JPMorgan gets slapped on the wrist, the NYTimes and The Athletic get reacquainted, and Tom Ford's parenting tips (and more!)

Hello! Happy holidays, cherubs.

We very much hope that you have a happy -- and also healthy -- couple of weeks while we take some time off. For what it's worth, it's looking like we won't be doing as much socializing as we'd hoped during this brief break in the action  -- thanks a lot, Omicron variant! 🦠 (We don't have it yet, but it's kind of looking like an inevitability.)

Back January 3rd. See you then.:)

JPMorgan Chase has agreed to pay a $125 million penalty for allowing employees on Wall Street to use smartphone apps to get around federal record-keeping laws, regulators announced today. The SEC said the violations occurred between 2018 and 2020, during which some JPMorgan employees used WhatsApp and personal email accounts to conduct official business. UPI has the story here.

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When South Park Commons (SPC), a community of tens of engineers in San Francisco’s South Park neighborhood, came together, it mostly flew under the radar, save for a New York Times profile in 2017, a year after it was formed.

Founded by Facebook’s first female engineer, Ruchi Sanghvi, she explained at the time that her ambition with SPC was to create tech’s answer to the Bloomsbury Set or Benjamin Franklin’s Junto club, where people could discuss their respective and shared experiences and hopefully form new ideas along the way.

Fast forward and SPC — which went on to raise a $55 million venture fund in 2018 to back projects born by community members — says the experiment is working. It now has 450 members in the Bay Area and across the globe. It just closed a new $150 million fund from tech luminaries, as well as institutional investors. 

It says it also has a highly valuable portfolio. In fact, says Sanghvi, SPC’s debut fund has already returned its capital — and then some — to investors owing to Compound Labs, an open-source platform for decentralized lending whose tokens were distributed in part to early shareholders.

Sanghvi says SPC has 10 to 12 other so-called unicorns across its portfolio, too.

We chatted earlier today with Sanghvi and her husband and business partner, Aditya Agarwal, who was also an early engineer at Facebook before cofounding with Sanghvi a startup they sold to Dropbox in 2012 in a reported talent acquisition. (Sanghvi stayed two years as Dropbox's VP of Operations; Agarwal, who joined as Dropbox’s VP of engineering, was promoted to CTO in 2016 and left in 2018, joining Sanghvi at South Park Commons.)

More here.

Clikalia, a four-year-old, Madrid, Spain-based digital real estate platform for home buying and selling, has raised $70 million in Series B funding led by Fifth Wall, with participation from Luxor Capital and Mouro Capital. Deutsche Bank separately provided the startup with nearly $450 million in debt financing. TechCrunch has more here.

HungryPanda, a 4.5-year-old, London-based Asian food and grocery delivery platform that says it's now operating in more than 60 cities across 10 countries, has raised $130 million in Series D funding led by Perwyn, with participation from Kinnevik, 83North, Felix Capital, Piton Capital, Vintage, Burda Principal Investments and Kreos Capital. Bloomberg has more here.

Corellium, a 4.5-year-old, Boynton Beach, Fla.-based startup whose tool creates virtual Android and iPhone devices for security testing, just raised $25 million in Series A funding led by Paladin Capital Group, with participation from Cisco Investments. Forbes has more here.

Cove.tool, a five-year-old, Atlanta, Ga.-based startup that wants to make sure buildings are sustainable by design from the moment of inception, has raised $30 million in Series B funding led by Coatue Management. Robert Downey Jr.’s FootPrint Coalition also participated in the round, along with existing backers Mucker Capital, Urban Us and Knoll Ventures. TechCrunch has more here.

Dedrone, a 7.5-year-old, San Francisco-based drone defense startup, has raised $30.5 million in Series C funding led by public safety firm Axon. Other investors include Aqton Partners, Menlo Ventures, Felicis Ventures, Target Partners, TempoCap and Cisco's legendary former CEO John Chambers. More here.

Dialpad, the 10-year-old, San Francisco-based unified business communications platform, just raised $170 million at a $2.2 billion valuation. Iconiq led the round, joined by GV, T-Mobile Ventures, OMERS, Amasia, Work-Bench and Section 32. The company has now raised $400 million altogether. VentureBeat has more here.

Famly, an 8.5-year-old, Copenhagen-based parent-teacher collaboration platform for childcare centers, has raised $18 million in Series A funding led by Susquehanna Growth Equity. More here.

Full Harvest, a 6.5-year-old, San Francisco-based B2B marketplace for “ugly” fruit, has raised $23 million in Series B funding led by TELUS Ventures. Other investors in the round include Rethink Impact, Citi Impact, Doon Capital, Stardust Equity, Portfolia and earlier backers Spark Capital, Cultivian Sandbox, Astia Fund and Radicle Growthand. TechCrunch has more here. 

Hevo Data, a five-year-old, Bangalore, India-based no-code data pipeline platform, just raised $30 million in Series B funding. Sequoia Capital India led the round, joined by Qualgro, investor Lachy Groom and Chiratae Ventures. TechCrunch has more here.

SkySafe, a six-year-old, San Diego-based airspace security and management tech startup, has raised $30 million in Series B funding led by Kingfisher Investment Advisors, with participation from Gaingels, MIT alumni investment fund Castor Ventures and previous investor Andreessen Horowitz. More here.

Stocktwits, a 13-year-old, New York-based social platform for investors and traders, has raised $30 million in Series B funding led by Alameda Research Ventures, with participation from Times Bridge (an arm of Times Group of India) and earlier investors True Ventures, Foundry Group, ffVC and Social Leverage. Bloomberg has more here. 

Field Day, a months-old, Portland, Ore.-based startup that enables employers and individuals to engage with nonprofits in their local communities, has raised an undisclosed amount of seed funding led by defy.vc, with participation from Voyager Capital, Cascade Seed Fund, and numerous angel investors. More here.

Fuzey, a 1.5-year-old, London-based customer messaging tool for small businesses, raised $4.5 million in seed funding led by ByFounders, with participation from Flash Ventures, Global Founders Capital and Ascension. TechCrunch has more here. 

Haystacks.ai, a months-old, New York-based data aggregation platform for real estate investors, just raised $5 million in seed funding co-led by Streamlined Ventures and Colle Capital. More here.

Join hundreds of military veteran entrepreneurs and venture capitalists who are building the future at the Military Veteran Startup Conference hosted by Context Ventures on Feb 4th, 2022 (Friday) in San Francisco. Conference panels will cover the following topics: 1) Women Veteran Entrepreneurs; 2) Veteran Entrepreneurs who survived Shark Tank; 3) Veterans in Venture Capital; 4) Veteran Entrepreneurs building consumer brands; 5) Dual use startups. The event is free for military veteran (spouses &) entrepreneurs. Enlist here.

The New York Times has reportedly entered exclusive talks to buy The Athletic, a digital sports news subscription business that it was reportedly contemplating buying back in June (a deal it was said to stop contemplating when the two couldn't agree on price). Puck has the story here.

* Longtime GM exec Dan Ammann is out as Cruise CEO.

* How Elizabeth Holmes changed her style for trial.

* TikTok is getting into the restaurant business. More here.

* An Amazon driver was told to "keep delivering" during last weekend's tornadoes or lose her job.

* Back to TikTok. It just seems . . .  evil in numerous ways(?).

* Tom Ford's son wears pants to school (and parents everywhere bow down).

* Quidditch is changing its name.

* Just when you thought it was over.

* Reviewing my parents' performance of "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?"

A "kill cord" that can instantly wipe your laptop if it's snatched or stolen.

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