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Funding Daily: Don’t you just love fall?

Image Credit: Starbucks

It’s just pumpkin spice lattes and money-money-money around here when Q4 kicks off. We’re delighted to share an unusually large roundup of funding stories today. We hope they warm your hearts as much as those super-cute Etsy mittens warm your latte-holding hands.

Ok, here we go:

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5 AM Ventures takes in $240M

It’s better to give than receive, and 5 AM Ventures is getting ready to give away a whopping $240 million. This life sciences firm filed papers with the SEC today for its fourth fund. Based in Menlo Park, Calif., 5 AM Ventures works exclusively with early-stage companies in fields such as pharmaceuticals, clinical trials, genetics, etc.

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Javelin raises its biggest fund yet

Javelin Venture Partners is movin’ on up with its latest fund in the amount of $125 million. Two years before, the team scraped together $105 million, and two years before that, $85 million. That ain’t chump change, but don’t look to this firm for big, honkin’ mega-rounds. Its partners are mostly focused on seed and Series A investments, sealing around 20 deals each year.

500 Startups raising a $100M fund

Accelerator program 500 Startups is apparently looking to raise money for a third early-stage investment fund, according to an SEC document filed today. The move is a bit of a surprise considering 500 Startups finalized $44.1 million for its second fund just last week. The group previously tried to raise $50 million, but for its third fund its doubling that amount to $100 million. Read more on VentureBeat.

Minted draws in $41M

Minted, a website that sells stationery, has pulled in a whopping $41 million Series C investment from Technology Crossover Ventures, Allen & Company, and Benchmark Capital. How does a site that sells paper and envelopes score such a massive investment? Through the magic of crowdsourcing, apparently: The site can draw on the creative resources of 5,000 designers, 98 percent of which are women and 40 percent of which are moms. Read the full story on VentureBeat.

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Accela raises $40M

Accela, a startup that provides software to bolster civic engagement, just raised $40 million in a fourth round of funding. With government agencies moving to the cloud, the San Ramon, Calif.-based company is in a strong position to boost its revenues in the next few years. Read the full story on VentureBeat.

Refinery 29 raises $20M

Refinery 29 is like that cool friend who always knows what to wear, the hottest restaurants, and the latest trends. The fashion and lifestyle website has raised $20 million to expand its media platform, which features content on fashion, beauty, lifestyle, news, and local cool stuff to do. It also includes an online store where consumers can search and shop from popular brands. Read the full story on VentureBeat.

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Social Touch raises $10M

Last year, Salesforce acquired Buddy Media for $689 million to become a marketing powerhouse. Social Touch hopes to emulate Buddy Media’s success in China — and just snagged more than $10 million to help brands like Proctor & Gamble, Dell, and Coca-Cola get their message out on China’s social networks. Read the full story on VentureBeat.

MapBox gets $10M

When you think of services that let you create interactive maps for use on your website or in your app, you might automatically think of Google Maps first or even exclusively. Well, Washington, DC- and San Francisco-based startup MapBox would like to change that. Today, the company announced it has taken $10 million from Foundry Group in its first institutional round of funding (the outfit was previously bootstrapped). Read the full story on VentureBeat.

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Boxer closes $3M

Boxer, a mobile e-mail client for iOS, just finalized a $3 million round of funding, the startup revealed to VentureBeat today. Boxer’s app is built for people who have high volume inboxes. It enables you to quickly and easily get through a ton of messages via its simple touch navigation — meaning you swipe e-mail messages to either trash, archive, or reply quickly. It also manages to do things that previously were only available via desktop app clients, such sending attachment files from a variety of cloud locker services like Box or DropBox. Read the full story on VentureBeat.

Next Principles collects $1.7M of proposed $4.2M deal

Social CRM startup Next Principles has started their fundraise with a sweet SEC filing, which shows the company has commitments for $1.7 million and hopes to raise a total of $4.2 million, in toto. The Milpitas, Calif-based startup takes care of all kinds of social media activity for brands, from analytics to audience engagement to customer service. Next also boasts a remarkably simple, easy-to-use platform that company reps say requires no training to use — unusual, indeed, for business software.

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Fancred scores $1.5M

Fancred is one of a few social networks for sports lovers, and this startup just got a solid $1.5 million in the bank. Go team! One of the spring 2013 graduating class of TechStars Boston, Fancred raised from Atlas Venture, Militello Capital, Star Power Partners, and a whole bunch of angels (in the outfield! Pun!). The network includes and iPhone app and a special scoring algorithm that generates stats for each user.

Kii expands into Asia with new funding

Kii, a provider of tools for mobile developers, has raised an additional round of investment, bringing its total raise to $7.3 million to date. The latest round is meant to fuel an expansion into Southeast Asia, including Singapore, Indonesia, Thailand, and Vietnam. Kii’s offering is a mobile backend-as-a-service (mBaaS, in the horrible lingo of the marketing people who come up with this stuff) that gives developers tools to add things like user and data management, push notifications, and the like. Read the full story on VentureBeat.

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Matchmaker, matchmaker, find me a board member

BoardProspects has raised $2.4M for its platform that connects prospective board members with companies and organizations looking to fill board seats. It provides an alternative way to connect and share boardroom recruitment opportunities for public, private, and non-profit companies Its own board member include Kathryn Swintek, managing Partner of Golden Seeds Fund 2, Yan Pujante, chief software architect of LinkedIn, Justin Miller, President of Comcast Silicon Valley and CEO of Plaxo.com, Steve Maxwell, a General Partner at NewVantage Partners, and Mikolaj Jan Piskorski, an Associate Professor of Business Administration at at the Harvard Business School.

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