Design-focused commerce company Fab has raised that round of funding we scooped a few months ago. Fab is announcing today that it has raised $150 million in the first tranche of the company’s Series D round of financing. We’re told that $150 million is the first part of a larger Series D round that Fab expects to complete over the next few months. New to this round is Chinese Internet giant Tencent, who will also have a board seat at Fab; and Japanese conglomerate Itochu. Previous investors Atomico, Andreessen Horowitz, Menlo Ventures, RTP Capital, Pinnacle Ventures, Lars Hinrichs, and Docomo Capital also participated in this latest round of financing.

This brings Fab’s total funding to $310 million. We’re hearing from multiple sources that the pre-money valuation of the company was $1 billion, as we had reported in April (a spokesperson for Fab has confirmed the valuation). And we’ve also heard from a source that Fab will be raising another $100 million or more in the later part of this round. At Fab’s last round of financing in 2012, the company was worth around $600 million. Past investors include First Round Capital, SoftTech VC, Baroda Ventures, Ashton Kutcher, Guy Oseary, Thrive Capital, Kevin Rose, SV Angel, The Washington Post, VTB Capital, Phenomen Ventures and the Times of India.

Founder and CEO Jason Goldberg said the company started down the fundraising route in March to raise enough capital to have several years of runway, at least until 2015. He added that for this round there was $400 million worth of interest coming from investors.

Growth, International And Another Pivot

Fourteen million users strong, Fab is continuing to grow at a fast clip after its initial pivot. Last year, the company saw $150 million in revenue, and revealed in February that sales were up by nearly 300 percent in January 2013 over January 2012. In fact, January was Fab’s third-highest sales month ever.

According to the company, Fab should reach $250 million in 2013 sales. Fab’s now achieving 43 percent gross margins, up from 29 percent in 2011. Interestingly, Fab says that most of its revenue is not derived from flash sales, which was the initial model Fab adopted after its pivot in 2011. As we wrote in this profile of the company, Fab infamously pivoted from Fabulis, which was a social network for the gay community, into a flash sales site. Fab says that two-thirds of sales are currently not from the flash-sales on the site, and the company recently rebranded to reflect this change. And 50 percent of Fab’s sales are in home categories.

In May, Fab debuted its new design store, which makes it more of an integrated e-commerce site. You can access design pages by room, type of furniture, color, designer and more.

International is also a huge potential growth area for the company. Fab has 1 million members in the UK, which is generating nearly 40 percent of its sales in Europe and is its fastest-growing market outside the U.S. Asia is the next frontier, which is why Goldberg and Fab are bringing on Tencent and Itochu as partners.

As Goldberg explains, there are currently only four e-commerce companies in the world that are valued at more than $10 billion: Amazon, Alibaba, eBay, and Rakuten. He believes that Fab has a legitimate chance to be the fifth by leading in what he calls Emotional Commerce. This basically means that Fab helps people discover the items they love and want.

Part of Fab’s plan to take over emotional commerce involves making its own line of products and home goods. Fab is also partnering with designers to manufacture and sell home furnishings exclusively through Fab. Additionally, Fab is experimenting with brick and mortar stores, with the first store debuting in Hamburg, Germany. Mobile is also a huge growth area, with one-third of sales being placed via mobile. And international will also be a major strategic focus for Fab, which just acquired German custom furniture store Massivkonzept. Fab sells products in 27 countries and 40 percent of sales today occur outside the U.S.

What Fab Is Spending The Cash On

$150 million is a lot of cash, and Fab is raising more. Where is the money going? Goldberg says that Fab will be investing in additional enhancements to its supply chain, logistics, customer service, technology, and merchandising. At the beginning of 2012 it took 16 days — on average — from time of purchase to shipping a product. Today, 75 percent of Fab’s orders ship within 24 hours of purchase, and Fab wants to make sure this is the case for 100 percent of the products sold on the site. This year Fab will open its own new Fab-operated warehouse in The Netherlands to serve European customers. In 2014 Fab will open a warehouse in the Las Vegas area.

As mentioned above, Fab will also be doubling down on manufacturing and designing more products in-house, as well as working with designers to offer items exclusively on Fab. We can also expect more development in social and mobile. And Goldberg says Fab will be putting more investment in international (likely via more acquisitions, as it has bought five companies in two years).

With the Tencent investment, Goldberg says that Fab will be working together to expand the site’s presence in China.

As for why Fab has raised as much as it has in only two years, Goldberg maintains that this is how retail works. “Tell me an e-commerce business that is worth more than $5 billion that hasn’t raised a lot of money,” he says. To fund things like logistics, fulfillment, inventory and manufacturing, a business needs a lot of capital, he explains. He adds that if Fab stayed as a U.S. business, the company wouldn’t need to raise as much.

There is also now a somewhat clear path towards profitability, at least for the U.S. and European businesses. Goldberg says that Fab will likely become profitable in its U.S. and European operations by Q4 2014 or Q1 2015.

It’s that time of the year again for us nerds to infiltrate Sand Hill Road, let loose, and enjoy some good food and libations. We’ve been hosting the TechCrunch summer party with VC firm August Capital since 2006. This year, as in years past, we’ll be partying on August Capital’s beautiful, sunny Sand Hill balcony on Friday, July 26. The party starts at 5:30 p.m. and goes til 9:00 p.m.

Tickets, which you can buy here, are $80 each and include drinks and food. We also have a number of sponsorship opportunities available and inquiries can be sent to sponsors@techcrunch.com.

TechCrunch parties have a history of being the place you want to meet your future investor, acquirer or co-founder. Case in point, back when TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington used to hold these ragers in his Atherton back yard; Box founders Aaron Levie and Dylan Smith met one of their first investors, DFJ. In 2010, we spotted 500 Startups’ Dave McClure writing a check to then stealthy startup Tello (which was recently bought by Urban Airship in December) at the August Capital party.

Hope to see you all there this year!!

About the 8th Annual Summer Party at August Capital

• July 26, 5:30 – 9:00 pm
• 2480 Sand Hill Road, Menlo Park CA 94025
• Get Tickets here, $80 based on availability. Tickets will be released in batches. Stay tuned to TechCrunch for releases as they sell out quickly.

While Pinterest has become a go-to destination for crafting ideas for accessories, parties, home design and more; the pinning giant (and Pinners) doesn’t provide the instructions on how to actually make these creations. Enter DarbySmart, a do-it-yourself crafting startup working with top Pinterest designers of DIY accessories, fashion and home items to Kit, market and sell their projects to consumers, complete with all materials and instructions needed to complete the project.

DarbySmart, which was co-founded by Nicole Shariat Farb, former Head of Emerging Private Companies in investment banking at Goldman Sachs and Karl Mendes, a Senior Software Engineer from Eventbrite; wants to take advantage of growing trend of people looking for inspiration and DIY crafts on Pinterest, while also tapping into the $29 billion crafting industry. The challenges many users face, however, is that once they are inspired by crafts on Pinterest, it’s tough to fund the materials and execute.

The startup offers pre-packaged Kits that have been compiled by popular designers on Pinterest. The DarbySmart team works closely with the project designers to test and identify the best possible materials for DIYers to create lasting products. Then, Darby Smart handles sourcing and purchasing the materials, to packaging the Kits and more. These Kits, which range from $25 to $45 each, include all the materials and instructions necessary to successfully complete the project at hand. Designers in turn receive a share of revenue from the kits sold.

For example, one of the kits offered on the site allows you to create a magazine clutch, a small purse with a Vogue magazine cover shellacked on the purse. The startup’s kit includes the Vogue magazine, the purse, glue, and shellack (Mod Podge).

The company is also announcing $1 million in seed funding from a number of strategic angel investors and advisors, including Forerunner Ventures, Novel TMT, Vivi Nevo, Warby Parker co-founder Dave Gilboa, and Maveron, among others.

Crafting is a huge business, and DarbySmart could be an interesting way to harness some of the virality on Pinterest and add an ecommerce component to the mix. Soleil Moon Frye just announced her crafting startup, Moonfrye, which is aimed at families.

Online coupon giant RetailMeNot has just filed for $230 million IPO, according to an S-1 released today.

RetailMeNot, which was acquired in 2010 by the $300 million-funded WhaleShark Media, operates one of the largest digital coupon marketplaces (WhaleShark was subsequently rebranded as RetailMeNot this year). In 2012, the marketplace featured digital coupons from over 60,000 retailers and brands, and the site saw more than 450 million total visits to desktop and mobile websites last year. As of December 31, 2012, the company said it has contracts with more than 10,000 retailers, or paid retailers. RetailMeNot sites account for the majority of the company’s traffic.

In terms of financials, RetailMeNot reports that revenues increased from $16.9 million in 2010 to $144.7 million in 2012. In the same period, net income increased from $2.3 million to $26 million, so the company appears to be profitable, and growing.

The Austin-based company has raised $300 million in funding from Google Ventures, IVP, Austin Ventures, Norwest Venture Partners and Adam Street Partners. Whaleshark had previously acquired a number of other coupon sites, including vouchercodes, deals2buy, coupon7, couponshare, cheapstingybargains.com, and deals.com.

It’s good to see a non-enterprise, consumer-focused company bet on the public markets in this climate. We’ve definitely seen a number of strong enterprise IPOs, so it will be interesting to see how the markets react to the more consumer-facing, and ecommerce-related RetailMeNot.

Chicago-based Inventables, a marketplace for technology and materials for developers and designers, has raised $3 million in new funding led by Tim Draper (via Draper Associates) with Dundee Venture Capital, Richard Yoo (founder of Rackspace), Georges Harik, and True Ventures participating. This brings Inventables’ total funding to $5 million.

Inventables launched in 2010 as a marketplace for software, hardware and materials for makers, designers and manufacturers to create prototypes and low-volume production runs. Essentially, Inventables sells the parts, machines and materials that many hardware developers or manufacturers need to build their products.

The marketplace itself is similar to any other shopping site, where you can purchase supplies online that are shipped to you within a few days. But Inventables has added a few features which make it friendly for makers. For example, on a product’s page, you’ll see what other designers have made with the material or how they used it to develop a product. You’ll also see questions (and answers) posted about the product.

Additionally, Inventables develops and sells its own products, including a CNC milling machine, called Shapeoko, which is used by a watchmaker to design and manufacture its leather and wood watches. The machine allows customers to create products digitally on the computer and then download them into a digital manufacturing machine where they are actually produced and made. Inventables also has one of the largest selections of acrylic sheets. And as 3D printing has taken off, Inventables sells 3D printers (including Makerbot), and has a selection of filament for these printers in 24 colors.

As founder and CEO Zach Kaplan explains, Inventables is helping to make it possible for a new generation of individuals and companies to manufacture and sell their own products without needing to outsource production. As we are seeing more hardware startups enter the market, Inventables has become a destination to buy the components needed to build these products.

Of course, Kaplan acknowledges that its a competitive market, with Inventables going head to head with AmazonSupply. But he thinks Inventables can differentiate itself via its community of designer, makers and entrepreneurs. Already there is a passionate community around some of the products and functions supplied by Inventables, and the company has even open-sourced the software and hardware behind the milling machine.

Inventables will use part of the new investment to expand to a new 25,000-square-foot facility in Chicago where product development, engineering and distribution will be co­located. And Kaplan is hiring a larger engineering team to develop additional proprietary software and hardware.

It’s that time of the week for a new episode of CrunchWeek, the weekly show where three of us writers plop ourselves down in the TechCrunch TV studio for some real talk about the most interesting stories from the past seven days.

Colleen Taylor, Greg Kumparak and I chatted this week about private social network Path’s rumored $1 billion valuation and the company’s growth to 12 million users, which has been questioned over the past few months.

Next up with Google’s purchase of Waze, the reported price tage of $1.1 billion, and why the search giant spent so much on the social mapping startup. And we talked briefly about the big news from Apple’s developer conference WWDC, including iOS 7, and iTunes Radio.

In this week’s Ask A VC epsiode, we had Canaan Partners’ Maha Ibrahim in the studio to chat about her perspective on social gaming and more.

Ibrahim, who has worked at Canaan since 2000, invests in cloud, social gaming and digital media companies for the firm. We raised an interesting question to Ibrahim: Why aren’t there more female VCs in the industry? According to a recent report, of the 25 most active VC firms in 2011, only 8 percent of their investment professionals were women. Many of these firms don’t have female investment professionals at all.

Considering Ibrahim’s investment in Kabam and the struggles Zynga has faced, we also asked her whether there is still an opportunity in social gaming.

Check out her answers to these questions above!

We’re hearing from multiple sources that private social network Path is raising a new round of funding that could value the company as high as $1 billion. According to one source, the company is in the process of seeking between $75 million to $100 million in financing and is aiming for the aforementioned number as a valuation.

We hear investors are approaching Path after a period of high growth, but as of yet no one has tossed out a valuation number or an amount that has stuck.

These reports come amidst controversy surrounding Path’s growth tactics and rumors that it is seeking an acquisition (which could still be the case as an alternative to raising more money). To date, Path has raised nearly $42 million in funding from VCs like Kleiner Perkins, Index Ventures and Redpoint among many others.

Path, which now has 12 million users, was founded in 2010 and is led by former Facebooker Dave Morin. The startup has had a frenzied past few months. The company’s app was accused of spamming users, had its hand slapped by Facebook and was forced to pay an $800,000 fine to the FTC over uploading user address books in their entirety to its servers.

Last year, Path raised $30 million at a $250 million valuation, so $1 billion is a pretty big jump for the social network. Google offered over $100 million for Path back in 2011, but Morin famously turned down the acquisition in favor of raising more money.

Walmart, via its Silicon Valley innovation lab @WalmartLabs, has made another acquisition today, continuing its shopping spree. The company is announcing that predictive intelligence startup Inkiru will be joining Walmart Labs to accelerate the retail giant’s analytics capabilities. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Inkiru’s platform is an active learning system that combines predictive intelligence, data abalytics and a decision engine to influence and determine customer interactions. Benefits to using Inkiru include being able to reduce fraud, improve customer segmentation and targeting, and more.

In a post announcing the acquisition, Walmart Labs writes that Inkiru’s predictive analytics platform will add data analysis capabilities, including site personalization, search, fraud prevention and marketing. From the post: “Walmart’s data scientists will now be able to work with big data directly and create impact faster than ever before.”

Walmart Labs is known for being acquisitive when it comes to snapping up early-stage startups to test new ideas in e-commerce. Some of these startups eventually get folded into the company’s e-commerce site and other online operations. In May, Walmart Labs purchased cloud computing newcomer OneOps and the software development shop Tasty Labs, which was founded by Delicious founder Joshua Schachter. In the past, it has acquired startups like Kosmix, OneRiot, Grabble, Small Society and others.

It looks like we can expect Walmart.com to improve personalization, which isn’t too surprising. Data analytics and personalization are certainly two areas where retailers are doubling down as a way to both add to the customer experience and draw more conversions online.

This week on TechCrunch TV’s Ask A VC show, we have Canaan Partners Maha Ibrahim and Lightbank partner Paul Lee in the studio. As you may remember, you can submit questions for our guests either in the comments or here and we’ll ask them during the show.

Ibrahim invests in cloud, social gaming and digital media companies for Canaan. Her past investments include PicksPal (acquired by Liberty Media), Kabam, and Koolbit. She’s also been investing in enterprise companies, including Virsto (acquired by VMware), XDN (acquired by Fortinet) and SenSage (acquired by KEYW Corporation), provider of log management and security information management systems.

We’re curious to hear Ibrahim’s thoughts on the future of social gaming, and whether there is still a real opportunity for growth in mobile.

Lee, who is based in Chicago, joined Lightbank as a Partner in February 2011. At Lightbank, Lee led the firm’s investments in BabbaCo, Beachmint, Cleversense (acquired by Google), Contently, DoubleDutch, ElaCarte, EventUp, Needle, OnSwipe, SkyVu Entertainment, and Udemy.

Previously, Lee was Managing Director and Group Head of Digital at Playboy Enterprises and was a founding Partner and Senior Vice President at the Peacock Equity Fund, a joint venture between NBC Universal and GE Capital. Lee has invested in both companies in Silicon Valley and outside of the Bay Area, in Chicago, LA and New York; so we’re curious to hear his thoughts on where the next crop of interesting startups are rising up from, what the barriers these startups face.

Please send us your questions for Ibrahim and Lee here or put them in the comments below!

Goal setting within a startup or company is essential to success. But there are a number of different approaches to attaining these goals both within teams and individually. And what better framework to follow than Google’s strategy around establishing goals.

This gem is part of the Google Ventures Startup Lab‘s body of content, explained by current Googlers, and other technology execs; aimed at helping startups navigate things like A/B testing, holding productive meetings and more. While most of these talks are private, Google Ventures is gradually posting a number of these discussions online for all entrepreneurs to access. In the video above, Google Ventures partner Rick Klau, who runs the Startup Lab with Ken Norton, covers the value of setting objectives and key results (OKRs) and how this has been done at Google since 1999.

Klau, a former Google company employee himself, recalls the story of Kleiner Perkins’ partner and early Google investor John Doerr visiting the company early on to explain a method of setting goals he has witnessed at Intel (as told in author Steven Levy’s book, In The Plex). What’s super interesting about Klau’s presentation is that he found the actual deck that Doerr used when presenting to the Larry, Sergey, and the rest of the Google team in 1999 (around 7 minutes in).

Salesforce is on a bit of an acquisition spree this week. After purchasing marketing software company ExactTarget for $2.5 billion, the sales SaaS giant has announced the purchase of EdgeSpring, an enterprise business intelligence and analytics startup.

Though financial terms of the deal were not disclosed, this is likely a smaller acquisition for Salesforce. EdgeSpring just came out of stealth last month, raising $11 million in Series A funding from Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Lightspeed Ventures. The EdgeSpring platform accelerates the building of analytics applications that parse business intelligence data like sales, financials and more. The company wants to allow businesses to derive insights from data of any size or structure. EdgeSpring says it enables applications to answer first and second order questions across structured and semi-structured data.

CEO and co-founder Vijay Chakravarthy, who previously worked at Salesforce, explained in May that part of EdgeSpring’s secret sauce is in its patent-pending technology. The core of the platform is built around  EdgeMart, a powerful data store, and the Lens Framework, a dynamic visualization engine.

He writes on the company’s site, announcing the acquisition:

“Over the past two and a half years, we at EdgeSpring have built up a strong team and executed on bringing a next-generation decision-making platform to market. Business Intelligence and Analytics in the enterprise is a massively painful and IMHO still largely unsolved problem today. Being a part of Salesforce.com will give us a tremendous opportunity to take our technology to the next level and deliver truly amazing innovation to solve this high value problem.

Having worked at salesforce.com once before, I am also excited to be (re)joining a company that shares the values that we hold true here at EdgeSpring: being strongly customer centric and focused on bringing consumer-like ease of use to the enterprise.”

Despite being in stealth, EdgeSpring was able to accumulate a number of high-profile customers, including AppSense, Demandbase, Docusign, EllieMae, Equinix, Hara, HighWire, Intacct, Lithium, Neustar, Pandora, SpruceMedia, and Xactly.

It’s not surprising that Salesforce would be doubling down on business analytics and intelligence talent and software — no word yet on whether Salesforce will shut EdgeSpring down or continue to sell the technology.

In this week’s Ask A VC show, Redpoint partner Chris Moore joined us in the studio to discuss how he sources and spots promising startups, and more.

Moore focuses on making investments for Redpoint in consumer internet, online marketing and SaaS companies, and has led Redpoint’s investment in Efficient Frontier (acquired by Adobe), Right Media (acquired by Yahoo), Auditude (acquired by Adobe), and IntoNow (acquired by Yahoo). Considering the many successful exits Moore has helped startups navigate through (especially in the ad tech space), we asked him how he knows when a company has the potential to go public vs. stay private, and accept an acquisition offer.

We also tackled a number of reader questions including whether he would rather invest in an entrepreneur who has previous experience working for a technology company in Silicon Valley.

Tune in above for more!

AdMob founder Omar Hamoui is joining Sequoia Capital, we’ve learned. Sequoia confirmed that Hamoui is joining the firm as an investment partner and will be starting in a few weeks.

Hamoui’s mobile ad platform AdMob was sold to Google in 2009 for $750 million, and Sequoia Capital was one of the first investors in the platform, back when AdMob was a one-man team with Hamoui. After Hamoui left Google, he started the incubator Churn Labs (with which Sequoia partnered, as well) along with AdMob’s first engineer, Mike Rowehl.

Churn Labs spawned a number of startups, including polling company Maybe (acqui-hired by LinkedIn) comic-book reader for the iPad Emanata, and mobile advertising startup Metaresolver (acquired by Millennial Media). He’s also made personal angel investments in Gigwalk, Card.io (acquired by PayPal), and Pocket Gems, among others.

Hamoui explains that he still wanted to be involved with building companies as opposed to taking the traditional VC route after he left Google, which is why he started Churn Labs. But as an angel investor he wasn’t able to really take a meaningful role in the day-to-day work of a startup, and joining a VC firm made sense, especially the firm that originally backed him as a fledgling entrepreneur at AdMob.

“Sequoia is trying to not only build enduring companies, but they really put founders first,” Hamoui tells us. “The firm is in the background but they are part of the grind and put a tremendous amount of work in to help founders build great companies.”

Hamoui recalls when AdMob was considering an offer from Google in 2009, Sequoia and the firm’s lead VC on the deal, Jim Goetz, was the loudest voice against the acquisition. The firm believed that AdMob could be a bigger, even potentially public company. “In retrospect, I think Jim and Sequoia were right to not want to sell,” he adds.

“The last time Omar resided at Sequoia he incubated AdMob. We’re excited to see how he can help founders now that he’ll be sticking around,” said Goetz in a statement.

In terms of what ideas Hamoui is interested in investing in, he says there isn’t a defined focus on what types of companies he’ll be evaluating, but he does still think there is opportunity in mobile ads technology. He’s also bullish on technologies that are changing the real-world economy, and Internet of things, such as companies like Nest, Airbnb and Uber.

Although Hamoui himself has been a serial entrepreneur and angel investor, he maintains that he will still be learning a tremendous amount from Sequoia’s partners. “I want to find and defend things that aren’t huge yet, that people will say will never work, and help bring that to the world,” he says. “Sequoia did this for AdMob, and I want to do this for other entrepreneurs.”

In the consumer mobile app world, developers have a number of platforms including iOS, and Android, from which they can not only find users but also monetize and make money. Connecting with social networks like Facebook can help for distribution, and you can sell your app in Apple’s App Store and Google Play or make money via ads. But in the enterprise world, this is a challenge that any mobile or web app developer faces. Today, cloud storage company Box is hoping to solve this problem for developers by debuting Box $rev, a new program for developers to monetize their applications on the Box platform.

“This is really about how we can drive value for both developers and users,” explains CEO and co-founder Aaron Levie. He says that enterprise apps do not monetize well in the App Store or other mobile app platforms, and this is going to provide a way for enterprise app developers who are building off of Box to actually make revenue from users interacting with their apps. “This is the easiest way for enterprise app developers to make money,” claims Levie.

With Box $rev, developers are paid when a Box Business or Enterprise customer uses a third-party app that’s integrated with Box. Box $rev, via a new SDK developers must use, will measure customer interactions with third-party apps integrated on Box and compensate developers based on that usage. Based on usage, developers can be paid up to 15 percent of the Box seat price ( which can range from $10 per month upwards) per user. If an entire organization with 10,000 seats downloads a specific app, that could be meaningful revenue for the developers. It also provides a way for Box to see which apps its users are interacting with the most.

“We’re rewriting the rules when it comes to supporting the next generation of enterprise app developers,” says Levie.

Box $rev is launching today with ten inaugural Box OneCloud partners including CloudOn, Notability, Documents by Readdle, PDFExpert, iAnnotate, Genius Scan, CamScanner, Outline+, GoodNotes and SmartOffice. Over time, Box $rev will expand to a broader set of programs and capabilities, the company explains.

Box is also releasing new SDKs for Android and IOS that add the ability for users to select Box files through a secure file picker with only a few lines of code. Box has also added built-in SSO support to easily manage enterprise identity.

At the heart of what Box is doing is trying to create a broader economy around its API and developer ecosystem. Box $rev could be a super interesting way to not only attract more developers to build off of Box, but also gain additional insight into how its business and enterprise users are interacting with additional functions and apps leveraging the cloud storage platforms. Today, the Box OneCloud ecosystem includes more than 500 app integrations, including drchrono, SmartOffice and Documents by Readdle. And 43% of the Fortune 500 are using apps from Box OneCloud today.

L.A.-based incubator and studio Science is in the process of raising a $30 million new investment fund, according to sources familiar with the matter.

Science was founded in 2011 by former Myspace CEO and serial entrepreneur Mike Jones as part of the new wave of company builders. The studio is currently led by Jones and Peter Pham, the former founder of BillShrink. Startups who have been incubated within Science include Dog Vacay and Dollar Shave Club.

At launch, Science raised $10 million in funding from Eric Schmidt’s Tomorrow Ventures, Rustic Canyon, White Star Capital, The Social+Capital Partnership, Jean-Marie Messier, Philippe Camus, Jonathan Miller and Dennis Phelps. Earlier this year, the organization took a $30 million investment from Heart Media Corp, as AllThingsD reported in February. That money was put towards operational costs and to expanding Science as a business. The company recently brought on Jason Rapp as a managing director.

This new fund, we’ve heard, is being put towards giving Science startups a guaranteed amount of money, the specific amount of which is still being determined. It’s similar in theory to YC VC (and its predecessor The Start Fund), which offers $80,000 in funding to each Y Combinator graduate. The fund will also be used to make outside investments in non-Science incubated startups. Science has made similar investments in the past, including BlackJet, OUYA and Wealthfront, according to the company’s site.

As we had written earlier this year, Science is part of the new wave of company builders who are forgoing traditional venture capital in favor of developing studio-like holding operations.

Payments startup Stripe is making an interesting move in the world of marketplaces that should make it significantly easier for collaborative consumption startups to take and process payments. The company is debuting a technology that allows for payments to be distributed to multiple bank accounts.

Here’s the problem many marketplaces face with many of the existing technologies. When a buyer of a service (i.e. a person using Lyft for transportation) pays, the money can only be transferred to one account. So Lyft has to have payments sent to their own account, and then sent to the driver (i.e. the seller). With Stripe’s new technology, you can insert a few lines of code into your app, and you will enable the ability to add multiple accounts to where money can be sent.

The new feature can send bank (ACH) transfers to anyone with a U.S. bank account. To use this feature, a marketplace would charge customers as they normally would. Once they have enabled production transfers via the new API, the marketplace will be able to pay out any number of accounts instead of having funds automatically deposited in one main bank account for distribution. You can collect payee bank account details directly with Stripe’s API or with Stripe.js (which means sensitive details never touch a marketplace’s server). Once you create a recipient, you can transfer funds to them with a single API call. It costs a flat $0.25 per transfer.

Co-founder John Collison tells me that marketplaces like Lyft, Sidecar, Exec, and Postmates are the company’s fastest-growing segment of enterprise users. It made sense to develop this technology to better suit their needs.

In the future, Collison says we can expect additional international expansion beyond the U.S., UK and Ireland. Stripe, which is currently processing millions in transactions every day, just acquired Belgian collaboration startup Kickoff and launched a partnership with Facebook-acquired, mobile app development platform Parse.

Japanese e-commerce giant Rakuten is acquiring Webgistix, a U.S.-based logistics and services company specializing in fulfillment technology for e-commerce retailers. The acquisition is Rakuten’s second logistics investment outside of Japan. Financial terms of the deal are not being disclosed at this time.

Founded in 2001, Webgistix allows e-commerce companies to manage their supply chains with software for order fulfillment, freight management and shipment optimization. The company also owns a strategic network of company-operated fulfillment centers that enable merchants to reach 98 percent of e-commerce customers in the U.S. within 1-2 business days via ground delivery. Essentially, Webgistix is Rakuten’s answer to Amazon Prime in the U.S. Webgistix, which is profitable, took one round of an undisclosed amount of outside funding.

Rakuten operates a number of web and mobile properties, chief of which is Rakuten Ichiba, the largest online retailer in Japan. It is also one of the largest e-commerce companies in the world, as measured by sales, and sells in 20 countries, including the U.S. via its marketplace

The company has made a number of interesting M&A and investment moves over the past few years, including buying Play.com (the UK property), Buy.com in 2010 (now Rakuten.com), Kobo and, earlier this year, Grommet. Last year, Rakuten led Pinterest’s $100 million round.

Boosting logistics infrastructure and fulfillment has been a major priority for the marketplace. In August 2012, Rakuten Logistics began offering Rakuten Ichiba Merchants “Rakuten Super Logistics,” which includes fulfillment service solutions, incoming/outgoing inventory management, storage, packaging, delivery, customer service and more. In November 2012 Rakuten bought French warehousing automation and logistics company Alpha Direct Services, which helped build out logistics across Europe and Japan.

The acquisition of Webgistix will provide warehouse and fulfillment services to US-based Rakuten.com Shopping merchants, says Hiroshi Mikitani, chairman and CEO of Rakuten. “We want to empower merchants to be able to ship anywhere in the world,” he explains. Empowering the merchant, he adds, is part of Rakuten’s focus. That’s why merchants are able to create customizable storefronts on the marketplace. The next piece of the puzzle, says Mikitani, was adding fulfillment.

Webgistix’s CEO and founder Joseph DiSorbo explains that the company provides a two-day delivery model that competes directly with Amazon Prime. “U.S. retailers on Rakuten’s platform will reap the benefits similar to Amazon Prime,” he says. While Amazon is a formidable competitor, the “game has not been won on the global marketplace, and Rakuten is empowering merchants in a different way,” DiSorbo says.

Whether Mikitani and Rakuten can take on Amazon in a meaningful way is yet to be determined. Clearly, the company has no hesitations in acquiring its way into market share and technologies. As of last year, Rakuten was seeing about $5 billion per year in revenues and is growing fast in mobile.

Porch, a soon to be launched home improvement and repair marketplace, has raised $6.25 million is funding from SV Angel, Chamath Palihapitiya, Javier Olivan, Jeff Skoll, Bill Lee, Geoff Entress, Charles Moldow, and others.

Porch is a Pinterest-like platform for home design and improvement that also connects you to professionals who can make the designs and reconstruction a reality in your own home or apartment. You view other neighbors’ home projects, see their actual project costs, and decide on the right professional by seeing friend endorsements.

At launch, Porch, which is still private and won’t be available until later in the year (through you can request early access on the site), has over 1.4 million professionals who can be reached via its platform. According to a 2012 Porch survey, 98%
of homeowners experience pain when finding a professional and knowing the price for their home needs. By understanding work history and which professionals’ friends and neighbors endorse, Porch says that it is able to provide homeowners with free, personalized, and vetted word of mouth recommendations for make home improvements.

And not only does the site collect data on professionals, but Porch has aggregated information on 60 million home improvement projects from these individuals with 600,000 photos. So the site will highlight actual project costs alongside before and after photos, and surface the professionals that worked multiple times for neighbors and friends and on specific projects at similar homes.

The Seattle-based startup was founded by data, marketplace, and consumer acquisition entrepreneurs, including CEO Matt Ehrlichman, from Google, Microsoft, Expedia and others.

Every year, residential construction and home improvement spending totals over $500 billion, so this is a huge, potential market for Porch. And other players in the space, including Houzz and Zillow’s Digs, are also trying to help homeowners both draw inspiration and find the right contractors online to manage home improvement.

It’s no secret these days that VCs are getting into data in a meaningful way. Firms can no longer afford to wait for companies, people and trends to come to Sand Hill Road. To start competing for deals, VCs have to be prospecting people, companies and trends well before events like Y Combinator’s Demo Day. Many VCs have built their own data-parsing platforms internally, but one startup launching today, Mattermark, is hoping to be the go-to software for firms to use when quantifying signals of growing and potentially lucrative startups.

Mattermark is the brainchild of Danielle Morrill, who previously founded Referly, a way for people who like to curate products to earn extra cash off recommendations through affiliate revenue. Referly was shut down in March (and most of its staff let go); and Morrill, her husband Kevin Morrill, and Andy Sparks (who joined Morrill via Referly’s LaunchGram acquisition in Feburary) are now focusing on Mattermark.

Morill, who is a graduate of Y Combinator via Referly, became increasingly intrigued by how VCs could mine data to identify companies. She was previously the Editor of Seattle 2.0 and helped produce Seattle 2.0 Index, which was a monthly ranked list of all the local startups. Based on her experiences, she realized there was an opportunity to use some of this data in the VC world. As she explains, “If VCs don’t see a company until YC’s Demo Day, they have less of a chance of winning the deal. So investors need to get smart and identify these opportunities beforehand,” she says.

The software allows VCs to access data from Twitter, news sites, SEC filings, LinkedIn, AngelList, CrunchBase, and the company’s own propriety Startup Index in order to spot potential opportunities and track existing startups. Here is an interesting example of some of the data dives that Morill and her team are experimenting with.

For seed investors it’s like an early-warning system, detecting businesses that are gaining mind share with customers long before they’re a hot deal (for example, the app will identify a startup that suddenly starts to get a lot of organic Twitter mentions). For later-stage investors it’s a way to research a startup and get a lot of information about them in one place, and even compare them to other companies in their space (e.g. an increase in LinkedIn followers correlates well with later-stage success).

You can query, track and organize companies by stage, vertical and geography and download this data to Excel or PDF. And Mattermark makes all this data more digestible with powerful filters. For example, you can query which startups are building developer tools who haven’t raised a Series A yet, and rank these companies by engagement on Twitter. The site also provides real-time alerts and weekly email digests.

Beyond just for sourcing deals, the software, says Morrill, can also be used to research the background of a potential investment or generate sales leads for clients. Referly-backers Andreessen Horowitz, Ignition and NEA did a follow-on round in Mattermark, and are actually using the application internally. Morrill adds that the startup is also looking to build custom applications for certain firms.

There is a free subscription product available that provides a weekly newsletter and access to all company leaderboards. The paid pro account is a subscription and provides full database access, custom reports and alerts.

There’s no doubt that there is a significant opportunity in being the Bloomberg terminal for VCs and investors. Until recently, most of the investments were sourced via word of mouth or introduction. It’s a different world for VCs these days and knowledge and data is now power.

As Morrill explains, “We don’t believe we can replace investors’ ability to build relationships with entrepreneurs, but we do think we can help them source opportunities more efficiently and reduce the chances of missing a whale.” And certainly the success of Mattermark will be hinged upon whether it does allow a VC firm to help find the next Instagram.