Networking technology company Cyan posted flat first-day performance in its Thursday IPO. But the offering still stands to deliver moderately positive returns for venture backers, including Norwest Venture Partners and Azure Capital.

With a handful of major technology disruptions sparking infectious excitement across venture, several key fundamentals are worth paying attention to including: don’t accept too high a valuation. I was reminded of this by Saad Shahzad, who has been around the venture capital block a few times. Here is what he has to say.

Workspot said it raised $1.9 million of seed funding from Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Norwest Venture Partners, Redpoint Ventures, and angel investors, including Peter Wagner and Gaurav Garg. The company also launched a bring-your-own-mobile-device service for IT administrators, Workspot Control, and a mobile application for IPads, called Workspot.

U.S.-Israeli company SundaySky expects its sales to triple annually as companies increasingly use personalised videos to win over new customers and retain existing ones, writes Reuters. Founded in 2007 in Israel, SundaySky is headquartered in New York and has raised over $17 million from Carmel Ventures, Norwest Venture Partners and Globespan Capital.

Motif Investing has raised an additional $25 million in financing from a group of investors including Goldman Sachs & Co. and existing Motif investors Foundation Capital, Ignition Partners and Norwest Venture Partners. San Mateo-based Motif is an online broker. Darren Cohen, Managing Director of Principal Strategic Investments at Goldman, is joining Motif’s board as an observer.

Pertino, which develops software for managing wide area networks over the cloud, has raised $20 million in a Series B round led by new investor Jafco Ventures, with Norwest Venture Partners and Lightspeed Venture Partners also participating. Pertino raised nearly $9 million in a Series A deal from Norwest and Lightspeed in April 2012.

Health Catalyst, a Salt Lake City-based data warehousing company that’s focused on healthcare, has added $8 million to its Series B round, care of Kaiser Permanente Ventures and CHV Capital. Previously, the company had raised $33 million for its Series B, from investors that include Norwest Venture Partners, Sequoia Capital and Sorenson Capital.

Medical device company Intersect ENT has raised a $30 million Series D round of funding that was led by new investor Norwest Venture Partners. Also participating in the round were existing investors Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, U.S. Venture Partners, PTV Sciences and Medtronic. The company, which develops therapies for ear, nose and throat surgeons, previously raised $30 million in known funding.

Morta Security, an early stage startup based in Palo Alto, CA, has closed its first round of financing. Investors include venture firms Andreessen Horowitz, Greylock Partners and Norwest Venture Partners and investors Data Collective, Larry Link, and Peter Wagner.

The current, accepted wisdom is that those who understand Big Data will rule the roost in the future. There’s just one problem: there aren’t nearly enough “data scientists” to go around.