Brent: Austin’s Silverton Partners filed papers late Monday indicating it plans to raise a new $100M fund, which would be its fifth fund and largest to date. I reached out to General Partner Morgan Flager, but I haven’t heard back yet. They appear to be keeping quiet with all media. So there are plenty of details unknown at this point. But, let’s talk about context while we wait for those responses.

For one, it’s worth noting that founder Bill Wood isn’t listed on the Form D as a fund manager. Is he stepping away from the day-to-day? We just don’t know. The other angle here is that it signals Silverton’s previous $75M fund may be getting close to dry. Meanwhile, the $100M ambitions indicate the VC firm has plenty of strong returns, largely through Austin startups, to show institutional investors its ethos is market savvy and the firm can find more wins.

Let’s look at the bigger picture.

The elephant in almost every room that I walk into with Austin tech startups and VCs is the inevitable funding gap discussion. There’s general agreement Austin has a lot of great angel investment activity and a lack of Series A and beyond VC funding. After that, it’s splitting hairs and each conversation is highly nuanced. Often, in these discussions, we all realize we’re operating with slightly different definitions of what is VC, a recognition of the rather limited data we’re looking at and the essentially unfair comparison to Silicon Valley and Silicon Alley. Meanwhile, almost everyone acknowledges Austin has a strong influx of new VC firms and several firms are just about to start writing checks, albeit at much lower levels than the big funds out west.

The VC debate really never ends. A few weeks ago, I focused this newsletter on a Twitter conversation about VC funding in Austin that last hours. Richard Bagdonas, an entrepreneur who keeps a close eye on VC activity, saw a similar outpouring of opinions and facts after he published “The Dark Ages of Austin Startup Capital” last year. Now, Bagdonas is back at it with a revisit to his look at Austin’s VC ecosystem, and I’m excited to share the story on Austin Inno next Monday afternoon. Can’t wait to dive into the debate because it shows not only how passionate everyone is about improving Austin’s tech scene but how much we can learn from each other’s perspectives.

Brent: One of the lamest things about self-driving cars is that they’re so careful. It’s tough to imagine them zagging through MoPac rush hour. But, there’s promise on the horizon. The fastest ever autonomous car lap happened at the Circuit of the Americas race track in Austin.

NIO, a Chinese car company, reported that NIO EP9 drove autonomously without any interventions with a solid top speed of 160MPH. The car, developed at NIO (owned by NextEV) in California, had clocked up to 170MPH. The company says that beat the fastest COTA lap time for a production car with a driver, achieving a lap time of 2m 11.30s.

Maybe NIO ought to talk to Austin’s Dean Drako, who knows a thing or two about lap speed records along with his colleagues at Drako Motors.

From the press release: NIO will hold a U.S. launch in Austin Friday, March 10 through Sunday, March 12 at Coppertank Event Center.

In other car news: Instaryde, the Canadian ride-hailing company that set up shop in Austin after Uber and Lyft left, has temporarily discontinued services as they complete some upgrades to their app and services, 512Tech reports. Although we don’t have official data, it appears Instaryde has been one of the least popular rideshare apps to enter the Austin market, in part because of better-financed competitors like Fasten, Fare and RideAustin have been making strong marketing pushes and word of mouth is key for all of these apps, most of which are less than a year old in the Austin market.

Brent: No Form Ds in the hopper today. But, otherwise, February has been a pretty strong month for startup funding, thanks largely to big deals for uShip, data.world and Tenfold. I put together a list of February funding deals to give you a broader look at the roughly $87M in equity funding activity this month. 

Brent: MissionBox, an Austin startup with a network for nonprofits, announced it has launched MissionBox.com, a free site with curated information on hundreds of nonprofits ways to communicate with other organizations worldwide. The startup is led by Founder and CEO Kathryn Engelhardt-Cronk.

Tonight’s Inno Approved event is VentureCrushATX, a series at ATX Factory that includes discussions about raising money for your startup and what it’s like to get investment. Among panelists are Nicole Quinn (Lightspeed Venture Partners), Adam Marcus (OpenView Venture Partners), Rick Orr (RealSavvy and NextGen Venture Partners) and Evan Bienstock (Lowenstein Sandler).

• From Wired: SpaceX Plans to Launch Humans Around the Moon in 2018
• From The Verge: Uber dismissed warnings about its illegal self-driving test for months, emails show
• From the ABJ (subscribers only): Austin startup backed by a billionaire turns unused electronics into cash

You’ve probably filled out a March Madness NCAA basketball bracket. Now, imagine that, except with Austin’s top tech startups instead of bball teams. We started with a list of 150 finalists. And at a big party at Buffalo Billiards next Thursday, we’ll unveil the 64 bracket contenders and let community voting determine which startups march on to the Final Four and the championship. Sound cool? Grab a ticket, and we’ll see you there. 

Brent: Who’s hungry for some fried meth? Los Pollos Hermanos, a business made famous from its role as a front for a drug dealer in “Breaking Bad” is apparently planning a temporary store in Austin. It seems likely to be a one-off promotion during SXSW (Bob Odenkirk, a comedian and actor who stars in “Breaking Bad” and “Better Call Saul” will be in town for the festival).

But, that’s not the only cinematic snacking available. Eater Austin reports there will be a heart-warming cafe where fans of “Twin Peaks” (I own the DVD set) to get a taste of the damn good coffee and pie that the show’s actors and writers have wafted at us through the episodes.

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