Harvard makes a killing, tech founders also making a killing, and the rise of the sneaker bots: "We got destroyed""

Well, hello there! You may have caught our print interview yesterday with this week's StrictlyVC Download guest, Jacob Helberg, the author of The Wires of War, a new book we're reading currently that offers a clear-eyed argument why our democracy is more imperiled than most of us likely appreciate. We really enjoyed talking with him; hope you'll enjoy hearing from him, too.

Giant thanks to Tegus for sponsoring this episode. Tegus offers lots of venture firms (and others) instant access to 20,000+ investor-led expert calls on public and private companies. Check out www.tegus.co/strictlyvc to quickly scale up your own research.

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P.S. If you care about climate tech, you might register for this streamed SOSV Climate Tech Summit happening next week. (It's free.) I talk with the original climate investor Vinod Khosla; you can also catch interviews with Tony Fadell and sci-fi author Chen Qiufan.

P.P.S.: Our event is also coming up next month, and we're very excited to say that Erin Griffith of the New York Times and Lora Kolodny of CNBC are coming to help interview our guest speakers. It's going to be a great night, with delicious food and warm cocktails. Thanks to Eclipse Ventures for partnering with us on this one, and for generously bringing Lucira tests for guests, just in time for your holiday travels.:)

Um, Elon Musk is now worth $230 billion —as much as Bill Gates and Warren Buffett combined.

Where do leading VCs go for in-depth research, models, investment theses, and comprehensive industry guides? The GoingVC Research Library. Join the more than 1,500 subscribers who get access to continually updated content as well as invitations to VC networking events and more. Click here to join and use the code STRICTLYVC for 20% off your first year!

No one can check out every investing outfit’s demo day. But one event that we try to catch every year is that of Pear, which is held annually each fall and features (blessedly) just a dozen or so very nascent startups.

Pear, a seed-stage venture firm founded in 2013, has an impressive track record when it comes to identifying promising companies from their earliest stages, including DoorDash, Gusto, Aurora Solar, Vanta, Branch Metrics and Guardant Health. As notably, despite introducing a far smaller number of teams to investors than Y Combinator and more renowned accelerator programs, there always seem to be at least one or two projects in Pear’s Demo Day mix that turn into actual, sustainable and, sometimes, sizable companies.

Consider that over seven previous “batches” that featured a collective 69 teams altogether, Pear has helped push into the market Xilis, which uses “micro-organoids” to quickly make thousands of 3D replicas of a patient’s tumor that can then be tested for drug compatibility (it closed a $70 million Series A round this summer); the relationship intelligence company Affinity (which announced $80 million in Series C funding last month), and Viz.ai, whose software helps doctors diagnose strokes and coordinate care (and whose funding now tops $150 million after closing its most recent round back in March). Pear has some others it can, and does, boast about, too.

This year, the event, held Wednesday, shined a light on 13 of these very nascent teams. Pear also connected investors in attendance with five of its own portfolio companies that were just coming out of stealth mode. For those of you who might be interested in tracking emerging themes or actual investment opportunities, here’s a quick rundown of who pitched what (with the Pear-backed companies at the end of this list).

More here.

* Clarafi, an eight-year-old, New York-based company that say it's using machine learning and its expertise in deep neural networks to develop a top object recognition system, has raised $60 million in Series C funding. NEA led the round, joined by CPP Investments, NextEquity Partners, SineWave Ventures, Trousdale Capital and earlier backers Menlo Ventures, Union Square Ventures, Lux Capital, LDV Capital, Corazon Capital and the NYU Innovation Venture Fund. More here.

* Grin, a seven-year-old, Sacramento, Ca.-based CRM startup focused on influencer marketing for e-commerce brands, has raised $110 million in Series B funding. Lone Pine Capital led the round, joined by Bond. According to Crunchbase data, the company has now raised $145.3 million altogether. More here.

* AiDash, a two-year-old, San Jose, Ca.-based startup using satellite imagery and AI to monitor infrastructure, just raised $27 million in Series B funding led by G2 Venture Partners, with participation from BGV, National Grid Partners, and additional strategic investors. The company has now raised $33 million altogether. VentureBeat has more here.

* Replai, a two-year-old, San Francisco- and Portugal-based startup at work on video intelligence technology, has raised $4.7 million in seed funding. Hoxton Ventures led the round, joined by Sonae IM, Lux Capital, Sequoia Capital and Accel. More here.

* Smallhold, a nearly five-year-old, Brooklyn, N.Y.-based specialty mushrooms producer, has raised $25 million in Series A funding. Astanor Ventures led the round, joined by Energy Impact Partners, Wheatsheaf Group, AlleyCorp and Almanac Insights. More here.

* Spacelift, a months-old, Redwood City, Ca.-based management platform for infrastructure-as-code, just raised $15 million in Series B funding led by Insight Partners, with participation from earlier backers Blossom Capital, Inovo Venture Partners and Hoxton Ventures. VentureBeat has more here.

* Spot AI, a nearly four-year-old, San Francisco-based startup that says its software platform “reads” video footage -- both by way of words and images in the frames -- regardless of the type or quality of camera where it was captured, has raised $20 million in Series A funding led by Redpoint Ventures, with Bessemer Venture Partners also participating. The company has now raised $22 million altogether, including from earlier backer Village Global and Stanford StartX. TechCrunch has more here.

Pagos, a 10-month-old, fully distributed payment intelligence infrastructure startup founded by former Braintree and PayPal execs, has raised $10 million in seed funding co-led by Underscore VC and Point72 Ventures. TechCrunch has more here.

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Tribe Capital is raising a $75 million crypto fund that will be managed by firm partner Jared Madfes and Tribe's cofounder, Arjun Sethi. Coindesk has more here.

Elastic, a company that commercializes open-source software for search and data analytics and went public in 2018, has announced plans to acquire Optimyze, the company behind the continuous profiling platform Prodfiler. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Founded out of Switzerland in 2018, Optimyze’s Prodfiler is said to give customers such as Booking.com insights into their entire cloud infrastructure, including applications and services. The company raised $3 million last year in a seed round of funding led Andreessen Horowitz. VentureBeat has the story here.

Expensify has filed for an initial public offering, disclosing growing revenue and income. The 13-year-old, Portland, Ore.-based maker of expense management software listed the size of the offering as $100 million, a placeholder amount, and said it had net income of $15 million on revenue of $65 million for the six months ended June 30, compared with $3.5 million in net income on $41 million in revenue during same period in 2020. Bloomberg has the story here.

Holy: Harvard Management Company returned 33.6% on its investments for the fiscal year ending in June 2021, pushing the value of the University’s endowment to $53.2 billion, the largest sum in its history, says the school, and an increase of $11.3 billion from the previous fiscal year. Harvard Management Co. CEO N.P. “Narv” Narvekar announced the gains in the university's annual financial report, published yesterday. According to the Harvard Crimson, he'd written that public and private equity markets were the main drivers behind the “tremendous returns.” The endowment’s public and private equity assets boasted 50% and 77% returns, respectively.

* Today’s tech founders don't just own the company; they're also getting huge pay packages.

* How YouTube makes sure its hit makers don't stumble.

* A wearable microphone jammer worn as a bracelet.

* A pop star’s secret weapon strides into the spotlight.

* Every movie and TV show could soon be dubbed into any language you want.

* How did it get so hard to buy sneakers?

Missing for years, a Van Gogh painting has resurfaced, and it's up for grabs November 11.

Today’s the last day for LPs to request an invite for the sixth annual RAISE Global Summit, happening next week, October 19-20. The RAISE Global Summit helps LPs identify and invest in emerging venture funds. 30 funds will present, 200+ fund decks are available in the RAISE Portal. Two half-day virtual sessions + in-person gatherings in SF, LA, NYC. Click here to request an invite.