Robots And Coffee Clash, Seed Startups, And Investors’ High

Welcome to the Crunchbase News Weekend Update. An email form of this post went out Saturday morning. Happy reading!

Fall in San Francisco looks like TechCrunch Disrupt, coffee-robot tension, Brex, cannabis funding, and esports. Last fall, while I was still in Boston, I would’ve said that this month felt like meeting old friends, Allston Christmas, and the leaves actually changing colors.

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Adjustment aside, let’s get into the latest headlines with an IPO update. In this week’s line up, we had debuts from Datadog and Ping Identity, funding for Postmates, and a set-the-record-straight moment from Airbnb (and WeWork).

Then there’s the still-private, but equally big companies. A Brazilian online home goods platform, MadeiraMadeira, raised $110 million; payments company Stripe raised $250 million; and WordPress owner Automattic landed $300 million.

We also covered two industries that have been traditionally slow to adopting new technologies but seem to be coming around. Fieldwire, which has developed a cloud-based task management tool aimed at those working in the construction field, raised $33.5 million. And Biproxi, which aims to be the “Zillow of commercial real estate,” brought in $10 million in a seed round.

Through scouring filings, we also got a look at the latest venture funds. Deep-tech investor DCVC landed $725 million for Fund V; March Capital Partners is eyeing $410 million for Fund III; Revolution Ventures closed $215 million for its third fund, and Precursor Ventures is raising $10 million for an opportunity fund. As part of the Seed Series, Gené Teare interviewed #Angels on its investment taste buds. Mary Ann also looked into Goldman Sachs’ startup investing spree.

Finally, here are some big topics in the late-stage and public markets you should understand: a theory behind Slack’s market repricing, the trend of supergiant seed rounds, and why, if you care about Andreessen Horowitz, you should probably care about the J-Curve.

After all of this, I guess one thing has stayed the same between the move from Boston to San Francisco: September will always be a little nerdy after all.

P.S.  Follow me on Twitter (@nmasc_)