The Strand 🌴 - February 24, 2019
Clutter, the on-demand storage company, gets $200 million led by the Softbank Vision Fund, Amplify.LA and Bonfire invest in SafeRide, Tesla is losing its general counsel, and Lyft aims for March IPO.
Welcome to the twenty-third edition of The Strand, a weekly-ish newsletter covering venture capital, private equity, and general business news from around the Los Angeles area. My name is Brendan Boken, a native of Southern California. Feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn, send deals/news to brendanboken@gmail.com.
Venture Capital Funding
Brainbase, a two-year-old, Los Angeles, California-based IP licensing ecosystem, has raised $1 million in seed funding led by Tera Ventures, with participation from Sterling Road and several angel investors including Severin Hacker, Andrew Rabin, and Hamid Barkhordar. PR Newswire
Clutter, a four-year-old, Culver City, California-based on-demand storage company, has raised $200 million in Series D funding led by the Softbank Vision Fund with participation from Sequoia Capital, Atomico, GV, Venice-based Fifth Wall, and Four Rivers Group. Forbes
Hello Sunshine, a 2.5-year-old, Los Angeles, California-based media company dedicated to female authorship across storytelling platforms, has raised an undisclosed amount of funding from Emerson Collective and Otter Media. Bloomberg
HiHello, a one-year-old, Palo Alto, California-based developer of digital business cards that can be exchanged seamlessly, has raised $2.5 million in seed funding. Investors include K9 Ventures, August Capital, and Los Angeles-based TenOneTen Ventures. TechCrunch
Neighborhood Goods, a 1.5-year-old, Plano, Texas-based online store that has been dubbed the “future of retail”, has raised $8.8 million in seed funding led by Global Founders Capital. The company has raised $14.5 million in total funding, including from Forerunner Ventures, Maveron, NextGen Venture Partners, Revolution’s Rise of the Rest Seed Fund, Group Up Ventures, Capital Factory, and Los Angeles-based Dollar Shave Club CEO Michael Dubin. CNBC
ParkHub, a nine-year-old, Dallas, Texas-based parking company, raised $13 million in Series B funding. Santa Monica-based Arrowroot Capital led the round. Finsmes
SafeRide Inc., a Los Angeles, California-based healthcare logistics provider, raised an undisclosed amount of Series A funding. Fresenius Medical Care Ventures led the round, and was joined by investors including Venice-based Amplify.LA, Los Angeles-based Bonfire Ventures, FCA Venture Partners, and Meridian Street Capital. PE Hub
Private Equity Funding
No Los Angeles-based companies or investors were involved in private equity investment transactions this past week.
Liquidity / Exits / M&A
Blackberry completed its $1.4 billion purchase of Irvine, California-based cybersecurity company Cylance. Cylance had raised over $320 million from firms like The Blackstone Group, Insight Venture Partners, DFJ Growth, and KKR, among others. Crackberry
Sorenson Capital agreed to sell Axiom Materials, a Santa Ana, California-based manufacturer of composite materials, to Kordsa, a subsidiary of Turkish conglomerate Sabanci Holdings. PR Newswire
New Funds
No Los Angeles-based firms announced new funds this past week.
IPOs
No Los Angeles-based companies filed for IPOs this past week.
Featured Jobs
Apres, a digital-first-beverage brand providing protein-based replenishment to the modern wellness consumer, is hiring a Head of Growth in the company’s Venice office.
Happy Returns, the startup enabling in-person returns for online shoppers, is hiring a Senior Product Manager in the company’s Santa Monica office.
Swell, an impact investing platform, is hiring a Product Manager in the company’s Santa Monica office.
News, Resources, & Required Reading
A month of rain - and snow - has cleared away drought conditions from nearly all of Los Angeles Country, according to a report released last Thursday by the National Drought Mitigation Center. At the beginning of 2019, more than 3/4 of California was experiencing “moderate drought” conditions or worse. Curbed LA
Audi has added a new feature to the vehicle-to-infrastructure technology embedded in its newer models that’s designed to help drivers catch every green light. The technology would receive information from the sensor on a traffic light (via a 4G LTE hot spot) and be able to tell the driver how long before it turned from red to green. There are currently more than 4,700 intersections that support the “time to green” feature, including Dallas, Denver, Los Angeles, and NYC. TechCrunch
Elon Musk took out $61 million in mortgages on five properties in California, four in Bel Air and one in Hillsborough, a neighborhood in the Bay Area. One refinancing on a 20,200-plus-square-foot property he bought in 2012 for $17 million turned into a $10 million loan into a $19.5 million debt. Musk’s monthly payment? About $180K. Bloomberg
Fast Company ranked the World’s 50 Most Innovative Companies of 2019 including LA-based Winc, GOAT, and Rocket Lab.
It appears Lyft will beat Uber to the public markets. The Wall Street Journal reports that Lyft will make its filing public as early as next week, and the IPO could be carried out by the end of March. The company plans to list on the Nasdaq and is aiming for a valuation between $20 and $25 billion. Fortune
Key investors are unhappy with the handling of the Softbank Vision Fund, the $100 million investment vehicle run by Masayoshi Son. The two biggest investors in the Vision Fund, Saudi Arabia’s Investment Fund and Abu Dhabi’s Investment Company, have complained about the high prices the Vision Fund has paid for some tech companies as well as Softbank’s practice of investing in companies first and later transferring the stakes to the Vision Fund - often at a higher price. The Wall Street Journal
Tesla’s general counsel, Dane Butswinkas, who was named to the position in December of 2018, is leaving the company due to “poor cultural fit”. TechCrunch
The Los Angeles Economic Development Corporation published its updated economic forecast for LA and the Southern California region this past week. One interesting note in the report is the slowdown in early-stage venture investing. Growth-stage investments in California have been hitting record highs, however, total deal count and seed investing (total seed dollars and seed deal count), were at their lowest points since 2012. TechCrunch
The most acquisitive U.S. unicorns, as of February 2019: Airbnb, Automattic, Pinterest, and The We Company. TechCrunch
With its parent company’s shares trading at a penny or two for six months now, MoviePass Inc. has made some cutbacks. The movie subscription service laid off its business development team this past Thursday. The three-person department was located in Los Angeles. Los Angeles Business Journal
Take a Break
Dustin Johnson just won the WGC-Mexico Championship for his 20th career PGA Tour victory.
Elon Musk always takes the freeway instead of Waze shortcuts so he can use autopilot.
How a beachside cottage became the world’s restaurant of the year.
How Chanel became a $10 billion business under Karl Lagerfeld.
TBT: Tomorrow’s Advance Man - Marc Andreessen’s plan to win the future.
The NBA referee who corrupted the NBA.
The Opportunity rover lasted 15 years and traversed more than 28 miles on the surface of Mars. Here’s a timeline of Opportunity’s time on the distant planet.
Zillion Dollar Listings: These are the priciest homes ever sold in LA.