Funding Daily: We opened ours early

As an adult living hundreds of miles from your point of origin, you’re faced with an annual dilemma: Open the brown box and all its contents now, or wait for the morning of the 25th.

Oh, you know what you should do. But you’re a dad-blamed grownup now. You make the rules!

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So when the first big, brown box tumbled onto our doorstep, my husband and I sat in front of it with the dog and our biggest pair of scissors.

“Doesn’t this feel kinda wrong?” I asked.

“Sure,” he said.

And we commenced slicing our way through layers of packing tape. One by one, the prettily wrapped packages emerged, always to cries of “What’s in there, Barclay! Get it, Barclay!” as we trained our dog in the ways of decorative paper and Scotch tape.

In 15 minutes, the greedy orgy was over, leaving only a residue of guilt and a small molehill of slightly crushed silver bows.

Such, we imagine, is the scene enacted by all these startups for whom Christmas also came early.

General Catalyst closes $675M

“Everybody’s waiting for the man with the bag.” Everyone, that is, except General Catalyst Partners. This venture firm shook down Santa (and a bunch of LPs) for its seventh fund, which brings the firm’s total capital raised over its 13-year history to approximately $3 billion. General Catalyst has made over 100 investments to date, and its portfolio includes notable companies such as Airbnb, SnapChat, Stripe, Venmo, Good Data, Warby Parker, Datalogix, and Kayak. Read the whole thing.

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Answers.com raises $300M to buy ForeSee

All Answers.com wanted for Christmas was Target gift cards. And when the company ripped open the red envelopes and got what it wanted, it raced to the big-box mega-consumerist-trap and bought ForeSee, reportedly for $200 million. Here’s the full story.

Zimperium gets $8M

Via email, we heard that mobile security company Zimperium snuck down the stairs and shook a bulky $8 million out of its stocking. This, its first round of institutional funding, was led by Sierra Ventures. What does the startup do? “That’s classified!” is the response from this stealth operation. But they do say they’ll be able to lock down your phone and its contacts like Fort Knox. We’ll know for sure on January 23, the scheduled launch date.

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CelebCalls picks up $2.8M

CelebCalls, which you use to send customized phone calls from celebrities, tore the corner of the wrapping paper on the very biggest box under the tree. But guess what, CelebCalls — joke’s on you because it was just a Super Soaker box. Yeah. Dad thought it’d be hilarious to put tighty-whiteys inside, especially since the whole tearing-the-corner act is getting to be a family-freaking-tradition. This startup also lets you personalize your voicemail with a celebrity’s voice, which isn’t pathetic at all, and says it “is excited to launch [our] web and mobile app platform,” as per an email sent to VentureBeat.

TouchTen cashes in with CyberAgent deal

Christmas came early in the far East, too, with little ol’ TouchTen throwing a complete hysterical meltdown until his pushover mom finally gave in. “Fine, fine! But just one. ONE! Then you’re going to bed.” TouchTen had planned on staying up with the help of another hissy fit, but Mom had already slipped Children’s Benadryl into his cocoa. Mom’s not such a pushover now, huh? TouchTen giddily ripped open the tissue-barfing bag to find an undisclosed amount from CyberAgent Ventures, which should help the Jakarta-based startup build out its mobile games offerings, according to an email from the startup.

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