Friday the 13th! We joke, though candidly, we are feeling a little spooked as it becomes more obvious we're all marinating in the coronavirus at this point. (Here in California, one in 40 people currently has it.)
We hope you are well and COVID free. If you are quarantining and looking for a weekend listen, we present you with the newest StrictlyVC Download podcast, made lovingly (if hurriedly) tonight and featuring famed crisis communication guru Mike Sitrick, whose clients have ranged from Theranos to R&B singer Chris Brown to Harvey Weinstein to Trump Hotels & Casinos. (It's quite a list!)
We talked earlier today with Sitrick -- whose practice has focused increasingly on the tech world as it has taken center stage -- about some of the current headlines and how he might advise some of today's newsmakers on how to handle their bad press. We also talked about some the techniques that Sitrick pioneered and that we've seen more recently.
More Monday.:)
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Top News
DoorDash, the seven-year-old delivery company, today filed the necessary papers for its upcoming IPO. The company is expected to raise more than $2 billion in the offering, which will make it one of the this year’s largest.
DoorDash has clearly benefited from the pandemic, reporting revenue of $1.92 billion in the nine months through September, more than 200% higher than the first nine months of last year, when it generated $587 million. Still, it continues to lose money, albeit a lot less than it used to, notes the New York Times.
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These Stanford Students are Racing to Get Laptops to Kids Around the U.S Who Most Need Them
The digital divide is not a new phenomenon. Still, it largely took Americans by surprise when, as the U.S. began to shut down to slow the spread of Covid-19 in March, schools grappled with how to move forward with online classes.
It wasn’t just a matter of altering students’ curriculum. Many lacked either internet access or home computers — and some lacked both. According to USAFacts, a non-partisan organization funded by former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, 4.4 million households with children have not had consistent access to computers for online learning during the pandemic.
It’s a problem that two Stanford students, Isabel Wang and Margot Bellon, are doing everything in their power to address, and with some success. Through their six-month-old 501(c)(3) outfit, Bridging Tech, they’ve already provided more than 400 refurbished laptops to children who need them most — those living in homeless shelters — beginning with students in the Bay Area where there are an estimated 2,000 homeless students in San Francisco alone.
Unsurprisingly, it began as a passion project for both, though both sound committed to building an enduring organization. They always cared about the digital divide; now they’ve seen too much to walk away from it.
Wang, for her part, grew up in the affluent Cleveland, Oh., suburb of Shaker Heights, which has “always had racial tensions,” she notes. (The best-selling novel Little Fires Everywhere is set in the same place, for the same reason.)
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Massive Fundings
Metagenomi, a four-year-old, Emeryville, Ca.-based gene editing company, raised $65 million in Series A funding. Bayer and Humboldt Fund co-led the round, joined by Sozo Ventures, Agent Capital, InCube Ventures and HOF Capital. Endpoints News has more here.
Udemy, an 11-year-old, San Francisco-based education marketplace with more than 130,000 video-based courses currently across 65 languages, is raising up to $100 million in a Series F round that would value the company at up to $3.32 billion. (This per paperwork for the fundraise first discovered by Prime Unicorn Index.) Just earlier this year, Udemy closed on $50 million in Series E funding at post-money valuation of just more than $2 billion. TechCrunch has more here.
Big-But-Not-Crazy-Big Fundings
Kira Pharma, a year-old, Cambridge, Ma.-based developer of therapies for immune-mediated diseases, has raised $46 million in Series A and B funding from Quan Capital, 6 Dimensions Capital, Qiming Venture Partners and Sinopharm Capital. Endpoints News has more here.
Livestorm, a 4.5-year-old, Paris-based video communications platform, has raised $30 million in Series B funding. Aglaé Ventures and Bpifrance co-led the round, joined by Raise Ventures and IDInvest. TechCrunch has more here.
Adaptilens, a 20-month-old, Boston-based maker of an injectable lens for improving vision, has raised $1.6 million in seed funding led by Pillar VC. More here.
Didactic, a three-month-old, Austin, Tex.-based e-learning company co-founded by Udemy co-founder Gagan Biyani and AltMBA co-founder Wes Kao, has raised $4.3 million in seed funding led by First Round. TechCrunch has more here.
GuideCX, a three-year-old, Salt Lake City-based customer onboarding platform, raised $10 million in Series A funding. Sorenson Ventures led the round, joined by Epic Ventures, Orchard Ventures, Album VC and Prelude Ventures. More here.
Kyklo, a five-year-old, Buffalo, N.Y.-based startup that helps wholesale distributors of electrical and automation products launch e-commerce stores, has raised $8.5 million in seed funding, Felicis Ventures and IA Ventures led the round, joined by Jungle Ventures, and numerous others. TechCrunch has more here.
Shred, a two-year-old, L.A.-based fitness platform that specializes in elite digital training, has raised $4 million in seed funding, including from serial founder Eduardo Vivas. More here.
Stakester, a 1.5-year-old, London-based competition marketplace for gamers created by a cofounder of Rockstar Games, has raised $2 million in seed funding led by RTP Global. Bloomberg has more here.
Not-Saying-H0w-Much Fundings
LISNR, an eight-year-old, Oakland, Ca.-based startup whose ultrasonic data-over-sound tech enables proximity verification and contactless transactions for merchants, financial service providers and mobility companies, has raised an undisclosed amount of strategic funding from Visa. Visa had also invested in the company late last year.
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New Funds
Gigafund, a 3.5-year-old, Austin, Tex.-based venture capital fund cofounded by Luke Nosek, a former managing director with Founders Fund, has raised $230.9 million for its eighth vehicle, shows a new SEC filing. More here.
NextView Ventures, a 10-year-old, Boston-based early-stage capital fund, has raised an $89.6 million fund, according to SEC filings flagged by TechCrunch. The firm closed its third fund in 2017 with $50 million. More here.
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Going Public
Airbnb, which is planning an IPO this year on the Nasdaq, may also list its shares in 2021 on the upstart trading venue for companies committed to environmental, social and corporate governance values, Long-Term Stock Exchange. So says Bloomberg, noting it would be the "biggest and only get for the upstart trading venue, which opened for trading in September." More here.
Believe, a 16-year-old, Paris, France-based music distributor, is prepping a 2021 IPO that could value it at around €2 billion, says Reuters. The company's investors include TCV, XAnge Private Equity, Siparex Group, GP Bullhound and Ventech. Reuters has more here.
C3.ai, the 11-year-old artificial intelligence services company founded by software pioneer Tom Siebel, just filed for an IPO with a placeholder amount of $100 million. Its underwriters are Morgan Stanley, JP Morgan, and Bank of America. ZDNet has more here.
Hydrofarm Holdings Group, a 43-year-old, Woodside, Ca.-based maker of hydroponics equipment and supplies, has filed plans for a $100 million IPO in paperwork that reports $2 million of net income on $255 million in revenue for the first nine months of 2020. The company is largely owned by a private equity firm in Ontario called Serruya Private Equity. More here.
Instacart has picked Goldman Sachs Group to lead its IPO, which could come early next year and ostensibly value the U.S. grocery delivery app at around $30 billion, CNBC reported yesterday. Instacart was valued at $17.7 billion last month, when it raised $200 million in a private fundraising round. More here.
Nuix, a 20-year-old, Sydney, Australia-based maker of data analytics software, has disclosed plans to raise A$975 million in what would be the year’s largest Australian IPO. The company is backed by the Australian investment bank Macquarie Capital. DealStreetAsia has more here.
Seer, a 3.5-year-old, Redwood City, Ca-based developer of proteograph products for biomedical research, has registered plans to raise $150 million in an IPO on the Nasdaq. The company raised more than $100 million from investors, including Maverick Capital, aMoon, Emerson Collective, and T. Rowe Price. More here.
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Exits
Sumitovant, the umbrella subsidiary of Sumitomo Dainippon that bought five of Vivek Ramaswamy’s “Vants” in September 2019, is planning on fully acquiring Urovant Sciences for $584 million in an all-cash deal, the companies announced yesterday. The merger values Urovant at $16.25 per share, a 96% premium over its closing price of $8.28 on Thursday. (If you don't know who Ramaswamy is, we sat down with him a couple of years ago for a StrictlyVC event when his holding company was a little smaller.) EndPoints News has the latest here.
Republic has acquired NextSeed, a Houston-based platform for investing in small businesses backed by investors including Rethink Capital Partners, says Fortune. Financial terms weren't disclosed. More here.
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People
M13 named Anna Barber has joined the outfit M13 as a partner. She was previously a managing director with Techstars LA.
Comcast Ventures, the corporate venture capital firm, is folding into Comcast’s business development division and shifting its strategy to focus only on strategic investments, CNBC reported earlier today, adding that partners were informed of the change just this week.
Elon Musk disclosed today that after experiencing cold-like symptoms, he receive mixed test results for COVID-19 and is awaiting the result of a more definitive test. "Something extremely bogus is going on," he said of the rapid test results.
Qiming Venture Partners USA has promoted principals Anna French and Colin Walsh to partners. French, who joined Qiming in 2017, was previously a management consultant at the Boston Consulting Group. Walsh, who joined last year, was last a vice president on the life science investment team at ND Capital.
Investor Peter Thiel's track record is mixed, but he's still worth $5.3 billion, estimates Bloomberg, which says he's "richer than ever" at the moment.
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Essential Reads
Eighteen months ago, Uber’s self-driving car unit, Uber Advanced Technologies Group, was valued at $7.25 billion following a $1 billion investment from Toyota, DENSO and Softbank’s Vision Fund. Now, it’s up for sale, and a competing autonomous vehicle technology startup -- Aurora Innovation -- is in talks with Uber to buy it, according to TechCrunch. Much more here
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Shareworks by Morgan Stanley. Curious about the state of secondary markets or why some companies are choosing to avoid the traditional IPO? Then join us for our inaugural, two-part Virtual Liquidity series this December and hear from industry thought leaders as they explore the evolution of secondary markets and the different paths to public markets. Visit the Shareworks by Morgan Stanley website to learn more. Shareworks by Morgan Stanley services are provided by Morgan Stanley Smith Barney LLC, member SIPC, and its affiliates, all wholly owned subsidiaries of Morgan Stanley. CRC 3315395 11/2020
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