Hasta La Gadget!

Toronto-based startup Slyce has raised a new round of $10.75 million in funding, led by Beacon Securities, and including PI Financial, Salman Partners, Harrington Global and more. The company builds image recognition tech, and wants to be the Amazon Flow for every other retailer on the planet, enabling point and shoot shopping with smartphone cameras. If you’re not familiar with Amazon Flow,… Read More

Diamond Products, a pleasure product-centric holdings company, has announced the acquisition of Jimmyjane. The terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Jimmyjane sits right at the intersection of sex toys and technology, developing next-generation pleasure products like the Form 6 vibrator and the HelloTouch vibrating finger pads. Not only do these products integrate tech-inspired design practices, such as wireless charging and minimalism, but they get the job done.

Trust me.

Diamond Products, in conjunction with a NYC private equity firm Brookstone Partners, has also acquired Pipedream Products, another sex toy, lingerie, pleasure product comapny.

The two companies (Jimmyjane and Pipedream) will now work together to “bring pleasure to the people.”

Here’s the full press release:

Diamond Products, in conjunction with a New York private equity firm, has made its second acquisition in the adult pleasure products industry in less than a year. Diamond approached Jimmyjane, the award-winning lifestyle brand known for reimagining the industry through design and innovation, to capitalize on the growing premium Sexual Wellbeing market. Together as part of Diamond, Jimmyjane and Pipedream Products aim to shape the future of the category as the world’s leading manufacturer of pleasure products.

With knowledge and experience gained over the last decade, Jimmyjane creates exceptional products that wow and delight its customers around the world. More than just a coveted brand, Jimmyjane embodies the team’s passion for pushing the limits of design, quality and innovation. Award-winning designer Ethan Imboden founded the company in 2004 with the goal of bringing “Pleasure to the People” – and reshaping the sex products market along the way. He and his team leveraged unprecedented design, engineering and marketing to achieve their goal of making exceptional pleasure products broadly available – both in top “sex positive” retail environments, as well as through mainstream distribution. Today, Jimmyjane products are globally renowned for their exceptional performance, durability and design. The company is credited for its leading role in reorienting the global conversation around pleasure products, and has become known in the media as “the Apple of sex toys”.

Nick Orlandino, CEO of Diamond Products commented “Jimmyjane is an exceptionally rare brand. Rare in the unique quality and design of its products, but also in the vision that has been executed over the last decade. I am very pleased that Ethan and the Jimmyjane team believe that our group is best able to ensure the continuity of this vision and the ongoing growth of the brand. Together we share the same values of quality and intense customer focus. I am convinced that our group will prove a good home and can help realize the significant future potential of Jimmyjane.”

Ethan Imboden, Founder and Chairman of Jimmyjane commented “We’re excited about this next step for Jimmyjane. Both our company and industry have come a very long way in the past 10 years. With the strength of Diamond behind Jimmyjane, we’ll be able to take our mission of bringing “Pleasure to the People” to an entirely different scale. Nick and the Diamond team respect the customer- and design-centric values, approach and attention to detail that are the foundation of Jimmyjane, and will be great partners in growing the brand’s reach and amplifying its message.”

This acquisition is a key facet of Diamond Products’ long-term growth strategy and offers the group a leadership position in the premium pleasure products market with one of the world’s best known specialty brands. Jimmyjane will continue to operate separately, maintaining its product development, creative, online, sales and day-to-day operations teams at its corporate headquarters in San Francisco.

Back in the summer we covered Fuel3D’s Kickstarter campaign for a high res scanner that can turn real world objects into 3D models with accurate geometry and colour — a companion device for the rise in ownership of 3D printers (which of course need 3D blueprints to print).

Fuel3D went on to raise more than $300,000 via its Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign, and today the technology that came out of the U.K.’s Oxford University has further added to its war chest for continued development and getting the product to market — snagging $2.6 million in early stage financing from a syndicate of private investors, led by Ben Gill of London-based Chimera Partners.

It’s also talking early IPO, with plans to follow this tranche of external funding with a mezzanine financing round, expected to take place before the summer — and, possibly, an initial public offering as early as 2015.

“We have established a core group of shareholders that have taken a long term view on the technology and management of Fuel 3D Technologies,” said Gill, commenting on the funding in a statement. “The 3D printing market is the focus of significant investor interest at the moment, and Fuel 3D’s disruptive technology feeds that interest from a unique angle. We are actively exploring a number of interesting financing options, including the possibility of an early IPO.”

Fuel3D said the big response to its Kickstarter campaign, which had only been aiming to raise $75,000 so pulled in 4x that original target, helped it draw interest from the broader investment community.

“We had a phenomenal response to our product on Kickstarter and the attention this generated led to many enquiries from the broader investment community,” said Stuart Mead, CEO, Fuel 3D Technologies, in a statement. “We have always been confident that our technology has the potential to revolutionize the industry and are delighted to have found a group of ambitious and well-resourced investors who share our vision.”

While Fuel3D is not the first to build a high resolution 3D scanner by any means, its focus on making such high end tech affordable — putting a sub-$1,000 price-tag on the device for its Kickstarter campaign — is presumably what’s especially exciting investors here.

The expected retail price of Fuel3D’s device will actually be $1,500 — albeit, that’s still far below rival high res scanners which it says retail for $15,000+.

Fuel3D’s device also breaks from the relatively rigid turntable model for scanning objects, such as the rival Photon 3D scanner, allowing for more freestyle scanning. So, for instance, human faces can be captured in situ — i.e. on people’s necks — without having to do any kind of separating of head from body.

The other focus for Fuel3D is on capturing accurate colour and detailed texture, offering wide scope for its scanner beyond the 3D printing space — i.e. for use by 3D artists, animators, game designers and so on.

Fuel3D’s original Kickstarter campaign was aiming to ship to the earliest backers in April, with additional shipments penciled in for July and September as it worked through to fulfill orders.

Coin, a YC-backed company looking to thin down your wallet, is currently in the process of raising around $15 million in Series A funding, according to multiple sources familiar with the matter.

Led by Kanishk Parashar and K9 investor/board member Manu Kumar, Coin offers a replacement for every credit card in your wallet. It swipes just like a credit card normally would, but with a button to switch between your AMEX, your personal Visa and your corporate credit card. But it does more than just slim your wallet.

The company put the Bluetooth-powered wallet up for pre-order in November using their own crowdfunding campaign, and blew past the $50,000 goal in less than 40 minutes. Coin promised to get first shipments out by this summer.

According to sources, the company needed to raise a Series A to cover production costs in the midst of unexpected and overwhelming demand. (I pre-ordered, too.)

Though the raise is imminent, it is unclear which investors are playing in the round. Rumors suggest that Redpoint may be involved. We have also heard that Coin has hired several new engineers, which could signal that they are expecting a cash infusion soon, or even that the round has already closed.

Prior to this, Coin had raised $1.5 million in seed funding from K9 Ventures, SoftTech VC, and Y Combinator, according to Crunchbase.

Coin creator and engineer Kanishk Parashar originally started a payments company called SmartMarket before moving on to develop a credit card replacement.

Pairing with your smartphone, Coin ensures that you never leave your credit card behind through alerts, and has sophisticated security features that recognize fraudulent activity the moment that someone tries to steal CC information. (Oftentimes, credit card owners aren’t aware that their credit card info has been stolen until the thief tries to use the card, not when they first steal the information.)

The price for such a device? $50, plus $5 shipping, as long as you participate in the pre-order phase. Once the device goes on sale officially, it will cost $100.

The company faced as much criticism as it did hype when pre-orders first opened, but has done a good job of answering questions.

This is hardly the first time a company has tried the all-in-one card strategy, nor is it the first time consumers have embraced it. In 2012, the press were similarly excited about a device called the Protean Echo, which is still listed as shipping soon. Flint is another startup dabbling in the consumer payments space.

Clearly, an evolution in the way we pay for things is on the horizon. The question, rather, is whether or not Coin will join Square and Stripe and Bitcoin and others as a major player in the revolution.

If you’re interested in learning more about Coin, check out TC writer Ryan Lawler’s interview with CEO and co-founder Kineshk Parashar below:

Google just bought Nest for $3.2 billion cash, and that means the startup’s early investors Kleiner Perkins Caufield Byers and Shasta Ventures have struck it rich. Multiple sources say Kleiner invested $20 million in Nest and got a 20X return to pull in $400 million. [Update: Meanwhile, the deal returned “almost all” of Shasta’s second $250M fund.]

Nest didn’t disclose the size of its Series A and B rounds or who invested how much. That makes it’s hard to pinpoint who earned what on the sale of the home automation startup that sells smart thermostats and smoke detectors.

Shasta and KPCB funded all of Nest’s Series A round back in September 2010, just a few months after the connected device startup was founded. Then in August 2011, they both participated in Nest’s Series B, which also included Google Ventures, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Intertrust, and Generation Investment Management.

Multiple sources say Kleiner Perkins was Nest’s biggest investor, and was able to invest $20 million in Nest across the A and B rounds. Our sources say the $3.2 billion cash price Google paid for Nest will generate a 20X return for KPCB — which matches the 20X multiple Fortune’s Dan Primack heard from a source. The money came from 2010′s $650 million KPCB XIV fund, which means Kleiner returned over 60% of the fund with just its Nest investment. The treasure should also boost the status of KPCB partner Randy Komisar, who sourced the investments and sat on Nest’s board.

The win for Kleiner Perkins Caufield Byers is reminiscent of its early home runs on investments in Google, Amazon, AOL, and Intuit in the 1990s. Recently, it’s gotten a piece of huge exits like Facebook and Twitter as well as rising stars like Square and Spotify, but not until later rounds when potential returns are much lower. But with Nest, KPCB got in on the ground floor and will reap the benefits when the acquisition by Google officially closes.

Shasta Ventures’ Managing Director Rob Coneybeer, who led its Nest investment

As for Shasta Ventures, today is a massive win for the firm and its managing director Rob Coneybeer, who we hear fought relentlessly to get the $250 million Shasta II fund into Nest’s Series A and B rounds.

[Update: A source familiar with Google’s deal to acquire Nest tells us Shasta’s investment will bring it enough money to return “almost all” of the $250 million Shasta II fund. That means Shasta pulled in $200 million or more from the Nest acquisition.]

The Nest deal almost surely trumps other Shasta hits like Zenprise which was bought by Citrix, and Mint which was bought by Intuit. The returns could bolster confidence in limited partners and help Shasta raise its next fund.

Google Ventures also pulled in big money today, as it led Nest’s Series B and C rounds. Oh, and so did Nest’s founders Tony Fadell and Matt Rogers.

For the venture capital industry as a whole, the Nest acquisition may contribute to a frothy market for hardware entrepreneurs. If companies like Google are out there paying billions in cash for young startups that build devices instead of software, it may become easier for hardware tinkers to raise serious capital and move from their garage to a real laboratory.

[Additional reporting by Kim-Mai Cutler]

Click below to read the full story on Google buying Nest: