Service Wi-Fi powered by Artificial Intelligence (AI), today announced it has come out of stealth and has reached two milestone achievements after just a few months of commercial service:
KodaCloud's disruptive services model requires no investments in equipment or software licenses by customers or managed services partners and is already commercially available. Research firm Dell'Oro estimates the market for cloud managed Wi-Fi to reach $1+ Billion by 2020. [ VC News Daily ]
VMRay Secures $3.9M in Series A Funding
VMRay GmbH, a Bochum, Germany-based provider of 3rd generation agentless threat analysis and detection, closed $3.9m (€3.5m) in Series A funding. Backers included eCAPITAL entrepreneurial Partners AG and High-Tech Gründerfonds (HTGF). The company intends to use the funds to expand the research and development team and establish a U.S. office in Boston, MA for North American customer support and worldwide sales and marketing. Led by CEO Carsten Willems and CTO Ralf Hund, VMRay provides an agentless automated threat analysis solution that leverages hypervisor-centric technology and a monitoring approach (Intermodular Transition Monitoring or ITM) developed through years of research by Willems and Hund, two of the world’s leading experts on dynamic malware analysis. The VMRay Analyzer monitors at the hypervisor level and is undetectable by malware running in the target operating system. [ Finsmes ]
CloudLex Inc. Raises $3.7 Million To Bring The US Civil Litigation Industry Onto Its Revolutionary Legal Cloud
CloudLex, Inc. (http://www.cloudlex.com) announced that it has closed $3.7 Million in its Series A financing round. The funds are for the launch of the company’s revolutionary Legal Cloud™, a complete cloud-based technology solution exclusively designed for the US Civil Litigation Industry. The Series A round is led by Aligned Partners. “CloudLex is the first legal technology focused exclusively on the civil litigation space,” said Dev Shrotri, Founder & CEO of CloudLex. “After several years working in the industry, our lawyer-led team noted a continuous complaint – the lack of innovative and user friendly technology for trial lawyers. For years, the only solutions available for their practices were either antiquated legacy systems or cloud technologies with a one-size-fits-all approach. So we used our insider knowledge and experiences, in collaboration with civil litigation law firms, to create CloudLex.” Founded in March 2015, CloudLex™ has already become a market leader. Each day, more and more trial lawyers are choosing CloudLex™ to manage thousands of matters and over a million records. [ PR Web ]
Veritas Genetics draws $30 million in funding
Veritas Genetics, a two-year-old startup that offers whole genome sequencing to consumers for under $1,000, said Monday it raised $30 million from a trio of investors. The Danvers-based company was founded by Harvard Medical School genetics professor George Church, and last year gathered $12 million from Lilly Asia Ventures, a Shanghai-based affiliate of US drug maker Eli Lilly & Co. that is a leading biomedical investor. Asian investors also figured heavily in the new funding round, led by Trustbridge Partners, a private equity firm with offices in Boston and Shanghai. Trustbridge was joined by Lilly Asia and Jiangsu Simcere Pharmaceutical of Nanjing, one of China’s largest
drug companies.
[ Boston Globe ]
Gymbox Secures £39M in Debt and Equity Funding
Gymbox, a London, UK-based gym chain, secured a £39m funding package. Backers included Business Growth Fund, which has provided an additional £13m equity financing, and HSBC, which has provided a debt package totalling £26m. The company inteds to use the funds to roll-out further new sites across London within the next 12 months, including a new Farringdon-based 42,000 sq ft gym which will feature a three lane running track, an Olympic sized boxing ring and a large free weights area, and will make more than 150 classes available every week. [ Finsmes ]
LATEST EXITS
Cisco Just Muscled Up in Workplace Software
Cisco bought Heroik Labs, Inc., which sells business productivity software called Worklife. Cisco is ramping up its push into workplace software. The networking giant said Monday that it had bought small enterprise software startup Heroik Labs, which sells software called Worklife for scheduling meetings, taking notes, and keeping track of company events on calendars. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. The startup has less than 10 employees, according to its LinkedIn page, so it’s likely that Cisco is acquiring the company for its workforce rather than purely for its technology. The Worklife team will be part of Cisco’s cloud collaboration technology unit, which includes video conferencing hardware and software, the Spark chat app, and related business productivity software. [ Fortune ]
Coty Buys Hair Straightener Maker Ghd
Coty Inc. said it would buy hairstyle appliance maker Ghd for about £420 million (about $510 million) as the beauty company continues to grow through deals. Ghd, which stands for “Good Hair Day,” sells professional-grade hair straighteners, hairdryers and curlers, and made £178 million in revenue this year. Coty is buying Ghd from London-based private-equity firm Lion Capital, and the deal is expected to close by year’s end. Coty shares rose 1.6% in premarket trading. Ghd has been working to expand from its core salon business and into premium retail and online sales. [ WSJ ]
FUND RAISED
Metalmark Capital targets $1.5bn for third fund
US mid-market buyout firm Metalmark Capital is in talks with investors in a bid to raise $1.5 billion for its third fund, a person familiar with the matter said. If the fund closes on target, it will be $1 billion less than the firm raised for its second fund, which closed at its $2.5 billion hard cap in April 2012, according to The Wall Street Journal. Metalmark targets mid-market companies in industries that are “undergoing change or that are otherwise out-of-favour”, with a particular focus on the energy, healthcare and industrials sectors, the firm’s website said. [ efinancial news ]
Audax Group Closes Senior Loan Fund III with $1.6 Billion of Investable Capital
Audax Group (“Audax”), a leading alternative asset management firm specializing in investments in North American middle market companies, today announced the successful final close of Audax Senior Loan Fund III (“SLF III” or “the Fund”) at its hard cap of $500 million of committed equity. SLF III was oversubscribed and exceeded its fundraising target of $400 million of equity. The Fund will employ modest leverage, utilizing a credit facility of over $1.1 billion in commitments, bringing the total investable capital of the Fund to over $1.6 billion. [ Business Wire ]
MORE FUND RAISED
