Facebook goes missing, Summit Partners has a fat new fund, and Jony Ive remembers Steve Jobs a decade later

Monday! Hello.:) 

Quick mention: We'll be interviewing Vinod Khosla this Wednesday if you're curious to learn where he's putting all that 'climate capital.'

Facebook and its services, including Instagram, WhatsApp, Oculus, and Messenger, suffered a global outage for more than five hours today, and Twitter loved every second . . . though there were serious implications. 

As the New York Times notes, billions of people use the platform to communicate. Facebook is also used to sign in to many other apps and services, leading to "unexpected domino effects such as people not being able to log into shopping websites or sign into their smart TVs, thermostats and other internet-connected devices." 

Facebook said afterward that the culprit was "configuration changes on the backbone routers that coordinate network traffic between our data centers," which "caused issues that interrupted this communication. This disruption to network traffic had a cascading effect on the way our data centers communicate, bringing our services to a halt."

Where experts recommend investing $100,000 right now. The pandemic completely disrupted markets. So Bloomberg asked the leading financial experts where they’d invest $100,000 today; they overwhelmingly recommended alternatives like art. In fact, Contemporary Art prices have returned 14% annually, outperforming the S&P by 174% from ‘95-’20, with only a 0.01 correlation to equities. Now, a revolutionary technology platform has finally democratized the remaining untapped asset class. Masterworks makes investing in art as easy as trading stocks online.

Jonathan Abrams and Kent Lindstrom have partnered on a lot of things over the years. Lindstrom was an advisor and investor at the early social networking service Friendster, founded by Abrams. He was also the COO of social news aggregator Nuzzel, which was founded by Abrams and that sold to a subscription startup called Scroll in 2019. (Scroll later sold to Twitter, which shut down Nuzzel in May.)

Because both have been angel investing all the while, and because there's still a lot of money looking to find its way into startups, it isn't surprising that they decided more recently to raise an actual seed-stage fund from outside investors, or that they decided to invest it together.

Thus was born 8-Bit Capital, a brand that refers to a time when computers were only able to store a maximum of 8 bits per data block, resulting in the blocky graphics that people who grew up on Atari remember well. Now, the duo is taking the wraps off 8-Bit's first fund, a $40 million vehicle that they raised from a wide number of well-known VCs and entrepreneurs, as well as several institutional investors.

We talked with Abrams earlier about some of those backers, who he asked we not name publicly (to shield them from more capital requests). We also talked about how he and Lindstrom are thinking about competing in the frothiest venture market ever and how focused -- or not -- the duo will be on social platforms, given their history. Our chat, below, has been edited lightly for length and clarity.

Why jump into VC full time right now?

We've been helping other entrepreneurs for a long time, and the feedback from a lot of entrepreneurs over the years is that they really appreciated he advice that we've given them. Part of that may be because the venture capital "value add" may may be a little overhyped in the industry, and part may be that Kent and I are just good at it. So even though there's a lot of investors out there, we thought it did make sense for us to do this.

What are your most successful "exits" as an angel investor?

I would say that the best companies, or the most successful ones, still haven't exited. That's the crazy thing about about doing angel investing or venture capital -- the early exits can be good but the the real winners take a long time. I was an investor in [the e-signature company] Hello Sign, which was acquired by Dropbox [in 2019 for $230 million in cash]. I was invested in [the content sharing platform] SlideShare, which was acquired by LinkedIn [in 2012 for $119 million in cash and stock], and those were very profitable exits. But some of the companies I invested in, like Instacart or Front or AngelList, are still not exited, and they're doing extremely well and will be extremely profitable investments.

It does require patience. There are companies that are worth tens of billions [of dollars], but oftentimes, the entrepreneurs have been working on those companies for a long time.

More here.

Byju’s, the Indian online learning platform valued most recently at around $16.5 billion, has raised about $300 million more at an $18 billion, per TechCrunch. (We've pretty much lost track of how much money this company has raised, though it has apparently garnered $1.8 billion since the outset of the pandemic. ) Oxshott Capital Partners led the round, joined by XN Exponent, Edelweiss, Verition Master Fund, IIFL, and Time Capital Advisors. TechCrunch has more here.

Ladder, a 6.5-year-old, Palo Alto, Ca.-based digital life insurance startup focused around flexible term life insurance policies, has raised $100 million in Series D funding co-led by Thomvest Ventures and OMERS Growth Equity. TechCrunch has more here.

Licious, a six-year-old, Bangalore-based startup that sells fresh meat and seafood online, says it has raised $52 million in Series G funding led by Mumbai-headquartered IIFL. TechCrunch has more here.

Sky Mavis, a two-year-old, Singapore-based crypto game developer that is currently famous for its game "Axie Infinity," has attracted $152 million in Series B funding led by Andreessen Horowitz, with participation from Accel and Paradigm. "Axie Infinity" is a blockchain-based game where players breed and battle digital creatures named Axies in order to earn tokens. Arianna Simpson, the general partner at a16z who led the round, also recently led a seed round for a Philippines-based company that lends players the money to buy the Axies and other digital assets so they can start earning money. (We talked to her about this for the StrictlyVC Download podcast.) Sky Mavis was assigned a $3 billion in the new round. More here.

Sunday, a two-year-old, Boulder, Co.-based lawn care startup, has raised $50 million in Series C funding led the round Bond, with participation from earlier backers Sequoia Capital, Forerunner Ventures, and Tusk Ventures. Forbes has more here.

Ula, a 1.5-year-old, Jakarta, Indonesia-based B2B e-commerce marketplace, has raised $87 million in Series B funding. Prosus Ventures, Tencent, and earlier investor B Capital Group co-led the round and were joined by Bezos Expeditions, Northstar Group, AC Ventures, and Citius. TechCrunch has more here.

Autoleap, a two-year-old, Toronto-based company that makes software for auto repair businesses, has raised $18 million in Series A funding. Bain Capital Ventures led the round, joined by earlier backer Threshold Ventures. TechCrunch has more here. 

Beacon, a three-year-old, U.K.-based digital supply chain and freight platform maker, has raised $50 million in Series B funding led by Northstar.vc. Upper90 also participated, as did earlier backers Jeff Bezos, Marc Benioff, and the venture firms 8VC and Expa. VentureBeat has more here.

GraphWear, a six-year-old, Bay Area-based company that makes a continuous glucose monitoring wearable, has closed a $20.5 million Series B round led by Mayfield, with participation from MissionBio Capital, Builders VC and VSC Ventures. TechCrunch has more here.

Ontop, a year-old, Miami-based startup that helps enterprises streamline their international hiring and payment processes by managing contracts, documents, taxes, regulatory compliance and payments, has raised $20 million in Series A funding co-led by Tiger Global and Point72 Ventures, with participation from the SoftBank  Opportunity Fund. Refresh Miami has more here.

Stable, a five-year-old, Chicago-based insurance startup that says it's aiming to minimize businesses’ risk due to volatile commodity prices, has raised $46.5 million in Series A funding led by Greycroft. Notion Capital, Anthemis, Continental Grain and earlier backers Syngenta and Ascot also participated in the financing. The company has now raised roughly $50 million altogether. TechCrunch has more here.

Jurny, a five-year-old, L.A.-based hospitality tech company sells its software to independent hotel brands, as well as vacation and short-term rental properties, has raised $9.5 million in fresh funding led by Mucker Capital. More here.

Lawpath, an eight-year-old, Sydney, Australia-based, subscription-based legal services platform, just raised $7.5 million AUD (about $5.5 million) from a wide variety of individual investors, along with previous backers LegalZoom and Adcock Private Equity. TechCrunch has more here.

ModernLoop, a year-old, San Francisco-based startup whose software aims to help teams automate and streamline their recruiting operations, has raised $3.3 million in seed funding led by Accel. Other investors include Webb Investment Network and executives from Brex and Zoom. More here.

Orchest, a 1.5-year-old, Palo Alto, Ca.-based maker of tools for data scientists so they can develop, iterate and deploy data pipelines without having to rely on an infrastructure or engineering teams, has raised $3.5 million in seed funding co-led by Gradient Ventures and Basis Set Ventures. TechCrunch has more here.

PHYTunes, a 10-month-old, Palo Alto, Ca.-based startup that says it can transport high-frequency wireless signals over existing wired infrastructure to seamlessly deliver full 5G inside the home, small business or enterprise, has raised $1.5 million from Deutsche Telekom, Draper University Ventures, and Quake Capital. More here.

PixieBridge, a year-old, New York-based free Chrome extension that allows users to modify the interface of any website, has raised $3.5 million led by NEA. Fast Company has more here.

Wasp, a nearly two-year-old, Croatia-based startup focused around a programming language for building web apps, has raised $1.5 million in seed funding co-led by Lunar Ventures and HV Capital, with participation from 468 Capital, Tokyo Black, Acequia Capital, Abstraction Capital and a slew of individual angels. TechCrunch has more here.

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Eight Roads Ventures, the venture firm that began investing out of Boston in 1969, operating then as Fidelity Ventures, has closed its fourth fund focused on European and Israeli tech companies with $450 million in capital commitments. TechCrunch has more here.

Five Seasons Ventures, a five-year-old, Paris-based venture firm that's focused on food tech, has closed its second fund with €180 million in capital commitments. TechCrunch has more here.

Summit Partners announced today that it has closed its eleventh U.S. growth equity fund with an impressive $8.35 billion in capital commitments. Summit Partners Growth Equity Fund XI will target minority and majority investments of $75 million to $500 million, primarily in  "profitable, category-leading growth companies", says the firm. Summit has now raised $43 billion across its growth equity, fixed income and public equity funds since being founded in 1984. Reuters has a bit more here.

Dapper Labs, the NFT startup behind NBA Top Shot that was recently valued at more than $7.5 billion, has acquired the virtual influencer startup Brud and will be bringing the entire 32-person team aboard. Brud is best known for its digitally rendered social media influencer characters, specifically one named Lil Miquela. Terms of the deal aren't being disclosed, but Brud founder and CEO Trevor McFedries will reportedly head up a new business unit for Dapper that's focused on building tools for DAOs, or decentralized autonomous organizations. More here and here.

Kitchen United, a nearly five-year-old, Pasadena, Ca.-based ghost kitchen company backed by GV, has acquired software and ghost kitchen developer, Zuul. for undisclosed terms. It's the first acquisition for the company; terms of the deal aren't being disclosed. Three-year-old Zuul had raised $9 million from investors, per Crunchbase data; meanwhile, Kitchen United has raised $56 million (at least, that's what has been publicly disclosed). Incidentally, we'd missed this, but founding CEO Jim Collins, who spoke at a StrictlyVC event in late 2019, left the company last fall; it's now being run for former CFO Michael Montagano.

One Identity, an identity and access management company owned by Quest Software, has acquired rival platform OneLogin. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Founded out of San Francisco in 2009, OneLogin markets a slew of identity products spanning single sign-on, multi-factor authentication, user provisioning, and more. The company had raised some $175 million since its inception. VentureBeat has more here.

Qualcomm has acquired Swedish automotive tech company Veoneer, nudging out Magna International with a higher bid. Qualcomm and investment group SSW Partners are paying $37 per share for the business in an all-cash transaction. At closing, SSW said it would sell Veoneer’s Arriver tech – an advanced driver assistance system stack that includes sensors and software – to Qualcomm and retain the Swedish company’s other Tier 1 supplier businesses. Veoneer had previous agreed to sell itself to Magna. It looked like that deal would move forward, until Qualcomm submitted its bid for $800 million, or 18%, more. TechCrunch has more here.

GitLab, which creates online tools to reduce the software development cycle by allowing teams to collaborate, is looking to raise as much as $624 million through an IPO in the United States and targeting a valuation of nearly $9 billion. The coding platform, backed by the likes of ICONIQ Capital and Khosla Ventures, was reportedly valued at $6 billion during a secondary sale of its shares back in January. Reuters has more here.

Rent the Runway filed for an IPO today and revealed its subscriber base tumbled during the Covid pandemic but has since started to grow again. CNBC has more here.

Volvo Cars, the Swedish auto maker owned by China’s Zhejiang Geely Holding, says it is proceeding with an IPO in Stockholm, in a deal that the WSJ says could value the company at upward of $25 billion. Volvo aims to raise about 25 billion kronor, equivalent to $2.86 billion.

The world lost about 14% of its coral reefs in the decade after 2009, mainly because of climate change, according to a sweeping international report on the state of the world’s corals.

Frances Haugen, a former product manager hired to help protect against election interference on Facebook, revealed herself last night on "60 Minutes" as the whistleblower who shared documents that helped inform the WSJ's recent series of articles about Facebook. She is scheduled to testify before Congress tomorrow. More here.

Might Jeff Bezos actually kill American treasure William Shattner? Given Shattner's age and health, it seems like a real possibility(?).

Instacart CEO Fidji Simo is also launching a women's health startup with a focus on treating complex neuroimmune disorders. Called the Metrodora Institute, it has already amassed $15 million in grants and private funding. Fortune has more here.

Broader inflation pressures are starting to show.

A jury ordered Tesla to pay $137 million to Owen Diaz, a Black former employee who accused the carmaker of ignoring racial abuse he faced while working there, his lawyer, Lawrence Organ, told the New York Times today. Diaz said he reached a breaking point when he witnessed similar racist epithets directed at his son, Demetric, who secured a job — his first — at the company with his dad's help.

Jony Ive on what he misses most about Steve Jobs, who died 10 years ago.

Damien Lewis confirms he is leaving "Billions." 💔

More bugs in flight.

A midlife crisis of cosmic proportions.

"Beyond bespoke."

A Croc boot by Balenciaga.

What do JAZZ Venture Partners, Obvious Ventures, Fifth Wall, Maven Ventures, and Fika Ventures have in common? They were all emerging funds featured at the RAISE Global Summit over the past five years. The RAISE Global Summit helps LPs identify and invest in the best emerging venture funds, before they make it big. Which new rising stars will emerge from this year's class? Click here to request an invite.