Unrest inside Apple, Discord's earliest backer, and reviewers aren't loving that new Tesla steering wheel

Hi, all.:) We are Audi 5000 at long last, but before we go, we have a treat this week for those of you who listen to our (mostly) weekly podcast, especially if you're interested in Discord, the chat app for a growing number of other communities that was just assigned a valuation of $15 billion, up from $7 billion last December. Our guest this week is Peter Relan, who wrote Discord its first check and who backed founder and CEO Jason Citron's first company, too. (Relan owned half of that one; he has a smaller -- but still presumably very lucrative -- stake in Discord, whose board he sat on until February of last year.) 

Relan is a really thoughtful VC who mostly stays out of the news but who listeners, and founders especially, might want to know better. Among other things covered, we talked about Discord's Series A deal and whether Benchmark shut out some of Discord's seed investors to land it; we also talked about whether Discord could potentially be competitive in the world of enterprise apps one day. 

Giant thanks to this week's sponsor, FounderShield, a broker that crafts risk-management programs for VC firms and their portfolio companies. If you’re not happy with your current broker or just want to understand your options, visit foundershield.com/strictlyvc to schedule a free risk assessment.

Apple and Google today removed an app meant to coordinate protest voting in this weekend’s Russian elections from the country on Friday, reports the New York Times, calling the move a "blow to the opponents of President Vladimir V. Putin and a display of Silicon Valley’s limits when it comes to resisting crackdowns on dissent around the world." The decisions reportedly came after Russian authorities threatened to prosecute local employees of Apple and Google. One Times source says specific individuals were named. More here.

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Blumberg Capital, founded in 1991 by investor David Blumberg, has just closed its fifth early-stage venture fund with $225 million, a vehicle that Blumberg says was oversubscribed — he planned to raise $200 million — and that has already been used to invest in 16 startups around the world (the firm has small offices in San Francisco, New York, Tel Aviv, and Miami, where Blumberg moved his family last year).

We caught up with him earlier this week to talk shop and he sounded almost ecstatic about the current market, which has evidently been good for returns, with Blumberg Capital’s biggest hits tied to Nutanix (it claims a 68x return), DoubleVerify (a 98x return at IPO in April, the firm says), Katapult (which went public via SPAC in July), Addepar (currently valued above $2 billion) and Braze (it submitted its S-1 in June).

We also talked a bit about his new life in Florida, which he was quick to note is “not a clone of Silicon Valley.” Not last, he told us why he thinks we’re in a “golden era of applying intelligence to every business,” from mining to the business of athletic performance.

More from our conversation, edited lightly for length and clarity, follows.

Grailed, an eight-year-old, New York-based curated menswear resale site that touts its digital authentication process, has raised $60 million. GOAT led the round, with participation from earlier backers Thrive Capital, Index Ventures and Groupe Artémis. Business of Fashion has more here.

Bright Money, 2.5-year-old, San Francisco- and Bangalore, India-based fintech startup that says it aims to help consumers manage their money and reduce debt, has raised $31 million from Sequoia Capital India, Falcon Edge Capital, and Hummingbird Ventures, along with prominent angel investor (and Alphabet board member) Ram Shriram. YourStory has more here.

Caresyntax, a nearly eight-year-old, Boston-based digital platform aimed at reducing deaths from surgery-related complications, has raised $30 million in extended Series C funding from accounts and funds managed by BlackRock, as well as specialty insurer ProAssurance Corp. The tranche brings the round total to $130 million. Bloomberg has more here.

EGYM, an 11-year-old, Munich, Germany-based connected fitness equipment company, has raised $41 million in Series E funding from Mayfair Equity Partners. Private Equity Wire has more here.

GigaIO, a five-year-old, Carlsbad, Ca.-based startup that's developing high-speed interconnect hardware for computing clusters, just raised $14.7 million led by Impact Partners. VentureBeat has more here.

Ketch, an 1.5-year-old, San Francisco-based data control company for programmatic privacy, governance, and security, has raised $23 million in Series A funding led by Acrew Capital, with participation from CRV, super[set], Ridge Ventures and SVB. TechCrunch has more here.

Kolide, a five-year-old, Somerville, Ma.-based endpoint security platform, has raised $17 million in Series B funding. OpenView Partners led the round,  joined by Matrix Partners. VentureBeat has more here.

Roboflow, a two-year-old, Des Moines, Ia.-based startup that says its developer tools enable companies to use computer vision without hiring a team of machine learning experts, raised $20 million in Series A funding led by Craft Ventures. VentureBeat has more here.

Tyk, a six-year-old, London-based enterprise API management platform, has raised $35 million in funding led by Scottish Equity Partners, with participation from MMC Ventures. TechCrunch has more here.

Aircover, a four-month-old, San Francisco-based sales intelligence platform raised $3 million in seed funding led by Defy Partners, with participation from Firebolt Ventures, Flex Capital, Ridge Ventures and a group of angel investors. Cofounder Andrew Levy previously cofounded Apteligent, a company that was sold to VMware in 2017. TechCrunch has more here.

Aurora Propulsion Technologies, a three-year-old, Finland-based aerospace startup that has developed a tiny thruster engine and a plasma braking system, just raised €1.7 million ($2 million) in seed funding led by the Lithuanian venture firm Practica Capital. TechCrunch has more here.

Journey Clinical, a nearly two-year-old, New York-based startup that says its ketamine prescription services enable psychotherapists to offer ketamine-assisted psychotherapy to their patients, has raised $3 million in seed funding led by Fifty Years. TechCrunch has more here.

Sequin, a two-year-old, Bay Area-based women-focused debit card focused on building women's credit scores startup, has raised $5.7 million in seed funding from Matrix Partners, Y Combinator, Scribble Ventures, IDEO, Thomvest, Commerce VC and Carrie Schwab. Forbes has more here.

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Santé Ventures, a 15-year-old, Austin, Tex.-based early-stage healthcare and life sciences investment firm, has closed its fourth fund with $260 million nc capital commitments, including from the Pennsylvania Public School Employees’ Retirement System. More here.

In July, the popular video conferencing platform Zoom announced its intentions to acquire Five9, a pioneer in cloud contact centers, in an all-stock deal valued at $14.7 billion. Now, with Zoom's share price down roughly 20% since then, Five9 investors are being advised to reject the deal. Bloomberg has more here.

GitLab, the 10-year-old, San Francisco-based maker of cloud-based software that allows developers to share code and collaborate on projects, said today it plans to list on the Nasdaq under ticker symbol “GTLB.” CNBC observes that GitLab is raising money to take on Atlassian and GitHub, which Microsoft acquired for $7.5 billion in 2018. GitLab was last valued at $6 billion in a secondary financing round that allowed shareholders to sell up to 20% of their vested equity. That was way back in January, so expect that number to be a lot higher when that IPO hits. More here.

Ginkgo Bioworks, the synthetic biology company founded in Boston in 2009, made its highly anticipated stock-market debut today after closing its merger with a special purpose acquisition company. You can find its ticker here. CNBC has more here.

A former VC and his lawyers were sued in the U.K. over the disappearance of some 64 million pounds ($88.5 million) of investor money. The liquidators of medical technology firm Enigma Diagnostics allege that British entrepreneur Harvey Boulter used its money for his own benefit, including a payment to a British super car manufacturer. Boulter is meanwhile awaiting trial in Namibia for murder over allegations he shot dead his game park manager during an argument in February. (Sounds like a character straight from "Fargo.")

Sagar Sanghvi has joined Accel as a partner. Sanghvi had spent six years with the grocery-delivery company Instacart, beginning as a VP and leaving earlier this year as its CFO. TechCrunch notes that the company's previous CFO, Ravi Gupta, left Instacart in 2019 to join Sequoia Capital in 2019. More here.

The SEC just awarded $110 million to a tipster whose information resulted in enforcement actions, bringing total payments under the agency’s whistle-blower program to more than $1 billion, says the agency. The tipster’s award, the second-largest ever, includes $40 million from the SEC and $70 million from a related action brought by another agency. Under the SEC’s whistle-blower program, tipsters can be paid for information that prompts sanctions by another agency. Bloomberg has more here. (If you're curious to learn more, we once talked with the first chief of this whistleblower program to learn how it all works.)

How Facebook hobbled Mark Zuckerberg's bid to get America vaccinated.

Hundreds of current and former Apple workers are now complaining about their work environment. A common theme is that Apple’s secrecy has created a culture that discourages employees from speaking out about their workplace concerns — not with co-workers, not with the press and not on social media.

A new trailer for "Succession." 

The case for potty-training cows.

How structural engineers learn from destruction.

The new steering "yoke" is a joke, suggests Consumer Reports of the brand-new Model S.

Life's a Beach.

Sotheby’s just premiered the first exhibition exclusively featuring Black jewelry designers. It's open to the public in New York through September 26.

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