For one SEC whistleblower, the payday is . . . substantial

Happy Cinco de Mayo, all! 

Before we pull the plug on this operation for the weekend, we leave you with this week's StrictlyVC Download, featuring Harry Nelis, a partner with the London-based Accel team for the past 18 years. We ran excerpts of that conversation yesterday; here is more from Nelis, who talked with us about everything from the slowdown in the late-stage market to how Accel still finds white space in enterprise automation. Hope you enjoy it.

Giant thanks to the sponsor of this week's episode: the financial technology company Mercury. As a reminder to readers, through its partner banks and their sweep networks, Mercury customers can access up to $5 million in FDIC insurance, which is 20 times the per-bank limit. Check out mercury.com to learn more.

Stocks popped today as regional bank shares climbed off their lows and market-darling Apple jumped after posting better-than-expected quarterly earnings.

Google plans to make search more "personal" with AI chat and video clips.

Finding it difficult to identify promising investment opportunities? Synaptic’s alternative data and intelligence platform lets you surface high-growth opportunities that were invisible earlier. Easily filter companies by your choice of industry, funding stage, geography and 100+ company performance metrics like user traffic, employee data, product reviews, and more! Our AI/Ml-based insights and automated alerts let you stay on top of your portfolio. Sign-up for a free trial to unveil a new experience in data-driven investing!

Inbox Health, a six-year-old startup based in New Haven, Ct., that has built a patient billing communications platform, raised a $22.5 million Series B round led by Ten Coves Capital, with additional participation from Commerce Ventures, CT Innovations, Vertical Venture Partners, Healthy Ventures, and Fairview Capital. The company has raised a total of $45.3 million. PYMNTS has more here.

Liquido, a startup based in Mountain View, Ca., that is building a payments platform for Latin American businesses, raised a $26 million round from Index Ventures, Base Partners, Restive Ventures, Mantis VC, and UpHonest Capital. Financial IT has more here.

Love, a two-year-old Miami startup founded by Bolt co-founder Ryan Breslow that is selling health and wellness products, raised a $12.5 million round from investors including earlier backers MaC Venture Capital and Streamlined Ventures. TechCrunch has more here.

Slash, a San Francisco startup that has developed an online bank targeting young entrepreneurs, raised a $19 million seed and Series A round led by NEA, with Menlo Ventures, Connect Ventures, Y Combinator, Soma Capital, and Global Founders Capital also contributing. TechCrunch has more here.

Bloomfilter, a one-year-old Cleveland startup that claims its platform helps software development teams identify bottlenecks in the development process, raised a $5.5 million round led by Magarac Venture Partners and including Sequoia, HPA, North Coast Ventures, and Techstars. It also secured $1.5 million in debt from Pacific Western Bank. More here.

Golioth, a three-year-old San Francisco startup whose platform provides cloud services for embedded devices, raised a $4.6 million seed round co-led by Blackhorn Ventures and Differential Ventures with participation from previous investors Zetta Venture Partners, MongoDB Ventures, and Lorimer Ventures. The company has raised a total of $7.1 million. More here.

GoodShip, a one-year-old Seattle startup that sells trucking analytics software, raised a $5 million seed round co-led by Ironspring Ventures and Chicago Ventures, with FUSE VC and Cercano Management also joining in. The company has raised a total of $7.4 million. GeekWire has more here.

Green-Got, a three-year-old Paris startup that provides bank accounts with the assurance that no money will be used to finance fossil fuel projects and other polluting industries, raised a $5.5 million round led by Pale Blue Dot. TechCrunch has more here.

Moonsense, a two-year-old San Francisco startup that allows organizations to improve fraud detection and prevention capabilities and use tailored risk scoring models to customize their fraud management, raised a $4.2 million seed round co-led by XYZ Ventures and Race Capital, with additional investment from Foothill Ventures and TheGP. SecurityWeek has more here.

Praktis, an Indonesian startup whose software helps D2C brands and suppliers manage supply chain issues ranging from raw material purchases to order fulfillment, raised a $20 million Series A round led by East Ventures, with Triputra Group and SMDV also pitching in. TechCrunch has more here.

Setscale, a New York startup that provides debt financing to SMBs, raised a $9.5 million seed round from a group that included Fin Capital, Great Oaks, Mantis, WndrCo, Ethos, and Jaws and secured up to $70 million in debt. More here.

Last year, top VCs grew their networks less than across the whole industry, but booked 15% more meetings and sent 11% more emails. This surprising finding comes from Affinity's latest research report, which considers the latest unicorn trends and provides an analysis of the firms that invest in them. See what else the research uncovered.

HV Capital, a 23-year-old, Munich-based venture firm, has closed its newest fund with €710 million in capital commitments. The vehicle will support seed- to Series D-stage companies "and beyond." Tech.eu has more here.

Amazon quietly acquired a small audio-focused AI firm called Snackable.AI in December to bolster user features for its podcasts, reports the New York Post. Mari Joller, the founder and CEO of Snackable, now serves as an AI and machine learning product leader* at Amazon. Snackable will be working on podcast features offered through Amazon Music, the company tells the outlet. The deal’s financial terms were not disclosed. 

Lawyers for Voyager Digital say the bankrupt crypto lender will self-liquidate its assets and wind down operations after failing to clinch a deal on a sale to either FTX US or Binance.US. According to the filing, Voyager’s customers will receive an initial recovery of just 36% of their crypto holdings. CoinDesk has more here.

* More here on the team that Amazon is building a work on AI tools.

Have you seen these packages that were recorded as "delivered at porch" but definitely were not? 

Peter Ackerson has departed from his role as general partner at fintech-focused venture firm Fin Capital and started a new firm, Audere Capital. TechCrunch has more here.

Internet pioneer Vint Cerf: "We're still in a very peculiar period of time."

Snoop Dogg asks, "Where the f*ck is the money" from streaming services? (Because musicians aren't seeing it.)

Matthew Goldstein, a founding partner of Microsoft's seven-year-old venture arm M12, has left to join London-based investor Systemiq Capital. Business Insider has more here.

A guide to the "rich techies" who sit courtside at Warriors playoff games, though it misses famed VC Bill Gurley, who can also be seen in one photo.

First Republic founder James Herbert is taking the 40-year-old bank's failure hard, according to his friend Frank Fahrenkopf, a longtime First Republic board member. In recent days, Fahrenkopf tells American Banker, Herbert has been staying with family members in Jackson Hole, Wy. — sitting in the backyard, looking at the Grand Tetons, and trying to forget what went wrong. More here.

Rapid (previously known as RapidAPI), a startup that built out an API marketplace valued at $1 billion last year, has laid off another 70 employees less than two weeks after letting go of 50% of its staff, TechCrunch reported earlier today. TC says just 42 people remain at the company — down from 230 in April — reflecting an 82% drop in headcount. All of the company’s remaining workers in Europe, and some based in the U.S., were impacted by the latest cut. More here.

The SEC has paid out its largest-ever award to a whistleblower, almost $279 million, it announced today. The award is more than double the previous record amount of $114 million, which was announced in October 2020. The SEC didn't name the person who was awarded the number or which enforcement actions came out of the information provided by the individual. The FT has more here.

Since Elon Musk's version of Twitter's subscription service launched last November, Twitter has only been able to convert around 640,000 users into paying Twitter Blue subscribers as of the end of April, Mashable reported earlier this week. More telling, says Mashable today, is how many of its earliest subscribers have canceled their subscriptions. According to the outlet, of roughly 150,000 early subscribers to Twitter Blue, just 68,000 paid their subscription as of April 30. More here.

Roughly 45% of YouTube’s U.S. viewership is on TV screens, per The Information, up from below 30% just three years ago. The jump makes the Google-owned video-streaming service the most watched outlet on TV.

The next big fear: that Hollywood’s killer robots become the military’s tools. (This has long a fear of those who work in AI, including OpenAI chief Sam Altman, who told us so a few years ago. "I personally find the idea of autonomous weapons, and thinking through where that could go, quite scary," he'd said.)

For top VCs, ByteDance’s historic windfall remains a $220 billion mirage.

TikTok spied on an FT reporter who covers the company via her cat's account.

Born in a time of relative prosperity, today’s market conditions aren’t boding so well for Lilium, the Munich-based EV take-off and landing jet developer, which is running out time and money -- and facing a Nasdaq delisting. Tech.eu has more here.

Christian Bale, Gen Z heartthrob.

A mansion hidden directly under the Bay Bridge.

The age when you stop feeling young.

AI-written rom-coms.

129 E 73rd Street. It's a townhouse and a part of pop culture history.

The houses must be white and the designs preapproved -- and everybody wants in.