YC-Backed Open Listings Enables Home Buyers To Purchase Houses Without Real Estate Agents

Sherpa Ventures Starts $150M Fundraising With $15M Infusion From TPG

Sherpa Ventures - a new early-stage venture firm recently founded by well-known Silicon Valley investor and entrepreneur Shervin Pishevar, formerly of Menlo Ventures, and former Goldman Sachs tech banker Scott Stanford - has started off its efforts to raise $150 million for its initial fund with a $15 million commitment from private equity giant TPG Capital, according to sources close to the situation.

The pair declined to comment on the new funding anchor for Sherpa, which has apparently already made more than two dozen investments in startups since its creation earlier this year. They include BackOps, a cloud-based company that offers back-office services like accounting, human resources and financial reporting; and Munchery, a gourmet-meal delivery service.

Along with Sherpa, Pishevar and Stanford also are working on a second part of their new business, called Sherpa Foundry, a business aimed at helping major strategic corporations gain a digital edge with their existing assets.

Interestingly, TPG recently made a big investment in Uber, the red-hot travel-logistics company. Pishevar has been a close adviser to co-founder and CEO Travis Kalanick.

As I noted in a February post about their new endeavors, the pair's efforts will certainly be interesting to watch:

Indeed more than many in the tech scene, the incessantly networking Pishevar is perhaps well suited to such an ambitious effort like Sherpa. He's has worked closely with a lot of Web 2.0 s hottest startups, such as Uber, Fab and Warby Parker, while also leading Menlo's investment in Tumblr.

An active angel investor, he has also started a number of companies, such as the Social Gaming Network, which was merged with MindJolt.

And Stanford is equally well known in Silicon Valley, having shepherded a wide variety of high-profile deals for the banking giant, while heading its global Internet investment banking business from San Francisco as a managing director. He's been at Goldman for a dozen years and has been involved in investments in Facebook, Zappos and LinkedIn. Before banking, he worked at pioneering search company, LookSmart.

Don Mattrick Debuts as New Zynga CEO, With Loss Expected in Q2

Former Microsoft Xbox head and new Zynga CEO Don Mattrick will helm his first quarterly report and conference call later today, after the company's founder and former CEO Mark Pincus removed himself from the top job several weeks ago.

Unfortunately for Mattrick, the San Francisco online gaming company is expected to report a second-quarter loss of seven cents per share, a decline from last year. On an adjusted basis, the loss will be less. Revenue is also expected to be down, around $185 million. Zynga will report after the markets close.

Such lackluster results might be the new normal for a while, with Zynga still in turnaround mode as it seeks to find lucrative new businesses, especially in mobile.

The tone and tenor of the new leader will be much watched by Wall Street, which will be interested in what Mattrick has in store. And although the Q2 results are not under his watch, Mattrick has already been at the job since July 8, working at its HQ in the city, having moved his family from up north to a house he owns in Silicon Valley.

One can expect a tougher message from Mattrick, who has a lot of experience in turnaround situations, and very little sugar-coating of the difficult situation that the company finds itself in now.

He might not get too specific, though, such as whether or not he will preside over additional staff reductions. Such cuts had already started under Pincus, who laid off more than 500 employees in June.

Pincus will apparently be on the call later today at the start, but only for a short while, as it will clearly be Mattrick's show from now on.

Yves Behar's "Smart" Lock Startup August Raises $8 Million

August, the home automation startup that makes a "smart" lock that uses virtual keys, said it has raised $8 million to bring the device to market next spring.

If you are talking about the Internet of Things trend, this is that.

The San Francisco-based company's Series A round was led by Maveron, who invested along with Cowboy Ventures, Industry Ventures, Rho Ventures and SoftTech VC. The funding follows on a $2 million seed round that included angel investors such as Matt Mullenweg, Mark Pincus and others.

August was co-founded by well-known tech designer Yves Behar and entrepreneur Jason Johnson.

The lock was, in fact, debuted at the 11th D: All Things Digital conference in the summer. It is a Bluetooth device that works with a mobile application to "send virtual keys to anyone you choose to have access to your home," the company said.

As part of the investment, Maveron's David Wu will join the August board.

Here's the video of the demo at D11:

Ex-LAPD officer Christopher Dorner continues to evade California police

Manhunt focuses on snowy Big Bear mountains north of Los Angeles after Dorner's burnt-out car is discovered nearby

A desperate hunt for a rogue ex-police officer suspected of killing three in a deadly vendetta against the LAPD resumed Saturday morning in an isolated mountainous area where he is believed to be hiding.

Hundreds of heavily armed police are attempting to track Christopher Dorner across the snowy mountains of Big Bear, to the north of Los Angeles, after a vehicle belonging to the suspect was found abandoned and burnt out nearby.

That hunt has been matched by the deployment of thousands of other police across southern California in a tense, frantic and panicky manhunt that has already seen police open fire in two separate incidents against innocent people.

Dorner, 33, has declared war on law enforcement officers and their families in a manifesto posted to the Internet that complains of his 2008 firing from the Los Angeles police department. But police have already admitted that they fear he may have escaped their dragnet as heavy snow and poor weather has made the search for him around Big Bear very difficult.

The weather made a ground hunt for Dorner impossible overnight and instead helicopters equipped with infra-red technology were deployed. But officers on foot were set to begin combing the rugged terrain again on Saturday morning, using dogs and backed up by armoured personal carriers equipped with chains.

The search for Dorner has stunned many Californians and captured attention worldwide. In a city known as the home of Hollywood action movies the real world crisis has felt a little like a surreal film plot from the latest blockbuster.

"He knows what he's doing - we trained him," Charlie Beck, chief of the Los Angeles police department, told a press conference last week. Dorner, who has posted a long and rambling statement onto Facebook, is accused of killing three people and wounding two others in self-declared "unconventional and asymmetrical warfare" against his former comrades. The week-long rampage has terrorised police from San Diego to LA after his manifesto tried to explain his actions and detailed a 40-person hit list.

Not surprisingly the story has rapidly spread over social media. Twitter buzzed with film references like Cape Fear, Rambo, The Deer Hunter, The Bourne Ultimatum, The Fugitive. More shockingly in some minds, Dorner was becoming a modern folk legend. Facebook pages sprouted up in support, hailing him a rebel.

Dorner's story was also swept into debates about race, gun control and law enforcement. According to his manifesto, this week's rampage can be traced back to racial taunts directed at him as a black boy in a mostly white school.

He attended Southern Utah University from 1997 to 2000, graduating with a bachelor's degree in political science and a minor in psychology. He played running back for the football team.

Dorner joined the navy in 2002, serving in Nevada and San Diego and Bahrain, where he was awarded the Iraqi Campaign Medal and National Defense Service Medal, the Global War on Terrorism Service Medal and other medals for marksmanship.

Clint Grimes, a former navy comrade, told reporters that Dorner was excited to join the LAPD, calling it a dream job. He appeared to like military protocol. "I would say: 'Call me Clint', and he would say: 'Yes, sir.'" Dorner was friendly, bright and technologically savvy, said Grimes. "I never knew him not to be smiling. They're not looking for a stupid guy here," Grimes said.

The dream job swiftly soured however. He accused a female training partner of kicking a mentally ill homeless man during a routine stop. She denied it, witnesses appeared to back her, and Dorner was fired in 2008 for making false accusations. A tribunal upheld the decision in 2009.

Divorced and without a job, Dorner seethed and called the sacking an affront to his "honor, courage and commitment". On 31 January he posted his manifesto, and on 3 February allegedly killed his first victims: Monica Quan, 28, a basketball coach and her fiance, Keith Lawrence, 27, as they sat in a car in Irvine, south of LA. Quan was the daughter of a police captain who had represented Dorner - negligently, in Dorner's view - at the tribunal.

As units scrambled to protect those named on the hit list, he was spotted near Corona at 1.30am local time on Thursday and exchange shots with a patrol, grazing one officer in the head. About 20 minutes later he allegedly ambushed two officers at a red traffic light in nearby Riverside, killing one, a veteran, and wounding the other, a trainee.

Police lashed out but picked the wrong targets. Officers from the Hollywood division blazed at a pick-up truck in Torrance, thinking it was Dorner's grey Nissan. They fired more than a dozen bullets, only to find they had hit two women who were delivering newspapers. They were taken to hospital with minor injuries. A few minutes later officers in another part of Torrance opened fire on another pick-up driven mistaken for Dorner's. No one was injured.

Apple starts construction of new campus in Santa Clara

“Apple’s planting its flag in Santa Clara in a big way for the first time as the technology giant continues its shopping spree for new offices, agreeing to occupy a site where Apple could locate 1,200 or more workers,” George Avalos reports for The Oakland Tribune.

“Cupertino-based Apple has struck a deal with developer Peery Arrillaga for a custom-tailored two-building campus that is under construction on the north side of Stevens Creek Boulevard in Santa Clara a short distance from the Cupertino city limits,” Avalos reports. “Multiple sources with direct knowledge of the transaction told this newspaper that Apple has leased nearly 296,000 square feet from Peery Arrillaga in a deal that included demolition of existing buildings.”

Avalos reports, “The two new structures will both be six-story office buildings, said Ruth Shikada, Santa Clara’s economic development officer... One of the big questions is whether the buildings Apple is leasing outside of Cupertino will be temporary workplaces for employees displaced while the company constructs its huge, circular-shaped ‘spaceship’ headquarters in Cupertino. Apple hopes to locate 14,000 employees at that site, up from estimates of 12,000 workers in June of last year. The headquarters, initially scheduled for completion in 2015, is now slated to open in mid-2016.”

Read more in the full article here.

[Thanks to MacDailyNews Readers "Brawndo Drinker" and "David E." for the heads up.]