Exodus at Twitter, layoffs at Nuro, and Sam Bankman-Fried's pandemic-era payout, courtesy of VCs 😶

It's the Friday before Thanksgiving and we, are, outta here. (Well, technically, we're here until Wednesday, and then we, are, outta here. For two days. Then we're back.) 

We do have a new episode of StrictlyVC Download for you before we go, with some of the juiciest news items of the week, plus tidbits you might have missed!

Enormous thanks to Context Ventures for sponsoring this week's episode. If you are a U.S. veteran or married to one or you're a civilian, you might check out the Military Veteran Startup Conference hosted by Context on February 2nd and 3rd in San Francisco. Context  calls it the "densest gathering of military veteran talent in the early-stage ecosystem." You can learn more and register here.

Ten months after she was found guilty of fraud, Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes today was sentenced to 11.25 years in prison, plus 3 years of supervised release. At her trial, she was found guilty on 4 of 11 counts related to defrauding investors, but she was not found guilty of defrauding patients. Holmes could have faced up to 20 years in prison for each of the four counts. It took more than four hours before Holmes’s sentence was decided. Alex Schultz, father of whistleblower Tyler Schultz, spoke to the court, recounting how his son slept with a knife under his pillow after Holmes hired an investigator to follow him. TechCrunch has more here.

Holmes, who is currently scheduled to begin her term in April (though she will presumably appeal the sentence), will be assigned to a prison by the Federal Bureau of Prisons based on factors such as location, space, her lack of criminal history and the nonviolent nature of her crime, notes the New York Times. It adds that minimum security prisons nearest to Holmes’s residence in Woodside, Ca., include Federal Correctional Institutions in Dublin. More here.

Twitter is teetering on the edge. Some internal estimates showed that at least 1,200 full-time employees resigned yesterday, per the New York Times. The many who said 'sayonara' include a large portion of Twitter's financial organization, including its payroll department, tax team and financial reporting team, says Business Insider.

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Drive Capital was founded by two former Sequoia Capital Partners looking to start anew in the Midwest. But investors in the Columbus, Oh.-based firm have had a bumpy ride of late, and according to our sources, they aren’t enjoying it.

It's a dramatic turn for Drive, which announced $1 billion in capital commitments back in June, a healthy amount for a 10-year-old firm whose mission it is to invest nearly everywhere in the U.S. outside of Silicon Valley. In fact, in June, the firm -- cofounded by veteran VCs Mark Kvamme and Chris Olsen -- seemed to be riding high, with a couple of apparent wins in its portfolio and assets under management that had grown to more than $2 billion.

Yet dating back to September — soon after we interviewed Olsen for a story — we heard rumblings about a rift, along with separate plans that Kvamme was making. Then came the announcement last month that the team was splitting up. 

At first, the story was that Kvamme, who logged more than twice as many years at Sequoia than Olsen, was transitioning to “partner emeritus” because, as he told the regional outlet Columbus Business First, 10 years and four funding cycles was longer than he originally planned to lead Drive Capital. (This came as news to Drive's investors.)

This week, the other shoe dropped. Columbus Business First reported that Kvamme, who races cars, is not zipping off to semi-retirement but instead talking with potential backers about a new fund, the Ohio Fund, which will apparently invest in multiple asset classes, including other funds, public stocks, private companies in Ohio, and infrastructure. The idea is to “focus on the future economic vitality of Ohio,” said an unnamed source to the outlet.

Olsen now says that he’s surprised by this development. We obtained a letter that Drive sent out to its limited partners tonight.

More here.

Daylight, a two-year-old New York startup that is building a digital bank focused on the LGBTQIA+ community, raised a $15 million round led by Anthemis Group; additional investors included CMFG Ventures, Kapor Capital, Citi Ventures, and Gaingels. The company has raised a total of $20 million. TechCrunch has more here.

Service 1st Financial, a three-year-old startup based in Bethesda, Md., that provides financial, technology and training services to home contractors, raised a $20 million Series B round co-led by S2G Ventures. The company has raised a total of $20.9 million. TechCrunch has more here.

Upstart Power, a five-year-old startup based in Southborough, Ma., that develops and manufactures solid oxide fuel cell power systems for on-demand backup power and distributed generation, raised a $17 million Series C round led by Itochu Corp., with previous investors Enphase Energy, Sunnova, Rodgers Capital, H+ Partners, and Felix Ventures also participating. The company has raised a total of $17.1 million. More here.

Anode Labs, an Austin startup that is creating a decentralized network to pay individuals and small businesses for their energy storage assets, in effect building a web3 energy grid, raised a $4.2 million round co-led by Lerer Hippeau and Lattice, with VaynerFund, CoinShares, and Digital Currency Group also taking part. The Block has more here.

Narwhal, a startup that developed Nx, a popular open source build system for JavaScript code, raised a $8.6 million seed round. Nexus Venture Partners and Andreessen Horowitz co-led the deal, which also included GitHub co-founder Tom Preston-Werner. TechCrunch has more here.

Pashouses, a Jakarta startup that has built a marketplace for buying and selling houses in Jakarta, with services ranging from brokerage and renovation to staging and mortgage, raised a $5 million "pre-Series B" round from QED Investors. Crowdfund Insider has more here.

Sematic, a one-year-old San Francisco startup whose mission is to provide development teams with the easiest way to prototype, automate, and activate end-to-end machine learning pipelines, raised a $3 million seed round led by Race Capital, with Y Combinator, Soma Capital, Leonis Capital, and Pioneer Fund also chipping in. More here.

Sensible, a two-year-old San Francisco startup whose aim is to make documents as accessible to software as APIs, raised a $6.5 million seed round led by Craft Ventures and including Engineering Capital and Clocktower Technology Ventures. More here.

Virtualness, a San Francisco startup founded this year that enables creators and brands to design, mint, and showcase digital collectibles, raised an $8 million seed round led by Blockchange Ventures, with Polygon Ventures, F7 Ventures, Micron Ventures, Oceans Ventures, and Neythri Futures Fund also piling on. NFT Gators has more here.

Zulu, a Colombian startup founded this year whose digital wallet for Latin America consumers enables Android and iOS users to save in secure digital dollars and send cross-border payments at no cost, raised a $5 million seed round led by Cadenza Ventures and joined by Nexo Ventures, Simplex, CMT Digital, and Gaingels. TechCrunch has more here.

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Index Ventures, the early-stage venture firm with offices in San Francisco, New York, London and Geneva, has closed a $300 million seed-stage fund, which is three times larger than the first seed-stage fund it unveiled last year and that closed with $200 million in capital commitments. With this new vehicle, Index is now investing from three funds totaling $3.2 billion. TechCrunch has more here.

Just Like FTX, FTX Ventures went big — and moved fast — when It came to investing (RIP). Crunchbase takes a look here.

When FTX raised $420 million from an array of big-name investors in October last year, the cryptocurrency exchange said publicly that the money would help grow the business, improve user experience and allow it to engage more with regulators. Not mentioned: that nearly three-quarters(!) of the money, $300 million, went instead to FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried, who sold some of his personal stake in the company. The WSJ has more here.

Zoe Perret has been promoted to principal at the San Francisco-based venture firm Initialized Capital. Perrett was hired as a strategic operations lead in January 2020 and previously spent more than four years in business development roles at BlackRock.

Nuro, the autonomous vehicle delivery startup backed by SoftBank, Google and Tiger Global Management, is laying off about 300 people, or 20% of its workforce, in an effort to preserve cash amid a stormy economic outlook, according to an email sent to employees this morning. TechCrunch has more here.

The exodus at Twitter may have been the plan all along (maybe).

They lived together, worked together and lost billions together: Inside Sam Bankman-Fried’s doomed FTX empire.

This actually is bananas.

The Pound Ridge house that "Dirty Dancing" built (is for sale for $6 million).