Technology

CarBlip, a new car-buying mobile application thataiming to compete with services like Wyper,has raised $2 million in a new round of financing.

The investment was led by Nordic Eye Venture Capital with participation from the startup studio and seed investment firm, Science.

CarBlip chief executive Brian Johnson said that the companymain purpose was to bring the car-buying experience online.

&One of the main things about why we started CarBlip is we wanted to circumvent the in-person negotiation process and avoid the influx of calls that a buyer gets,& says Johnson.

The user just downloads an app and looks for the brands they want that are available in an already geo-located area, Johnson said. Shoppers can submit bids on a vehicle privately and receive counter-offers via the app. Then, when they&re ready, they can head down to a dealership to move forward with the purchase, Johnson said.

While Johnson doesn&t have much auto experience himself (outside of marketing), co-founder Eric Brooks and business development executive Kim Lane both spent time in the car business, Johnson said. Brooks founded LA Car Connection, a local car broker, while Lane spent more than a decade at Ford, according to the companywebsite.

Like the old Wyper (now called Findy and offering a broader range of matching services) CarBlip touts a Tinder-like interface that lets users swipe to select vehicles they&re interested in; what Johnson says differentiates his business is the ability to negotiate on the platform for the vehicle. Ita feature thatbound to attract interest from dealerships because they&re pretty much assured a sale, Johnson said.

&We loved the value proposition that they were signing up dealers directly,& said Richard Sussman, the managing partner for Nordic Eye in the U.S.

This post has been updated to indicate that CarBlip is selling new cars, LA Car Connection is a car broker and Kim Lane is an executive in charge of business development.

Sequoia Capital, the 46-year-old venture firm, has secured $6 billion in capital commitments for an $8 billion global fund, according to a new report in the Financial Times. The report echoes a late April piece in The Wall Street Journal that reported Sequoia investors had already committed &roughly& $6 billion to the new fund.

A source familiar with the matter confirms for us that both stories are accurate.

The capital commitments thus far have come from investors with no prior relationship to Sequoia. The firm intends to turn to its previous investors for the rest of the capital commitments, which Sequoia is securing in increments of $250 million or more.

Sequoia now makes more than 50 cents from every dollar returned to its investors from its overseas bets, according to a separate source close to the firm, with the firmChina strategy proving particularly fruitful. Like numerous Silicon Valley firms, Sequoia decided to dip its toe into the market beginning in 2005. Unlike most Silicon Valley firms that opted not to remain in China, owing either to attrition or because of tenuous relationships with local VCs, Sequoia stayed put, empowering the founder of Sequoia Capital China, Neil Shen, to eventually build up offices in Beijing, Hong Kong and Shanghai — and to assemble a portfolio that is today rife with highly valuable companies.

Among the many companies Sequoia Capital China has funded:Meituan-Dianping, the group-discount service that sells locally found products and retail services and just filed to go public in Hong Kong; Ele.me, the food ordering company that sold a controlling stake in its business to Alibaba in April for $9.5 billion; DJI, the drone company, which was reported to be raising $1 billion in new funding this spring at a $15 billion valuation; VIP.com, the commerce platform that went public in 2012 and currently boasts a $7.2 billion market cap; and Didi, the mobile transportation giant thatin a race against its U.S. rival Uber to conquer the global ride-hailing market.

Sequoia Capital China is also an investor in the electric car company Nio, which filed confidentially for a U.S. IPO last month.

Many of the aforementioned companies started as earlier-stage investments for Sequoia, and a source familiar with the matter to says expect the same, no matter how much Sequoia raises. This person observes that the majority of the funds from Sequoiafirst two global growth funds — which were $700 billion and $2 billion, respectively — have been funneled to companies with which Sequoia was already in business, adding that its new funds will also go mostly to existing portfolio companies and new opportunities.

The race to gather up an unprecedented amount of money — by Sequoia most notably, but also numerous other firms that have been raising record-breaking amounts this year — is directly correlated to one of the biggest disruptive trends in the venture industry in recent years: SoftBankVision Fund, a $100 billion fund for now, though SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son has said expect more gargantuan funds in the not-too-distant future. &The Vision Fund was just the first step,& he told the Nikkei last fall. &Ten trillion yen [$88 billion] is simply not enough. We will briskly expand the scale. Vision Funds 2, 3 and 4 will be established every two to three years.&

As sources close to the Vision Fund explained its strategy to us last fall, its mission is not to produce venture-like returns. The idea is instead to return more money to investors than private equity firms like KKR, whose first 18 private equity funds wound up delivering more than two times total capital invested on a gross basis, and produced a net IRR of 18.9 percent. Said one source in particular, &If someone is investing in [Vision Fund], heexpecting to get better returns than with KKR and Blackstone.& Indeed, added this person,20 percent IRR over seven years — the time SoftBank estimates it will take most of Vision Fundbets to play out — is the &worst-case scenario.&

Shen meanwhile suggests that, SoftBank notwithstanding, the game has changed. As he tells the Financial Times of Sequoiamassive new fundraising effort: &The magnitude is different today because the companies are different today . . . To be the lead investor in a company you can no longer just invest $100 million . . . if you want to build a company that is worth several billion. For that you need $400 million or $500 million.&

Billboard will beginusing Pandora Premium and iHeartRadio subscription streams to inform its Billboard 100 and Billboard 200 charts, along with other streaming-inclusive charts, the company announced this week. Before, only Pandoraradio spins were included.

According to Pandora, the change goes into effect on July 14 and will bring nearly 6 million Pandora subscribers& spins into the chart, from those who weren&t being counted before.

iHeartRadio&sterrestrial radio stations nor its programmed radio streams will be reported to Billboard, and won&t impact chart rankings. Instead, its All Access and Plus subscription tiers will be added to theall-genre Hot 100, Billboard 200 and genre-based song and album charts, says Billboard.

These changes are launching alongside a big revamp of how Billboard weighs streaming data for its charts.

Starting with the rankings dated July 14, which cover streaming data from June 29 through July 5, Billboard will give more weight in the chart to plays on paid subscription streaming services like Apple Music and Amazon Music, as well as the plays on the subscription tiers of hybrid (paid/ad-supported) platforms, like Spotify and Soundcloud.

Meanwhile, plays on ad-supported services like YouTube and the non-paid tiers of hybrid services (e.g. Spotifyfree tier) will be given less weight.

Pandoraradio plays have been a part of Billboard charts, including the Hot 100, since January 2017, but the addition of another 6 million users& on-demand streams could greatly impact the rankings.

As Pandora noted today, its app has three times the monthly active streams compared to terrestrial radioonline platform.

&The Billboard charts are our industrybible,& says Jeff Zuchowski, PandoraVP of Artist Marketing and Industry Relations, in a statement about Pandorainclusion. &The fact that all three tiers of Pandora streams are now included is a major milestone not only for us and our 72 million monthly active listeners, but also recognizes, in a very powerful way, the millions of fans who listen to their favorite artists via the Pandora platform,& he said.