Equity: Recent Episodes
TechCrunch, Natasha Mascarenhas, Alex Wilhelm, Grace Mendenhall, Maggie Stamets, Kell, Mary Ann Azevedo
Equity: A podcast about the business of startups.
Every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, Alex Wilhelm, Natasha Mascarenhas, and Mary Ann Azevedo unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines. We wade through the hype to keep you up to date on the world of business, technology and venture capital.
Today on Equity, TechCrunch Editor Julie Bort is sitting down with Marc Benioff, the CEO of Salesforce and one of the tech industry’s biggest hype men, about his latest work with Time Ventures and Salesforce Ventures, and why he thinks AI agents are the next big thing for enterprise software.
Listen to the full episode to hear about:
- The impact of AI on customer experience
- The application of AI agents in the healthcare space - and what it could mean for data privacy
- Marc's thoughts on Salesforce competitor Microsoft's Copilot
- The range of gadgets that have piqued Benioff’s interest lately
As always, Equity will be back on Friday with our news round-up!
Equity is TechCrunch’s flagship podcast, produced by Theresa Loconsolo, and posts every Wednesday and Friday.
Subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod. For the full episode transcript, for those who prefer reading over listening, check out our full archive of episodes over at Simplecast.
Credits: Equity is produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. Bryce Durbin is our Illustrator. We'd also like to thank the audience development team and Henry Pickavet, who manages TechCrunch audio products.
A tech regulation shakeup is on the way with President-elect Donald Trump set to take office in January. Trump has made it clear that he plans to dismantle Biden’s AI policies on "day one," aligning himself with those who’ve pushed back against regulation. Today on TechCrunch’s Equity podcast, hosts Kirsten Korosec, Devin Coldewey and Margaux MacColl dove into what Trump’s win could mean for AI policy and innovation moving forward.
While AI is always on the mind these days, there was so much more startup and venture news for the Equity crew to get into this week. Listen to the full episode to hear about:
- OpenAI’s acquisition of Chat.com, the domain previously acquired by HubSpot co-founder and CTO Dharmesh Shah for a whopping $15.5 million. We’re not sure if this signals a brand change for the AI startup, but users’ trips to ChatGPT just got three letters shorter.
- DeepRoute’s $100 million raise and the startup’s race to get its automated systems out before Tesla FSD is available in China.
- Biotech startup Archon’s $20 million effort to power up drug development with its ‘antibody cages’. Of course, we couldn’t talk about the news without a biochemistry lesson from Devin where we learned a new scientific term: thingies.
- Google’s new AI-focused data center and collaboration with the Saudi Public Investment fund. The move had the team thinking more about tech’s climate commitments at large, and who is walking back their pledges in favor of AI.
- The election bidding boom - from Polymarket to Kalshi and a potential $450 million payout.
Equity will be back next week with a special interview between TechCrunch senior editor Julie Bort and Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff, so stay tuned.
Equity is TechCrunch’s flagship podcast, produced by Theresa Loconsolo, and posts every Wednesday and Friday.
Subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod. For the full episode transcript, for those who prefer reading over listening, check out our full archive of episodes over at Simplecast.
Credits: Equity is produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. Bryce Durbin is our Illustrator. We'd also like to thank the audience development team and Henry Pickavet, who manages TechCrunch audio products.
Today on Equity, we’re taking you backstage at TechCrunch Disrupt. Rebecca Bellan caught up with Rebecca Gevalt, Managing Partner at Dcode Capital following their onstage discussion about the boom in national interest startups. Also on the panel was Topher Haddad, CEO of satellite imagery startup Albedo, and Kai Klepfer, CEO of biometric gun startup Biofire. Tune in to hear Bellan and Gevalt dive deeper into how startups can get a foot in the door of government contracts.
Check out the full onstage conversation here, and Equity will be back on Friday!
Equity is TechCrunch’s flagship podcast, produced by Theresa Loconsolo, and posts every Wednesday and Friday.
Subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod. For the full episode transcript, for those who prefer reading over listening, check out our full archive of episodes over at Simplecast.
Credits: Equity is produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. Bryce Durbin is our Illustrator. We'd also like to thank the audience development team and Henry Pickavet, who manages TechCrunch audio products.
As the founder and CEO of Rocket Lab, Peter Beck is a familiar face to anyone in the space industry. But the company's ambitions go far beyond its popular Electron launch vehicle.
Today, we're bringing you an interview from TechCrunch Disrupt when Devin Coldewey sat down with Beck to discuss his belief that to thrive, perhaps even to survive, space companies will have to become fully integrated one-stop shops.
Equity is TechCrunch’s flagship podcast, produced by Theresa Loconsolo, and posts every Wednesday and Friday.
Subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod. For the full episode transcript, for those who prefer reading over listening, check out our full archive of episodes over at Simplecast.
Credits: Equity is produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. Bryce Durbin is our Illustrator. We'd also like to thank the audience development team and Henry Pickavet, who manages TechCrunch audio products.
The Equity crew was live at TechCrunch Disrupt 2024! Hosts Kirsten Korosec, Devin Coldewey and Margaux MacColl took over the Builders Stage to kick off day 2 of Disrupt with no shortage of conference highlights, startups deals and venture news to chew through.
Listen to the full episode to hear about:
- Devin’s plans to go to space thanks to his chat with Rocket Lab Founder Peter Beck.
- What Sierra, the AI startup co-founded by Bret Taylor, plans to do with its fresh $175 million funds.
- Waymo’s who’s who of Silicon Valley round, and why Kirsten’s routing for the robotaxis over the competition.
- How General Catalyst is breaking down its latest fund and setting its sights on European startups.
Equity will be back with a special interview episode on Friday, so stay tuned!
Equity is TechCrunch’s flagship podcast, produced by Theresa Loconsolo, and posts every Wednesday and Friday.
Subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod. For the full episode transcript, for those who prefer reading over listening, check out our full archive of episodes over at Simplecast.
Credits: Equity is produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. Bryce Durbin is our Illustrator. We'd also like to thank the audience development team and Henry Pickavet, who manages TechCrunch audio products.
It’s no secret that Stripe has doubled down on its crypto offerings, enabling crypto purchases in the EU back in July and announcing a Pay with Crypto feature earlier this month. This week, the fintech giant made its dedication to crypto even clearer with its largest deal to date: its acquisition of stablecoin platform Bridge for an eye-popping $1.1 billion. Today on TechCrunch’s Equity podcast, hosts Kirsten Korosec, Anthony Ha and Devin Coldewey kicked off the show with their thoughts on the deal – mainly how surprising it is to see anyone spending over $1 billion on crypto in 2024.
But of course, there was so much more startup and venture news for the crew to get into this week. Listen to the full episode for more about:
- Mobileye founder and CEO Amnon Shashua’s latest startup
- A 3D metal printing startup’s $14 million round from Boeing’s AE Ventures and Nvidia
- Andreessen Horowitz’s plans to provide its portfolio companies with Nvidia GPUs
- And who we’re expecting to see at TechCrunch’s Disrupt 2024.
Equity will be live at Disrupt on Tuesday, so we'll see you there!
Equity is TechCrunch’s flagship podcast, produced by Theresa Loconsolo, and posts every Wednesday and Friday.
Subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod. For the full episode transcript, for those who prefer reading over listening, check out our full archive of episodes over at Simplecast.
Credits: Equity is produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. Bryce Durbin is our Illustrator. We'd also like to thank the audience development team and Henry Pickavet, who manages TechCrunch audio products.
“It's a bit too early to say that the race is over,” said Philippe Botteri when asked about European startups’ AI progress. “I think we're just at the very early innings of this race.”
Botteri is a partner at early-stage investment firm Accel with over 13 years under his belt at the firm, leading investments in DocuSign, UiPath and more recently Snyk and Chainalysis. Today on TechCrunch’s Equity podcast, host Rebecca Bellan caught up Botteri to dive deep into Accel’s Euroscape 2024 Report. Tapping into Botteri’s experience in Cloud, SaaS security, and enterprise sectors, the pair discuss AI's rising influence, its impact on software and cloud investments, and how European startups can compete with the US.
Listen to the full episode for more about:
- How AI is eating the software market, with AI and cloud funding predicted to hit $79.2 billion by the end of 2024.
- The challenges faced by traditional software companies as funding growth slows outside of AI.
- Why Europe’s strong talent pool gives it an edge in the AI race, even as startups on the continent struggle to compete with the ungodly amounts of money U.S. tech giants have.
- Increased M&A activity globally amid a slow IPO market.
- Why 2025 will be the year of the “agentic revolution” with AI significantly impacting software development and productivity.
Equity is TechCrunch’s flagship podcast, produced by Theresa Loconsolo, and posts every Wednesday and Friday.
Subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod. For the full episode transcript, for those who prefer reading over listening, check out our full archive of episodes over at Simplecast.
Credits: Equity is produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. Bryce Durbin is our Illustrator. We'd also like to thank the audience development team and Henry Pickavet, who manages TechCrunch audio products.
Today on Equity, Devin, Margaux and Anthony Ha are rounding up the week's startup and venture news, kicking things off with a look at the $400 million raised by Lightmatter, and the importance of fast networking within the fast growing datacenter industry today — not just in years to come — makes the impressive round a little more understandable.
Our Deals of the Week continue with Paladin's drone play for first responders and police, and Abel aiming to reduce the substantial paperwork backlog that officers accrue in their everyday duties. Abel Founder Daniel Francis brings a chaotic energy (having landed a Twitter job from Musk after pretending to have been laid off) that could shake things up.
Diving deeper, Anthony breaks down the complex back-and-forth that is the WordPress/WP Engine dispute - and we're left wondering why the obligations of and to the "open source community" are not entirely clear. What does it mean for an open source ecosystem when one person (in this case WordPress co-founder Matt Mullenweg) still seems to exercise tremendous influence? And could we say the same of Meta's Llama or other "open" AI solutions?
Last, the "bummer" results from PitchBook showing that although founders are founding and investors are investing, there isn't a huge amount of money being made. Turns out they weren't just in it to change the world after all. What could this lack of liquidity be attributed to? Is it the macroeconomic climate, the sectors being invested in, the VC's strategies changing... or something else? At least defense and AI are doing OK, and Europe seems to be chugging along, so maybe it's specific to America? Check back in a month.
Equity is TechCrunch’s flagship podcast, produced by Theresa Loconsolo, and posts every Wednesday and Friday.
Subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod. For the full episode transcript, for those who prefer reading over listening, check out our full archive of episodes over at Simplecast.
Credits: Equity is produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. Bryce Durbin is our Illustrator. We'd also like to thank the audience development team and Henry Pickavet, who manages TechCrunch audio products.
At Tesla’s robotaxi reveal event last week, several Optimus humanoid robots mingled with guests, pouring drinks and cracking jokes. Impressive technology, but the vocals and some of the gesticulations appear to have been remotely controlled by humans, something Tesla did not disclose.
Today on Equity, Rebecca Bellan chatted with TechCrunch’s hardware editor Brian Heater about Tesla’s Optimus bots, the market opportunity for humanoid robots, and other companies that are leading the charge in this industry.
We'll dive into:
- A CBInsights report which found that funding in 2024 already reached new highs for humanoid robots and PitchBook data that suggests funding into humanoid robot companies has reached close to $1 billion as of October.
- Where we're most likely to see humanoid robot applications in the coming years. Automakers like BMW plan to deploy startup Figure’s robots at their plants, and Amazon, which has been a huge proponent of robotics for over a decade now, has tested Agility’s digit robot at its warehouses.
- When we could see humanoid robots enter homes. Some companies plan to have their robots help older folks with household tasks like Kind Humanoid.
Equity will be back on Friday with our weekly news roundup, so we'll talk to you then!
Equity is TechCrunch’s flagship podcast, produced by Theresa Loconsolo, and posts every Wednesday and Friday.
Subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod. For the full episode transcript, for those who prefer reading over listening, check out our full archive of episodes over at Simplecast.
Credits: Equity is produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. Bryce Durbin is our Illustrator. We'd also like to thank the audience development team and Henry Pickavet, who manages TechCrunch audio products.
Did OpenAI really ask its investors to avoid backing rivals like Anthropic and xAI? That’s what hosts Devin Coldewey, Margaux MacColl and special guest Anthony Ha wanted to know on today’s episode of TechCrunch’s Equity podcast. The team kicked off the show with a look at OpenAI's $6.6 billion round, which is being called the ‘largest VC round of all time’. Devin broke down what the funding could mean for the company’s path to profitability, and debunked some of the rumors floating around post-announcement - especially given how unusual those investor restrictions would be in later-stage funding.
OpenAI is not all that was on the Equity crew’s minds this week. Margaux wanted to discuss Dave Clark's new venture, Auger, which just raised $100 million to make supply chains more efficient with AI. Taking Clark’s Amazon and Flexport history into consideration, Augur could be on the path to success amid current global supply chain issues and the recent longshoreman strikes. To round out our deals of the week, Anthony set his sights on Impulse Space, which recently secured $150 million to develop and launch its orbital transfer vehicles.
What about the AI that people don’t want? Margaux took us deeper into her coverage of Shield AI, AI weapons and ethics. On the subject of tech getting out of hand, Devin and Anthony closed out the show with an update on the ongoing antitrust case against Google, and what a potential breakup could mean for the tech giant and startups looking to disrupt search.
Hit play to join the conversation, and Equity will be back next week!
Equity is TechCrunch’s flagship podcast, produced by Theresa Loconsolo, and posts every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts.
Credits: Equity is produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. Bryce Durbin is our Illustrator. We'd also like to thank the audience development team and Henry Pickavet, who manages TechCrunch audio products.
Today on Equity, Rebecca Bellan sat down with Zander Brumbaugh, the 22-year-old founder of Gamebeast, a startup that offers Roblox developers tools like A/B testing and LiveOps to modify games without needing to release a new version or interrupt a user’s ongoing game.
Gamebeast recently raised a $3.7 million pre-seed round, led by J2 Ventures with participation from a16z’s Speedrun accelerator, which Brumbaugh graduated from in March. Brumbaugh said everything from his experience consulting for entertainment studios like Netflix, and writing a best-selling book on Roblox development, to chats with investors tell him that the future of video gaming is in user-generated content, or UGC.
The two discussed the rise in popularity of UGC games, a sector that investors are increasingly looking towards as drivers of growth in the video game industry. Brumbaugh didn’t only get investment for his startup because investors see the value in enabling UGC game development. J2 Ventures’ thesis focuses on dual-use technology, and Gamebeast was able to demonstrate how its tech has applications both in commercial and defense. And indeed, we’re seeing a trend of companies going for that sweet military money to stay afloat.
There are more insights about the future of the video game market and investor insights aplenty, so have a listen, and enjoy!
Equity is TechCrunch’s flagship podcast, produced by Theresa Loconsolo, and posts every Wednesday and Friday.
Subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod. For the full episode transcript, for those who prefer reading over listening, check out our full archive of episodes over at Simplecast.
Credits: Equity is produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. Bryce Durbin is our Illustrator. We'd also like to thank the audience development team and Henry Pickavet, who manages TechCrunch audio products.
Kirsten Korosec, Devin Coldewey, and Margaux MacColl are unpacking another busy week in the tech world, kicking things off with Governor Newsom’s veto of SB 1047, the controversial AI bill aimed at stopping real-world disasters caused by AI systems before they happen. This may not be the last we'll see of the bill, however, as its author has plans to return with a revamped SB 1047 next year.
What else went down this week, you ask? Kirsten had us looking to the skies with Joby Aviation’s $500 million investment from Toyota. While Toyota seems to believe that the electric air taxi dream is finally taking off, the Equity crew is skeptical. Margaux argued that aeronautics startup Salient Motion is taking off, despite attempts from Palmer Luckey to shut it down.
On the AI front, Devin wanted to discuss Poolside's massive round, the latest drama surrounding Y Combinator-backed PearAI and why it's making waves in the open source community. Speaking of community, Paris-based Motier Ventures . had the team feeling optimistic about the French tech scene with its announcement of its new startup hub, La Maison.
Hit play to join the conversation, and Equity will be back next week!
Equity is TechCrunch’s flagship podcast, produced by Theresa Loconsolo, and posts every Wednesday and Friday.
Subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod. For the full episode transcript, for those who prefer reading over listening, check out our full archive of episodes over at Simplecast.
Credits: Equity is produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. Bryce Durbin is our Illustrator. We'd also like to thank the audience development team and Henry Pickavet, who manages TechCrunch audio products.
HR software is big, big business. And no one understands that better than Parker Conrad the CEO and co-founder of Rippling, a global HR company that offers global payroll, onboarding, time tracking, benefits management and more. This week, Equity is bringing you an episode of our sister show, Found. The Found crew talk with Conrad about what goes into building a leading HR tech company—from what it’s like building out features companies love, to dealing with fierce competition in this ever growing landscape. Conrad also gets into the power imbalance that can arise between VCs and founders and the drama at his previous company that inspired him to build Rippling.
Found posts every Tuesday. Subscribe on Apple, Spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts to be alerted when new episodes drop. Check out the other TechCrunch podcast: Equity . Subscribe to Found to hear more stories from founders each week.
Credits: Equity is produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. Bryce Durbin is our Illustrator. We'd also like to thank the audience development team and Henry Pickavet, who manages TechCrunch audio products.
Equity is closing out the week as always with a round up of the week's top startup and venture news. Kirsten, Devin and return guest host Margaux McColl had no shortage of themes to cover: VC karaoke, the SpaceX economy, no moats for AI, OpenAI versus open source.
To kick things off, we weighed in on Caroline Ellison's sentencing and deals of the week from Reflect Orbital and Pyka. Of course, we had to dive deep into Y Combinator's Summer 2024 Demo Day cohort from there - including a highlight of a few non-AI and AI startups that got our attention. And on the non-AI point, we noticed another startup getting VC attention: Synex and its portable MRIs to test glucose.
Clearly, we had much to discuss on today's episode, so press play and join the conversation!
Equity is TechCrunch’s flagship podcast, produced by Theresa Loconsolo, and posts every Wednesday and Friday.
Subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod. For the full episode transcript, for those who prefer reading over listening, check out our full archive of episodes over at Simplecast.
Credits: Equity is produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. Bryce Durbin is our Illustrator. We'd also like to thank the audience development team and Henry Pickavet, who manages TechCrunch audio products.
Today on Equity, Rebecca Bellan sits down with Lisa Coca from Toyota Ventures during Climate Week NYC to discuss a key part of Toyota Ventures' $800 million portfolio - their Climate Fund.
The fund's $300 million is laser-focused on climate innovation, but Coca says it casts a wide net beyond just mobility, backing startups from seed to Series A. So far, they’ve invested in companies like AM Batteries, which is cutting battery manufacturing costs by 40%, and Ecoletro, pioneers in green hydrogen production using hydropower.
Together, Bellan and Coca are shedding light on the significant challenges in hydrogen, direct air capture, and methane reduction, and emphasizing that startups need to achieve cost parity with fossil fuels to drive real change.
As always, Equity will be back with a news roundup on Friday. If you like what you hear, don't forget to leave us a review!
Equity is TechCrunch’s flagship podcast, produced by Theresa Loconsolo, and posts every Wednesday and Friday.
Subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod. For the full episode transcript, for those who prefer reading over listening, check out our full archive of episodes over at Simplecast.
Credits: Equity is produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. Bryce Durbin is our Illustrator. We'd also like to thank the audience development team and Henry Pickavet, who manages TechCrunch audio products.
This week on Equity, the podcast crew discusses several weird things and at least one cool thing.
Kirsten Korosec, Devin Coldewey, and Rebecca Bellan first talked about the least weird thing of the week, how nice it is that Cohere co-founder Nick Frosst has a band that people really like.
Then we get weird. First the good weird: a helmet that squeezes your head, but for a really good reason. It prevents hair loss from chemotherapy. Devin covered Luminate’s latest fundraise and news, and everyone was pleased that money was going to a startup that may really be helping people feel better about themselves during a difficult time. The company is hoping to improve at-home care as well.
Next, Kirsten explained the weird phenomenon of Flink, the “quick commerce” startup that just recently was rumored to be on the block for about $106 million, instead raising $115 million. Quite a turnaround! But as the team discusses, it may be that investors see the possibility that the “tumultuous time” for this sector is ending and Flink may have a good grip on the German market. Still…
Then the weirdness begins in earnest. Rebecca is at the “Principled Business Summit,” aimed at “reclaiming capitalism” from, apparently, itself. She is getting mixed messages from the crowd and the content, which seems to combine enthusiasm for doing the right thing with some fringe tendencies to do… other things.
And weirdest of all, autonomous trucking startup TuSimple’s pivot to… AI-generated animation and video games. What?! Though there is some overlap between simulation and animation/gaming, it’s a wild and unexpected change for the company, and a lot of shareholders are not going for it. Apparently the new division is working on another adaptation of “The Three-Body Problem,” so that’s good… but what about the $450 million they were going to spend on trucks? That conflict is playing out before our eyes.
Press play, and catch up!
Equity is TechCrunch’s flagship podcast, produced by Theresa Loconsolo, and posts every Wednesday and Friday.
Subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod. For the full episode transcript, for those who prefer reading over listening, check out our full archive of episodes over at Simplecast.
Credits: Equity is produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. Bryce Durbin is our Illustrator. We'd also like to thank the audience development team and Henry Pickavet, who manages TechCrunch audio products.
Today on Equity, Kirsten Korosec is joined by J.P. Morgan’s Head of Startup Banking, Ashraf Hebela. Prior to joining J.P. Morgan, Hebela spent 13 years at Silicon Valley Bank, a bulk of those years dedicated to serving as SVB's head of banking. With over a decade in the startup world, he’s got some serious insights to share.
Following the recent release of J.P. Morgan’s Startup Insights report, Kirsten wanted to dive into what it really takes to build a unicorn in 2024, and what parts of the startup ecosystem are seeing success beyond AI and Silicon Valley.
The pair discussed the changing landscape, from new startup hubs popping up in Seattle, Austin, and Miami to the resilience and passion required to thrive. Hebela also talked about the decreasing rate of unicorn creation since 2021 and what founders need to keep in mind today - including how ‘Founder Mode’ may do more harm than good. Hit play and join the conversation!
Equity will be back with our weekly news roundup on Friday, so don't miss it.
Equity is TechCrunch’s flagship podcast, produced by Theresa Loconsolo, and posts every Wednesday and Friday.
Subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod. For the full episode transcript, for those who prefer reading over listening, check out our full archive of episodes over at Simplecast.
Credits: Equity is produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. Bryce Durbin is our Illustrator. We'd also like to thank the audience development team and Henry Pickavet, who manages TechCrunch audio products.
What could be more frightening than Friday the 13th? How about a realization that AI is in its awkward tween stage? At least, it was for the TC Equity pod crew, which this week included hosts Devin Coldewey and Kirsten Korosec along with TC reporters Tim de Chant and Dominic Madori Davis.
AI is often a topic over here at Equity Pod; and this week was no different. It seems to be everywhere — and nowhere — all at once. Take Apple, for instance. As Coldewey noted on the show Apple has punted on AI. The tech giant is touting its AI capabilities, but for now, it’s all promise for the future and not quite a fully mature product. (get the tween reference yet?)
As Kirsten and Devin discussed, it’s not all bad in AI land. Take the startup Someone Somewhere, a Mexico City-based startup that applies handcrafts on clothing and accessories and works with rural artisans in seven of Mexico’s poorest states to create “quality, on-trend products.” The startup used AI — specifically, Stable Diffusion’s text to images model — to show companies how some of their most iconic items might look if they were made with artisans from different regions. Let’s just say, the company got a lot of attention for the effort.
See AI can be used for good?
There were plenty of other non-AI deals and discussions to be had on Equity, including an eye-popping pivot from the venture-based autonomous vehicle delivery startup Nuro as well as Oura’s recent acquisition of metabolic health startup Veri.
For the second half of the show, De Chant joined to provide his insight and expertise on an interesting trend around climate tech startups — hint it’s about hardware. Davis helped close out Equity with an important update on Fearless Fund and discussion of what the trickle down effect might be following a legal settlement and the shutdown of its contested Strivers Grant Program.
Equity is TechCrunch’s flagship podcast, produced by Theresa Loconsolo, and posts every Monday, Wednesday and Friday.
Subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod. For the full episode transcript, for those who prefer reading over listening, check out our full archive of episodes over at Simplecast.
Credits: Equity is produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. Bryce Durbin is our Illustrator. We'd also like to thank the audience development team and Henry Pickavet, who manages TechCrunch audio products.
Today on Equity, Former SoftBank Group International President Alok Sama joins Rebecca Bellan ahead of the launch of his new book THE MONEY TRAP: Lost Illusions Inside the Tech Bubble. Here's what the pair got into:
- What Apple's AI announcements could mean for startup innovation and companies like ARM and Nvidia
- Concerns about the circularity of investments and unusual follow-on rounds led by VCs.
- IPO alternatives in a slow public market
- High valuations, the risk of over-investment and how to know when a bubble is going to pop.
Equity will be back on Friday, so stay tuned!
Equity is TechCrunch’s flagship podcast, produced by Theresa Loconsolo, and posts every Wednesday and Friday.
Subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod. For the full episode transcript, for those who prefer reading over listening, check out our full archive of episodes over at Simplecast.
Credits: Equity is produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. Bryce Durbin is our Illustrator. We'd also like to thank the audience development team and Henry Pickavet, who manages TechCrunch audio products.
Don’t have an hour and forty minutes to devote to watching the replay of Apple’s 'Glowtime' event? As expected, the show was packed with AI announcements, from new chips to creative features. TechCrunch Minute's Amanda Silberling is taking over to catch you up in just a few minutes. Equity will be back with a deeper dive on how startups can compete with Apple's latest move, so stay tuned!
Equity is TechCrunch’s flagship podcast, produced by Theresa Loconsolo, and posts every Wednesday and Friday.
Subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod. For the full episode transcript, for those who prefer reading over listening, check out our full archive of episodes over at Simplecast.
Credits: Equity is produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. Bryce Durbin is our Illustrator. We'd also like to thank the audience development team and Henry Pickavet, who manages TechCrunch audio products.
The Equity podcast crew is wrapping up another eventful week, with real estate, AI agents, gambling, and secondary markets — which are, of course, a form of legalized gambling.
Mary Ann Azevedo, Becca Szkutak, and Devin Coldewey started off this Friday's episode with the acknowledgment that the X/Twitter ban situation in Brazil is possibly too complicated an issue to even have an opinion on. Let us cook on that for a bit.
In the deals of the week, Devin first talked about You.com's $50 million play to take on more difficult AI tasks, things that can't be solved with a quick Google search. The company is hoping to be the go-to for complex stuff that mixes live search, coding, and natural language understanding — and unlike a lot of its competition, some of its customers actually pay for themselves!
Becca, as someone who hazards a buck on a game now and then, is intrigued by DubClub, a startup that claims to systematize and legitimize professional betting handicappers. These are folks who claim to be able to beat the odds, but tend to offer their services by more informal methods. Can DubClub make a clean business out of this popular, but legally fraught, line of work?
A 9-figure deal is always worth chatting about, and Mary Ann brings up Paylocity's acquisition of Airbase for $325 million — though, as she points out, the real value of the deal is probably considerably higher. It's a lot of money, yes, but compared with earlier valuations... no? Somehow we don't think founder Thejo Kote is shedding too many tears over it.
Anyone who's bought a house or tried knows the sting of the realtor's fee. How many percent? Well, due to a recent court ruling overturning an established business practice in real estate, percentage fees may be on their way out — if startup Landian has its way. They want to make flat fees and pay-on-close the standard. Redfin is not amused! But they aren't mad either, or so they'd like us to think.
Investing in AI is so popular people are investing in the investors investing in AI — on the secondary market, where positions on Anthropic, OpenAI, and xAI are now commanding a staggering 30% premium. That gives the actual equity holders a lot of leeway, and potentially gives smaller investors a chance to ride the hype train, but it also gives the whole thing the feel of, as Devin put it, "a beanie baby economy." That reference is just for the millennials as a "thank you" for listening.
Equity is TechCrunch’s flagship podcast, produced by Theresa Loconsolo, and posts every Wednesday and Friday.
Subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod. For the full episode transcript, for those who prefer reading over listening, check out our full archive of episodes over at Simplecast.
Credits: Equity is produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. Bryce Durbin is our Illustrator. We'd also like to thank the audience development team and Henry Pickavet, who manages TechCrunch audio products.
Today on Equity, we're throwing it back to when Mary Ann interviewed Roger Lee, an entrepreneur who’s spent the better part of a decade building tools for employees and employers alike. Lee is an angel investor as well the creator of Layoffs.FYI and co-founder of Comprehensive and Human Interest.
Roger joined us on the show last year in the wake of 2022’s tech layoffs, but this week we’re focusing on the business of shutting down and why investors are lining up to back startups in the space, including Roger.
We also talked about:
- Just how many more companies shut down in 2023 compared to 2022 (spoiler alert, it was a lot!)
- How many more layoffs we saw last year compared to years prior
- The types of companies winding down and laying off
- How his work is tied to all of it and the role of AI
Press play and join the conversation! Equity will be back on Friday, but don't forget to keep up with us in the meantime on X and Threads @EquityPod.
For episode transcripts and more, head to Equity’s Simplecast website.
Equity drops at 7 a.m. PT every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders and more!
Credits: Equity is produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. Bryce Durbin is our Illustrator. We'd also like to thank the audience development team and Henry Pickavet, who manages TechCrunch audio products.
Today on Equity, Devin Coldeway kicked off our Deals of the Week rundown with Piramidal, a startup which offers a foundational model for analyzing brain scan data that just raised $6 million, as his deal of the week. The premise behind the company is a fascinating one in that its technology aims to help complement the work of nurses and doctors in neural ICUs by helping identify signs of things like an epileptic episode, or a stroke.
Mary Ann Azevedo wanted to talk about Comun, a neobank serving Latino immigrants in the U.S. with financial services and banking products. The fintech just raised $21.5 million a round led by Redpoint Ventures, not that long after closing its seed round. It’s seeing fast growth — as well as a higher valuation.
Rebecca Bellan dug into a scoop she had about Fluid Truck and recent drama there. The startup, which was founded to disrupt the commercial vehicle rental industry, has apparently ousted its sibling co-founders — CEO James Eberhard and chief legal counsel Jenifer Snyder — in what is being described as a hostile takeover.
We then moved into the arrest of Telegram founder Pavel Durov, and whether or not tech executives can, and should, be held responsible for what happens on their platforms. And lastly, we dug into what’s going at Inflection after Microsoft poached its co-founders. That move has drawn attention from antitrust regulators in the U.S. and U.K., who are now investigating whether Microsoft was anticompetitive. The Equity crew discussed whether or not companies are using acqui-hires to get around antitrust regulation.
Honestly, we had so much fun we could’ve gone on for a whole other episode. Give it a listen!
Equity is TechCrunch’s flagship podcast, produced by Theresa Loconsolo, and posts every Wednesday and Friday.
Subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod. For the full episode transcript, for those who prefer reading over listening, check out our full archive of episodes over at Simplecast.
Credits: Equity is produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. Bryce Durbin is our Illustrator. We'd also like to thank the audience development team and Henry Pickavet, who manages TechCrunch audio products.
When US District Court Judge Amit Mehta found that Google had acted illegally to maintain its monopoly in online search, it was seen as a major defeat for Google. The decision could alter the way the tech giant does business, shake up opportunities for search startups, and even change the structure of the internet. While Google plans to appeal either way, there's another antitrust case coming up the pipeline: the DOJ and eight states are accusing Google of creating an advertising technology monopoly that squashes competition, forces publishers and advertisers to use Google's ad tech products.
On today's episode of Equity, Rebecca Bellan is sitting down with lawyer, computer scientist, and head of AI Policy at the Abundance Institute, Neil Chilson. Join the conversation as we take a closer look at competition, a potential Google breakup, how to unwind a 16-year-old merger, and why these cases may actually be too early in the age of AI.
If you want to dive deeper into the early wave of major legal cases regarding tech giants, their in-market heft and behavior, Rebecca Bellan joined Alex Wilhelm back in November to talk through it all. You can catch that episode here.
Equity will be back on Friday with our weekly news roundup, so stay tuned!
Equity is TechCrunch’s flagship podcast, produced by Theresa Loconsolo, and posts every Wednesday and Friday.
Subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod. For the full episode transcript, for those who prefer reading over listening, check out our full archive of episodes over at Simplecast.
Credits: Equity is produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. Bryce Durbin is our Illustrator. We'd also like to thank the audience development team and Henry Pickavet, who manages TechCrunch audio products.
In this Friday’s episode of TechCrunch’s Equity podcast Mary Ann Azevedo, Devin Coldewey, and Equity's newest voice Margaux MacColl are here to discuss three major deals of the week. First up is the $80 million round for Story, which is trying to apply that ol' web3 magic to AI and talent management. Next, Mary Ann attempts to untangle the knotty, weird term sheet for Bolt: $450 million. But is that real money or "marketing credits"? And the Margaux explained Balaji Srinivasan's private island "technocapitalist college town" where "those with a fondness for the current world order need not apply."
Then the crew got into our two main themes. Devin talked about two AI companies that aren't just doing enterprise AI. Reliant AI is focused on researchers (especially in pharma) who need to analyze thousands of papers at once. And BeyondMath is working with Formula 1 companies to create a "digital wind tunnel" that does high-accuracy physics-based computational fluid dynamics simulations in near real time. When was the last time ChatGPT made a race car faster? Then Margaux wrapped us up with the increasing activity level in defense tech acquisitions.
Equity is TechCrunch’s flagship podcast, produced by Theresa Loconsolo, and posts every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts.
You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod. For the full episode transcript, for those who prefer reading over listening, check out our full archive of episodes over at Simplecast.
Credits: Equity is produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. Bryce Durbin is our Illustrator. We'd also like to thank the audience development team and Henry Pickavet, who manages TechCrunch audio products.
What is the right way to regulate AI? There appears to be as many different answers to that as there are regulators. On today's episode of Equity, we're bringing you a live interview from TechCrunch's recent Strictly VC event. Equity co-host Becca Szkutak sat down with Helen Toner, the director of strategy and foundational research grants from the Center of Security and Emerging Technology and a former board member of OpenAI. The pair discussed companies' ability to self-regulate, what impact regulation could have on startup innovation and so much more.
Equity is TechCrunch’s flagship podcast, produced by Theresa Loconsolo, and posts every Wednesday and Friday. Subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts.
You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod. For the full episode transcript, for those who prefer reading over listening, check out our full archive of episodes over at Simplecast.
Credits: Equity is produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. Bryce Durbin is our Illustrator. We'd also like to thank the audience development team and Henry Pickavet, who manages TechCrunch audio products.
This week on Equity Kirsten Korosec and Mary Ann Azevedo were joined by one of TechCrunch’s resident AI experts, Devin Coldeway . They broke down their deals of the week: WeRide, a Chinese autonomous vehicle startup, seeking an initial public offering in the United States at a $5 billion valuation, EliseAI, the company offering AI solutions to landlords, raised $75 million and became a unicorn, and Grok-2 is now available on X but it will cost you.
Then the team got into a couple recent startup shutdowns: Tally and Score. Tally was a nine-year-old fintech that helped consumers manage and pay off their credit card debt. Score was a dating app for people with good to excellent credit that was only around for a few months before it got sunsetted. And last but not least, we did a deeper dive into a California bill known as SB 1047 that is aimed at stopping real-world disasters caused by AI systems before they happen.
Equity is TechCrunch’s flagship podcast, produced by Theresa Loconsolo, and posts every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts.
You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod. For the full episode transcript, for those who prefer reading over listening, check out our full archive of episodes over at Simplecast.
Credits: Equity is produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. Bryce Durbin is our Illustrator. We'd also like to thank the audience development team and Henry Pickavet, who manages TechCrunch audio products.
Enterprise AI is booming so it’s no wonder that, as companies figure out how to implement it, the industry of AI infrastructure is emerging. This week, Equity is bringing you an episode of our sister show, Found. Becca and Dom talk to Nick Frosst from Cohere, the AI company building natural language models for enterprise customers. They discuss why Frosst thinks the AI boom isn’t built on a bubble, whether or not AI companies are building toward a “digital god”, and how AI regulation could be a good thing.
Equity is TechCrunch’s flagship podcast, produced by Theresa Loconsolo, and posts every Wednesday and Friday. Subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts.
You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod. For the full episode transcript, for those who prefer reading over listening, check out our full archive of episodes over at Simplecast.
Credits: Equity is produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. Bryce Durbin is our Illustrator. We'd also like to thank the audience development team and Henry Pickavet, who manages TechCrunch audio products.
In this Friday’s episode of TechCrunch’s Equity podcast, Kirsten Korosec, Mary Ann Azevedo and Becca Szkutak kick off the show dissecting a bill which aims to regulate AI at the model level. Naturally, some VCs and founders as well as students and professors are in an uproar about it. But we have to ask, is regulation in the name of safety such a bad thing? Short answer: It depends.
Then the trio got into the deals of the week, including OpenAI’s potential new investment in webcam maker Opal. We also discussed some major changes at the executive level within OpenAI and what that could mean about what’s going on internally. Becca then wanted to talk about a new startup called why?!, which was founded by ex-Clubhouse employees and aims to be a networking, messaging and dating app all in one. And Kirsten wanted to drill down on electric vehicle maker Lucid’s new $1.5 billion capital infusion from the Saudi wealth fund.
We then shifted gears to talk about just how many new unicorns were born in the U.S. this year so far and the surprising diversity of sectors they were in. And lastly, we dug into a couple of notable M&A deals in the fintech space, including one this week in which Payoneer scooped up a five-year-old Singaporean startup called Skuad for $61 million in cash as well as Stripe’s latest buy.
We had a blast this episode, so give it a listen!
Equity is TechCrunch’s flagship podcast, produced by Theresa Loconsolo, and posts every Wednesday and Friday. Subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts.
You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod. For the full episode transcript, for those who prefer reading over listening, check out our full archive of episodes over at Simplecast.
Credits: Equity is produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. Bryce Durbin is our Illustrator. We'd also like to thank the audience development team and Henry Pickavet, who manages TechCrunch audio products.
In today’s episode of Equity Podcast, Mary Ann Azevedo talked to Flourish Ventures co-founders Tilman Ehrbeck, Emmalyn Shaw and Arjuna Costa about a variety of topics, including how their investment themes have evolved in the past 5 years and what trends they’re most excited about today. We also got their opinion on M&A deals in fintech, AI and founder wellness, among other things.
The trio founded Flourish Ventures in 2019 and now the evergreen firm has $850 million under management, last raising a $350 million fund in October of 2023. Flourish invests all over the world, backing fintech startups in the U.S., and across Africa, Asia and Latin America. Notable investments include digital bank Chime, Brazilian neobank Neon, which was last priced at $1.6 billion; embedded finance startup Unit, and African payments infrastructure company Flutterwave.
Equity is TechCrunch’s flagship podcast, produced by Theresa Loconsolo, and posts every Wednesday and Friday. Subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts.
You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod. For the full episode transcript, for those who prefer reading over listening, check out our full archive of episodes over at Simplecast.
Credits: Equity is produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. Bryce Durbin is our Illustrator. We'd also like to thank the audience development team and Henry Pickavet, who manages TechCrunch audio products.
On today's Friday news roundup, we just had to talk about AI hardware taking on a new shape with Friend’s $99 necklace. The pendant gives you an AI friend to talk to and…that’s about it. Friend’s pitch is that its wearable can help combat loneliness, but other AI hardware products that have come to market lately – like Humane’s Ai Pin and Rabbit’s r1 – have fallen short of expectations. Even OpenAI, the leader in the space, has come out later than expected with its hyper realistic AI assistant, and only today to a small “alpha group” of users, so it’s hard to assess the product’s capabilities.
On the other side of the AI coin is, sadly, deepfakes and hallucinations. The team touched on this topic, noting how Meta’s AI assistant hallucinated when it said that there was no assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump. Rebecca asked Devin Coldewey if he thought AI companies should take greater care to block users from asking questions about sensitive topics until they could solve for hallucinations, and if they should block users from making deepfakes about certain A-list people, particularly during an election year. His answer? Yes, but it’s probably not as easy as it sounds.
For our deals of the week, Kirsten kicked things off with Mary Ann's coverage of FranShares, a Chicago-based startup that lets people invest in franchise businesses starting with as little as $500 with a goal of providing passive income and portfolio diversification. Apparently, a lot of Gen Z and Millennials are investing in franchises through this platform, which just raised a $4.2 million seed round led by Chicago Ventures with participation from The Pitch Fund and Litquidity Ventures. Kirsten asked Rebecca if she, as a Millennial, would invest in a franchise, and her answer may surprise you.
Kirsten and Rebecca also talked about Kennet of London, a 25-year-old growth equity investor that just raised $287 million for its largest fund to date, and it’s a growth fund. Kennet’s approach is interesting because they focus on B2B SaaS companies that are founder owned and bootstrapped, and thus potentially more capital efficient.
Finally, the team discussed VC movings and shakings. Specifically, Alex Cook, a former partner at Tiger Global who oversaw some of its largest fintech investments and India deals, has left the firm after nearly seven years. Cook is the latest VC to leave a firm before the fund closed and he could see a return on investment. There must be something in the water.
We had a lot of fun this episode, so give it a listen!
Equity is TechCrunch’s flagship podcast, produced by Theresa Loconsolo, and posts every Wednesday and Friday. Subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts.
You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod. For the full episode transcript, for those who prefer reading over listening, check out our full archive of episodes over at Simplecast.
Credits: Equity is produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. Bryce Durbin is our Illustrator. We'd also like to thank the audience development team and Henry Pickavet, who manages TechCrunch audio products.
Global startup funding was up 16% in the second quarter, according to Crunchbase data, led by an uptick in mega-rounds. That increase was led, unsurprisingly, by the AI sector. Funding to companies in AI made up 30% of all dollars invested and actually doubled quarter over quarter to $24 billion.
On today's episode of TechCrunch's Equity podcast, Mary Ann was joined by Gené Teare, a Senior Data Editor at Crunchbase and Crunchbase News, to talk through the numbers. Teare is a well-known analyst of the global venture capital market, and was instrumental to Crunchbase’s early life and remains one of its more tenured staffers.
“I was actually quite shocked by the doubling in AI because we're six quarters in from the launch of Chat GPT,” Teare said. “I think part of that is that in venture, things take time to sort of filter through.”
There were also signs that larger M&A deals increased in the second quarter, providing much needed liquidity in a continued dry IPO market.
“We're definitely seeing a stronger M&A environment compared to 2022,” Teare said. “The big expectation is that M&A is going to pick up more significantly and I’m not sure we’ve seen that yet, partly because prices have come down. There's a lot of companies who might realize they're not gonna make it to going public in the next 3 to 5 years…So, I think it has improved but not as much as many in the bench community were wanting or expecting.”
Equity is back on Friday with our weekly news roundup. So come back then!
Before we let you go, some disclosures: We invited Gené on the show because we wanted to get her valuable insights regarding the venture capital markets. We knew she’d be great on the topic, because Mary Ann worked with her for years at Crunchbase. During her tenure at Crunchbase, she was paid partially in stock options, and retains a minor stake in Crunchbase itself. We do our best at Equity to cite the best data source for whatever topic we’re looking at, which means we use Crunchbase data as well as information from its competitors at PitchBook and CB Insights. For instance, we had a PitchBook denizen on the show to chat through Q2 2023 results last year. We think we put together the best possible show for you on its merits alone, but did want to note some professional overlaps right up top.
Equity is TechCrunch’s flagship podcast, produced by Theresa Loconsolo, and posts every Wednesday and Friday. Subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts.
You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod. For the full episode transcript, for those who prefer reading over listening, check out our full archive of episodes over at Simplecast
Credits: Equity is produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. Bryce Durbin is our Illustrator. We'd also like to thank the audience development team and Henry Pickavet, who manages TechCrunch audio products.
Today’s episode is packed with M&A talk, how one YouTuber succeeded at the creator economy, why Twitch is still losing money and an autonomous vehicle company that is making a comeback.
First up, Rebecca took a look at fintech giant Stripe’s acquisition of four-year-old competitor Lemon Squeezy. The buy will allow Stripe to beef up its merchant of record selling “in a big way,” according to Stripe CEO Patrick Collison. Deal terms weren’t disclosed, but Lemon Squeezy has a reputation for turning down other offers, including a $50 million Series A. The company’s founder said he was holding out for the right partner to take the business to the next level, and apparently Stripe was it.
This comment led Rebecca to explore the idea of M&A as an exit strategy. Does this practice create perverse incentives in venture capital, where investors are becoming more risk-averse and looking for a surer path to regaining capital, at the long-term expense of competition? Other startups have turned down such opportunities so they can go it alone. Just look at Wiz’s decision not to get acquired by Google for $23 billion, something we discussed on last Friday’s episode.
Next, Rebecca touched on MatPat, the first big YouTuber to successfully exit his company, Theorist Media. Matthew Patrick turned his successful video series, The Game Theorists, into a full-fledged media business called Theorist, with 40 million subscribers across channels. But he was getting tired of the ceaseless content uploading, and found a way to convince investors that the business could go on without him. Now, he’s in Capitol Hill educating politicians about what creators need to succeed as small businesses.
Speaking of creators and acquisitions, Rebecca pulled up a Wall Street Journal report that found that after 10 years, Twitch is still losing Amazon money. Amazon bought Twitch for $1 billion in 2014, but the company still isn’t profitable. And will it ever be? Twitch in 2023 generated about $667 million in ad revenue and $1.3 billion in commerce revenue, but that accounted for less than 0.5% of Amazon’s total 2023 revenue. Amazon defended its buy, saying Twitch has a long-term path to profitability. But broader trends that seem to favor short-form videos over watching someone play an entire video game live say otherwise.
Finally, while we’re on the subject of comebacks, autonomous delivery startup Nuro is gearing up for one of its own. Nuro has been quiet for the past year or so after two big rounds of layoffs. Once the darling of the AV industry with over $2 billion in funding from high-profile investors, Nuro was burning money fast as it tried to scale and commercialize all at once. Now, Nuro is back with better AI and a new vehicle, the R3, which it will be testing later this year in the Bay Area and Houston.
Equity is TechCrunch’s flagship podcast, produced by Theresa Loconsolo, and posts every Monday, Wednesday and Friday.
Subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod. For the full episode transcript, for those who prefer reading over listening, check out our full archive of episodes over at Simplecast.
Credits: Equity is produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. Bryce Durbin is our Illustrator. We'd also like to thank the audience development team and Henry Pickavet, who manages TechCrunch audio products.
This week felt like two weeks rolled into one. To kick things off, Mary Ann Azevedo walked everyone through Clio’s huge fundraise. The Canadian legal tech company raised $900 million at a $3 billion valuation — a very large sum anytime, but especially in this market. Impressively, the company is still growing rapidly, which isn't easy to do when you’re at such a late stage. We talked about the drivers behind that growth and how Clio differs from other legal tech startups raising capital these days.
Next up, Mary Ann and Rebecca Szkutak discussed Alphabet’s announcement this week that it would invest another up to $5 billion in Waymo. It’s an obvious vote of confidence on self-driving cars on Alphabet’s part, but both Becca and Mary Ann agreed on one thing: They’d prefer to stick with riding in cars with human drivers.
We closed out our deals of the week with a lively discussion on a 17-year-old founder and investor who pitched investors out of the stall of his high school bathroom. He just raised money for his startup, Aviato, and his story is an inspirational and fun read.
Next up was cybersecurity company Wiz turning down a $23 billion acquisition offer from Alphabet. We talked about potential reasons and looked at other examples of large M&A deals not working out.
We wrapped up Equity with a look at digital banking startup Mercury abruptly shuttering its service to founders located in certain countries, such as Ukraine. Founders were naturally not happy, but another fintech was waiting in the wings to help affected customers.
It was a super fun episode, so don’t miss giving it a listen!
Equity is TechCrunch’s flagship podcast, produced by Theresa Loconsolo, and posts every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts.
You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod. For the full episode transcript, for those who prefer reading over listening, check out our full archive of episodes over at Simplecast.
Credits: Equity is produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. Bryce Durbin is our Illustrator. We'd also like to thank the audience development team and Henry Pickavet, who manages TechCrunch audio products.
Maven Ventures General Partner Sara Deshpande has been investing in the consumer tech space for a decade.
Over time, the seed-stage venture firm has backed the likes of Zoom, Cruise, Hello Heart, Perplexity and x.AI and has grown to over $200 million in assets under management.
Now, with a new $60 million fund — and plans to write six to eight checks of up to $1.5 million each year — Deshpande joined TechCrunch senior reporter Mary Ann Azevedo on Equity to discuss the changes in the consumer landscape, how her firm is doubling down on artificial intelligence and what makes a startup stand out.
When it comes to AI, Deshpande thinks that at the seed stage, AI's ability to improve life for consumers “is going to get here much more quickly than people think.” At the same time, she thinks that the peak AI frenzy was about 12 months ago.
She also acknowledged that there is naturally going to be some “tumult” around the sector. Perplexity, for example, has been under fire amid plagiarism and web scraping charges.
Equity will be back on Friday, so stay tuned!
Equity is TechCrunch’s flagship podcast, produced by Theresa Loconsolo, and posts every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts.
You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod. For the full episode transcript, for those who prefer reading over listening, check out our full archive of episodes over at Simplecast.
Credits: Equity is produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. Bryce Durbin is our Illustrator. We'd also like to thank the audience development team and Henry Pickavet, who manages TechCrunch audio products.
On today’s episode of Equity, Rebecca Bellan did a deep dive into the CrowdStrike outage that affected around 8.5 million Windows devices around the world, causing disruptions in air travel, banking, hospitals, media outlets, federal agencies and businesses of all kinds. The outage began when CrowdStrike, a cloud security giant, sent out a defective software update. While CrowdStrike quickly identified the issue and deployed a fix, the fallout continued over the weekend and will probably continue into this week, particularly for the travel sector. United, American and Delta airlines all collectively saw thousands of flights canceled and delayed, which will have ripple effects into the week.
Rebecca went into how this outage – despite not being a cyberattack – has provided the world with a stark example of just how vulnerable our critical infrastructure systems are, a big problem if our adversaries decide to get any bright ideas. She also discussed the reputational damage CrowdStrike experienced, the startups that have smelled blood in the water and are poised to strike, and the potential need to regulate monopolies that offer essential services.
Moving on, Rebecca took a look at what U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris’s stance on technology has been, now that President Joe Biden has stepped out of the race for the presidency and officially endorsed his right hand. Harris appears to favor oversight for big tech companies to protect consumer privacy, as well as AI regulation to stop companies from prioritizing profits over people and society. While some big names in the VC and tech world have backed former President Donald Trump due to his laissez-faire approach to regulating AI and crypto (something we talked about on last week’s Friday episode!), others in the industry have shown support for Harris. VCs like John Doerr and Ron Conway were among her early supporters, and as a presidential candidate, Harris was quickly endorsed by LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman.
Rebecca also looked at a Reuters report detailing Nvidia’s plans to build a version of its new flagship AI chips for the Chinese market that are compatible with current U.S. export controls. The U.S. tightened controls of exports of semiconductors to China in 2023, a move designed to limit the Chinese military’s breakthroughs in supercomputing, but it appears Nvidia isn’t so keen to let that market go.
Finally, Rebecca took a look at a deep dive from TechCrunch’s Paul Sawers on Yandex, once referred to as the “Google of Russia” and its comeback from Nasdaq limbo. Yandex’s publicly traded Dutch entity has severed all ties with Russia, selling off the entirety of its Russian assets in a fire sale earlier this year. The “new” company has adopted the name of one of its few remaining assets, a Finnish data center and AI cloud platform called Nebuis AI. The company is now operating as something of a corporation-startup hybrid. Its goal? To be a European AI compute leader.
Equity will be back on Wednesday to interview Maven Ventures’s Sara Deshpande about why the VC is bullish on consumer funding and how venture is looking at AI companies, so tune back in then!
Equity is TechCrunch’s flagship podcast, produced by Theresa Loconsolo, and posts every Monday, Wednesday and Friday.
Subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod. For the full episode transcript, for those who prefer reading over listening, check out our full archive of episodes over at Simplecast.
Credits: Equity is produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. Bryce Durbin is our Illustrator. We'd also like to thank the audience development team and Henry Pickavet, who manages TechCrunch audio products.
To kick off this week's news roundup, Kirsten walked us through Elon Musk’s recent declaration of his intent to move both SpaceX and X’s headquarters out of California to Texas. Whether or not he’ll see those plans through remains to be seen, but of course, the Equity crew had thoughts.
We then got into the deals of the week.
First up, we talked about Sequoia Capital’s emailing LPs in funds raised between 2009 and 2011 with an offer to buy up to $861 million worth of shares in Stripe. The move is notable for two reasons. For one, it’s evidence that LPs are increasingly antsy for liquidity in this dry IPO market. (2024 thus far has delivered just four venture-backed tech IPOs — Reddit, Astera Labs, Ibotta and Rubrik — in March and April.) The Equity team also discussed how Sequoia’s gesture reflects that the firm is confident not only of Stripe’s future, but in its ability to eventually exit in a way that will reward investors handsomely.
Next up, Rebecca Bellan led a discussion as to how Andrej Karpathy, former head of AI at Tesla and researcher at OpenAI, is launching Eureka Labs, an “AI native” education platform. We had a lively discussion on Karpathy’s new initiative and when and how AI is appropriate in the classroom.
We closed out the deals segment with Mary Ann’s scoop on PartnerOne’s acquisition of HeadSpin, a company whose founder was sentenced to prison for fraud earlier this year. Employees were upset that they got nothing for their options as part of the buyout, which Marina Temkin this week reported was valued at a mere $28 million.
The group then got into an in-depth conversation about Silicon Valley’s involvement in the election this year. Former President Donald Trump this week picked Ohio Senator J.D. Vance as his running mate, as he runs to reclaim the office he lost to President Joe Biden in 2020. Vance, who’s best known for his memoir, “Hillbilly Elegy,” spent years as a venture capitalist before leaving the industry when elected to the U.S. Senate in 2022. We also talked about Andreessen Horowitz’s controversial vocal support of Trump and the startup-related reasons why its leaders are backing the Republican nominee.
We wrapped up Equity with a look at Latin America’s startup scene and how it rebounded in funding in the second quarter, boosted by late-stage funding in the fintech sector.
It was a great episode, so give it a listen!
Equity is TechCrunch’s flagship podcast, produced by Theresa Loconsolo, and posts every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts.
You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod. For the full episode transcript, for those who prefer reading over listening, check out our full archive of episodes over at Simplecast.
Credits: Equity is produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. Bryce Durbin is our Illustrator. We'd also like to thank the audience development team and Henry Pickavet, who manages TechCrunch audio products.
Renegade Partners co-founders Renata Quintini and Roseanne Wincek have seen it all in their careers — notably over the past four years when they launched their first fund as the COVID pandemic took hold and navigated the economic roller coaster that followed.
Now, with a second $128 million fund — and a plan to write checks of up to $10 million into 20 startups — Quintini and Wincek join TechCrunch editor Kirsten Korosec on Equity to discuss those early days of their first fund, what they look for in a startup and what’s driving the shift away from megafunds.
Equity is TechCrunch’s flagship podcast, produced by Theresa Loconsolo, and posts every Wednesday and Friday. Subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts.
You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod. For the full episode transcript, for those who prefer reading over listening, check out our full archive of episodes over at Simplecast.
Credits: Equity is produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. Bryce Durbin is our Illustrator. We'd also like to thank the audience development team and Henry Pickavet, who manages TechCrunch audio products.
On today’s episode of Equity, Rebecca Bellan explored Google’s reported talks to acquire Wiz, a cloud security company, for around $23 billion. Wiz provides an “all-in-one approach to cloud security,” pulling data from Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud and others, then scanning it all for security risk factors – something that Google might see as a good way to fortify its own cloud business, which grew 28% to $9.57 billion in Q1 this year.
We also discussed a letter from OpenAI whistleblowers who say the AI company has placed illegal restrictions on how employees can communicate with government regulators. They say OpenAI’s NDAs prohibit and discourage employees and investors from communicating with the SEC over securities violations, and forced employees to waive their rights to whistleblower incentives and compensation, among other things.
Bellan also talked about the paradox of how much money is being invested into AI versus how much money it’s making. In the first half of 2024 alone, more than $35.5 billion was invested into AI startups globally, per Crunchbase data. As these AI startups gain force, other companies hopping on the generative AI train want more than the assurance of trigger happy VCs and eye-popping valuations before they pull out their wallets. They want to know that this tech will improve business performance and revenue, as promised. Because after all, many experts say the promise of AI will take much longer to come to fruition than the current investment frenzy suggests, something that they also say could lead to an AI bubble bursting.
Finally, we touched on the return of e-bike startup darling VanMoof, and how its new owners want to win over old customers. Their audacious strategy involves offering customers who never got their e-bikes before VanMoof went bankrupt a €1,000 discount off a new bike. Why not just refund those customers? Well, VanMoof’s new owners don’t have access to that customer money, which is tied up in bankruptcy proceedings. Will this strategy be enough to lure back jilted customers? We’ll soon find out.
Equity will be back on Wednesday, so stay tuned!
Equity is TechCrunch’s flagship podcast, produced by Theresa Loconsolo, and posts every Monday, Wednesday and Friday.
Subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod. For the full episode transcript, for those who prefer reading over listening, check out our full archive of episodes over at Simplecast.
Credits: Equity is produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. Bryce Durbin is our Illustrator. We'd also like to thank the audience development team and Henry Pickavet, who manages TechCrunch audio products.
Mary Ann was off this week, and Kirsten took the lead with Becca Szkutak and Rebecca Bellan in the co-host seats. This episode is packed with deals, antitrust musings, AI and more, so let's get into it!
For our first deal of the week, one of the many lawsuits Musk faces after firing 6,000 Twitter employees after his 2022 takeover was dismissed. The result may be good news for Musk, but it doesn’t eliminate Musk’s legal troubles. Musk is facing at least one other lawsuit from CEO Parag Agrawal, who along with three other former Twitter Inc. executives are seeking $128 million in severance payments from X Corp.
Next up, Rebecca broke down Microsoft’s decision to leave its observer seat on OpenAI’s board, after which the AI company will no longer host observers. The legacy tech giant said it has seen enough progress being made at OpenAI and is “confident in its direction,” but we’re not exactly buying that Microsoft would give up such a coveted spot so easily. We suspect that the decision was fueled by ongoing antitrust scrutiny of Big Tech’s influence over emerging AI players.
After that, Becca talked about Duolingo’s deal to buy Hobbes, a Detroit-based animation and motion design studio. Hobbes is a company that Duolingo has worked with for years on several features, including Duolingo Music, so it’s interesting to see the acquisition happen at this stage. Maybe Hobbes was having money trouble and needed a lifeline? Either way, Duolingo is calling this an acqui-hire deal. While Hobbes isn't an AI company, we make a prediction that we'll see similar acquisitions of smaller AI startups as larger companies scoop up the AI startups they're already working with.
We’ve been noticing a few stories lately that investigate what happens when a company’s founder or owner dies. Today, Rebecca went over the story of Unseen Capital, whose founder Kayode Owens passed away in 2021 just after raising $30 million. The VC’s mission was to help early-stage healthcare companies started by underrepresented founders. Pharma company Eli Lilly was one of Unseen’s LPs, and in a move to protect its own investment while signaling confidence in Unseen’s mission, has brokered a deal for Seae Ventures to acquire the unmoored VC. It’s a good fit, as Seae Ventures is another diversity-focused VC firm.
Meanwhile, a recent TC story on deep tech funding caught the Equity pod’s attention. The gist: a recent survey of 30 deep tech VCs from eight countries found that very technical CEOs raise larger rounds. The survey also noted that pre-seed and Series A deep tech hardware rounds were bigger in 2023 than in 2022.
While the survey seems to provide a rosy picture for technical CEOs, it does not provide a complete one. For instance, the survey focused on Europe, which got the Equity crew musing about whether those same stats would hold up in North America.
And it followed rounds up through Series A. The Equity pod wondered if the results changed in Series B rounds and beyond. Plus, we think the rise of deep tech-focused funds may also play a role here too.
Equity is TechCrunch’s flagship podcast, produced by Theresa Loconsolo, and posts every Wednesday and Friday. Subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts.
You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod. For the full episode transcript, for those who prefer reading over listening, check out our full archive of episodes over at Simplecast.
Credits: Equity is produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. Bryce Durbin is our Illustrator. We'd also like to thank the audience development team and Henry Pickavet, who manages TechCrunch audio products.
Mike Maples Jr. is a prolific angel investor and co-founder of early-stage venture firm Floodgate. Over the years, he’s taken a lot of bets. Some have paid off handsomely (Twitter, Twitch, Lyft and Bazaarvoice, for example). Others have not.
On today's episode of Equity, Mary Ann sat down with Mike to dig into a number of topics, including some of his most memorable investments, the one that got away, what he looks for when evaluating startups that pitch him - and what Godzilla has to do with it. We also talked a bit about his new book that he co-authored with Peter Ziebelman called “Pattern Breakers. Why some startups change the future.” Press play and join the conversation!
Equity is TechCrunch’s flagship podcast, produced by Theresa Loconsolo, and posts every Wednesday and Friday. Subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts.
You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod. For the full episode transcript, for those who prefer reading over listening, check out our full archive of episodes over at Simplecast.
Credits: Equity is produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. Bryce Durbin is our Illustrator. We'd also like to thank the audience development team and Henry Pickavet, who manages TechCrunch audio products.
On today's episode of Equity, we're taking a look at news you might've missed over the holiday weekend here in the U.S., starting with the recent OpenAI security breach. While it doesn't seem that people have to be too worried about what the hackers actually accessed, the fact that it happened is worth paying attention to. TechCrunch's Devin Coldeway argues that AI companies are treasure troves of data and will likely become more of a target for hackers. Companies that work with the large AI companies should pay attention.
We also had an update on Fisker’s slide into bankruptcy. The EV startup, that you've already heard about on Equity, had a new update this week. The company asked its bankruptcy judge for permission to sell its remaining inventory for $14,000 a vehicle, a noticeable drop from the $70,000 Fisker was initially asking for. This has some fearing that this chapter 11 bankruptcy could turn into a chapter 7.
To close out, we looked at a new trend of venture funds helping seed investors exercise their pro rata rights and avoid their equity stake being diluted. This is interesting because while it could be good for smaller funds to have a way to maintain their equity stakes, pro rata rights discussions can get contentious and bringing more capital to the table won't necessarily help that.
Equity will be back on Wednesday with an interesting conversation between Mary Ann and angel investor and Floodgate Co-Founder, Mike Maples Jr, so we’ll talk to you then!
Equity is TechCrunch’s flagship podcast, produced by Theresa Loconsolo, and posts every Wednesday and Friday. Subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts.
You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod. For the full episode transcript, for those who prefer reading over listening, check out our full archive of episodes over at Simplecast.
Credits: Equity is produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. Bryce Durbin is our Illustrator. We'd also like to thank the audience development team and Henry Pickavet, who manages TechCrunch audio products.
What’s the common thread between Tesla, building startups, General Motors, venture capital and Lyft?
Jon McNeill, co-founder and partner of DVx Ventures, joins TechCrunch editor Kirsten Korosec on Equity to discuss how Elon Musk’s pay package has influenced founders, when it makes sense to go light on cash and heavy on equity, and his firm’s unique approach to investing that eschews the traditional management fee structure.
McNeill describes DVx as VC 2.0. The firm comes up with business ideas and builds them into a startup within the firm before it goes out to find the leadership team. To date, the firm has started and invested in 14 portfolio companies that span EVs and AI, SaaS, consumer tech and climate tech.
McNeill also walks Equity through the startup creation process, managing risk and how to spot opportunities that can disrupt the market.
Equity is TechCrunch’s flagship podcast, produced by Theresa Loconsolo, and posts every Wednesday and Friday. Subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts.
You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod. For the full episode transcript, for those who prefer reading over listening, check out our full archive of episodes over at Simplecast.
Credits: Equity is produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. Bryce Durbin is our Illustrator. We'd also like to thank the audience development team and Henry Pickavet, who manages TechCrunch audio products.
Mary Ann, Haje and Kirsten are back on the mic for this week's episode, which was is jam-packed with deals, hot topics, and the latest dramaaaaaa in the tech world.
For Deals of the Week, Haje wanted to chat about Formation Bio, an AI-focused drug development startup that just raised a whopping $372 million in Series D funding, led by Andreessen Horowitz. Next, Kirsten broke down the surprising partnership between Volkswagen Group and Rivian and how its initial $1 billion investment could grow up to $5 billion. To wrap up our deals, Mary-Ann highlighted Nubank’s acquisition of Hyperplane, an AI-for-banks startup.
Moving onto our themes, Haje took us on a deep dive into the fediverse, a decentralized network of social media platforms like Mastodon, Threads, and even Trump’s Truth Social. The fediverse has seen a surge in popularity, especially after Elon Musk acquired Twitter (now X). Mastodon, for example, has just about tripled its user base since Musk took over. The appeal lies in its decentralized nature, offering users more control and niche communities. Whether you’re a photographer, a journalism enthusiast, or just someone fed up with traditional social media, the fediverse has something for you.
Last but not least, we discussed the ongoing debate around DEI (Diversity, Equity, Inclusion) in tech in a more controversial segment. Scale AI’s founder Alexandr Wang recently sparked a debate by advocating for MEI (Merit, Excellence, Intelligence) over DEI. This has drawn support from big names like Elon Musk and Palmer Luckey but also significant criticism.
The stats are troubling: new women recruit levels in the U.S. data industry have dropped dramatically, and DEI-related job listings are down.
Equity will be back on Wednesday with a new interview episode, so stay tuned!
Equity is TechCrunch’s flagship podcast, produced by Theresa Loconsolo, and posts every Monday, Wednesday and Friday.
Subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod. For the full episode transcript, for those who prefer reading over listening, check out our full archive of episodes over at Simplecast.
Credits: Equity is produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. Bryce Durbin is our Illustrator. We'd also like to thank the audience development team and Henry Pickavet, who manages TechCrunch audio products.
Today, we’re bringing you a conversation from TechCrunch's StrictlyVC event in DC earlier this month, where TechCrunch Editor in Chief & General Manager Connie Loizos sat down with Luther Lowe, who serves as Y Combinator’s Head of Public Policy. Lowe joined the accelerator last fall from Yelp, where he was SVP of Public Policy.
Connie and Luther touched on antitrust efforts to reign in big tech, Y Combinator’s impact, leadership and access to talent, and what competition, policy and regulation look like in the AI era. It’s a super interesting conversation, so press play and listen in!
Equity is TechCrunch’s flagship podcast, produced by Theresa Loconsolo, and posts every Monday, Wednesday and Friday.
Subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod. For the full episode transcript, for those who prefer reading over listening, check out our full archive of episodes over at Simplecast.
Credits: Equity is produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. Bryce Durbin is our Illustrator. We'd also like to thank the audience development team and Henry Pickavet, who manages TechCrunch audio products.
In a press release this morning, the European Commission named Apple as the first of tech’s so-called “gatekeepers” to be charged for violating the EU’s Digital Markets Act. Apple is one of six tech giants named by the European Commission as “gatekeepers” last year, alongside Alphabet, Amazon, ByteDance, Meta and Microsoft. While we continue to keep our eyes on the EU’s attempts to ensure a competitive marketplace, that’s not all we got into on the Equity podcast this morning. Rebecca Bellan led the show this morning and reported that X still has a Verified bot problem, but this time they came for TechCrunch writers (herself included). The experience had us wondering if X’s competitors will step up, and create platforms with more safety…and fewer bots.
Rebecca also had an IPO update for our listeners this morning as Shein finally filed for its public debut in London, and we closed out our startup coverage with a look at Sir Jack A Lot’s startup for retail traders. The startup, which recently raised a $4.5 million seed round, had us hyped on the retail trading space and its continued growth.
Finally, Haje closed out today’s show with a teardown for Feel Therapeutics. The startup recently raised a $3.5M seed deck to revolutionize mental health care with a science-forward approach that integrates wearable devices, mobile apps, and clinician dashboards. Hit play to hear how they did it!
Equity is TechCrunch’s flagship podcast, produced by Theresa Loconsolo, and posts every Monday, Wednesday and Friday.
Subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod. For the full episode transcript, for those who prefer reading over listening, check out our full archive of episodes over at Simplecast.
Credits: Equity is produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. Bryce Durbin is our Illustrator. We'd also like to thank the audience development team and Henry Pickavet, who manages TechCrunch audio products.
This week, co-hosts Mary-Ann Azavedo and Haje Kamps were joined by the ever-insightful Kirsten Korosec to dive into the latest and greatest happenings in the startup world.
Kicking things off, our trio of hosts break down three major deals of the week. First, there's Waabi, an autonomous trucking startup that just closed a whopping $200 million Series B round. Kirsten Korosec provides an inside look into how Waabi's AI-first approach is setting it apart in the crowded autonomous vehicle space and why investors are still willing to back big bets in this field despite the market's ups and downs.
Next, they explore the intriguing case of Gynger, a fintech company that has raised $20 million led by PayPal Ventures. Mary-Ann explains how Gynger is shaking up the way startups handle tech purchases with its buy-now-pay-later model, working both with buyers and sellers to offer flexible payment terms. Kirsten and your trusty correspondent weigh in on the potential risks and rewards of this unique business model, especially in today's volatile economic environment.
The third deal takes us into the realm of artificial intelligence with Safe Superintelligence. I'm delving into the story of OpenAI co-founder Ilya Sutskever’s new venture, which aims to develop general AI with a focus on safety. We discuss the ambitious goals of this startup and the challenges of balancing rapid advancement with the ethical considerations of creating superintelligent AI.
After dissecting these deals, the conversation shifts to a sobering topic: the wave of bankruptcies that have hit the startup world in 2024. Kirsten provides a detailed analysis of the factors leading to these failures, with a spotlight on high-profile cases like EV startup Fisker and fintech service Synapse. The team discusses the common pitfalls that led to these companies' downfalls and what other startups can learn from their mistakes.
But it's not all doom and gloom—our hosts wrap up with an exciting discussion about the future. They dive into Voodoo's acquisition of social media startup BeReal for $537 million. Mary-Ann explores the reasons behind this bold move, how Voodoo plans to integrate ads into BeReal's platform, and what this could mean for the landscape of social media. Kirsten and myself debate the potential success of this strategy and the broader implications for user engagement and authenticity in the age of digital advertising.
Equity is TechCrunch’s flagship podcast, produced by Theresa Loconsolo, and posts every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts.
You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod. For the full episode transcript, for those who prefer reading over listening, check out our full archive of episodes over at Simplecast.
Credits: Equity is produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. Bryce Durbin is our Illustrator. We'd also like to thank the audience development team and Henry Pickavet, who manages TechCrunch audio products.
Last week, Brex announced that it would be ditching its co-CEO model, and that got Equity hosts Haje Kamps and Mary Ann Azevedo wondering about co-CEO teams and the effectiveness of the structure overall.
Brex, founded in 2017 by Pedro Franceschi and Henrique Dubugras, initially thrived under the co-CEO structure, with Pedro focusing on internal operations and Enrique handling external relations. However, as the company grew, this setup began to slow decision-making, prompting a shift to a single CEO model. Pedro will now lead as the sole CEO, while Enrique transitions to Chairman of the Board.
We discuss the broader implications and challenges of co-CEO leadership, highlighting how this change aims to enhance agility and appeal to investors as Brex eyes a potential public offering. We also explore other companies that have adopted or abandoned similar leadership models, providing a comprehensive analysis of the pros and cons of shared CEO responsibilities in the competitive tech landscape.
Equity will be back with a full rundown of the week's startup and venture news on Friday, but if you want more from TechCrunch podcasts until then, Darrell and Becca spoke to both Brex CEOs on Found last year about why the duo chose to go down the co-CEO path in the first place.
Equity is TechCrunch’s flagship podcast, produced by Theresa Loconsolo, and posts every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts.
You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod. For the full episode transcript, for those who prefer reading over listening, check out our full archive of episodes over at Simplecast.
Credits: Equity is produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. Bryce Durbin is our Illustrator. We'd also like to thank the audience development team and Henry Pickavet, who manages TechCrunch audio products.
This week on Equity, we discussed some big news that really matters: How Black founders are addressing the diversity gap in AI chatbots. We’ve all noticed how OpenAI’s ChatGPT and other AI chatbot tools struggle with cultural nuance, often coming up with answers that reflect a largely Euro-centric worldview. Now, a handful of Black-owned chatbots and ChatGPT versions – like Latimer.AI, ChatBlackGPT and Spark Plug – have cropped up to ensure Black POVs are included in the AI conversation, and that Black founders get a cut of this trillion-dollar industry.
That’s not all Rebecca talked about on Monday’s show. We also looked at how different social media companies are playing around with what’s real and what isn’t, an increasingly salient topic in the age of AI. On the one hand, we’ve got TikTok’s introduction of generative AI avatars, which creators and brands can use to speed up ad campaigns and spread them out to a global audience. And on the other hand, YouTube is experimenting with a “Notes” feature that lets users add context to videos. It’s an attempt to combat misinformation as AI threatens to inundate us all with deepfake and misleading political content in the lead up to the 2024 presidential election.
In IPO Land, Rebecca touched on Tempus’s 9% rise and $441 million raise on its Nasdaq debut last Friday. The genomic testing and data analysis company, started by Groupon’s founder, need have only hinted at its future genAI integrations for investors to throw money at it. Meanwhile, Chinese e-commerce giant Shein is struggling to get Beijing to approve its London IPO, reports the Financial Times. Shein’s executive chair reportedly angered Chinese regulators last month by saying its corporate values meant it “could be considered a US company,” so now the retailer is trying to walk back on those comments. Shein is trying to raise £50 billion (US$64 billion) from its London IPO, and it needs Beijing on its side to do so.
Haje closed out today’s show with a teardown of Kinnect’s $250K angel deck. Founded just last year, the digital archive startup is already making waves with $100,000 in funding from Techstar’s Rising Stars program. Hit play to hear how they did it!
Equity is TechCrunch’s flagship podcast, produced by Theresa Loconsolo, and posts every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod. For the full episode transcript, for those who prefer reading over listening, check out our full archive of episodes over at Simplecast.
Credits: Equity is produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. Bryce Durbin is our Illustrator. We'd also like to thank the audience development team and Henry Pickavet, who manages TechCrunch audio products.
Welcome back to Friday Equity!
In today’s episode Equity podcast, Mary Ann, Haje and Becca dug into three very different but all super interesting deals of the week. Haje wanted to discuss Raspberry Pi’s debut on the public market, and we all agreed that what this profitable company has managed to build – a tiny affordable computer that fits into the palm of your hand – is very neat.
Mary Ann then wanted to talk about InScope, a fintech which just raised a $4.3 million seed round of funding led by Lightspeed Venture Partners to automate financial reporting. Becca got to riff on Meowtel, a niche – and also profitable – startup focused on cat-sitting that has raised just $1 million in venture capital over its nine-year life.
The trio then talked about all the Apple news (largely AI-focused) that came out of WWDC and its potential impact on the startup world. They then turned their attention to Elon Musk’s reaction to Apple’s announcement that it would be integrating ChatGPT into its iOS. While he clearly wasn’t happy about it, we discussed what his true motives for threatening to pull Apple devices from his companies might be.
That’s it for this week, but we’ll be back bright and early Monday with more tech and startup news. Talk soon!
Equity is TechCrunch’s flagship podcast, produced by Theresa Loconsolo, and posts every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts.
You also can follow Equity on X and Threads at @EquityPod. For the full episode transcript, for those who prefer reading over listening, check out our full archive of episodes over at Simplecast.
Credits: Equity is produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. Bryce Durbin is our Illustrator. We'd also like to thank the audience development team and Henry Pickavet, who manages TechCrunch audio products.
Vanessa Larco, partner at New Enterprise Associates (NEA), believes that Generative AI’s impact on the world of SaaS could be huge.
The investor joined Mary Ann Azevedo on Equity to talk through, among other topics, her theories about how GenAI could alter the pricing models SaaS businesses use when charging customers.
“I think where [SaaS] people aspire to get to is value-based pricing. This is really, really hard,” she said. But “I think it's a North Star for a lot of different SaaS products.”
Larco also touched on how incumbents’ AI strategies may impact the startup world in general and in particular, what Apple’s new intelligence offering might mean for founders.
The venture capitalist also gave us insight as to why despite being a big believer in the enterprise, she’s also still bullish on consumer investing and what she looks for when evaluating startups in the space.
“I'm bullish on it. Look, I think the consumer is always going to spend. They just are,” she said. “It just depends on what they're going to spend on, what their priorities are.”
In addition to discussing the SaaS and consumer spaces, the investor also shared her thoughts on what she believes the next wave of fintech will look like. (Spoiler alert: think less neobanks and more SMB focus).
It was a super fun conversation, so press play and listen in!
Equity is TechCrunch’s flagship podcast, produced by Theresa Loconsolo, and posts every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts.
You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod. For the full episode transcript, for those who prefer reading over listening, check out our full archive of episodes over at Simplecast.
Credits: Equity is produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. Bryce Durbin is our Illustrator. We'd also like to thank the audience development team and Henry Pickavet, who manages TechCrunch audio products.
Apple’s WWDC is just hours away, and we’re gearing up for big announcements on – you guessed it – AI. We're kicking off today’s episode of Equity with a list of what we can (and can't) expect from the highly anticipated developer conference.
But that's not all we talked about this morning. Becca Szkutak also took a look at Byju’s alarming valuation drop. The Indian edtech giant, once valued at $22 billion, might now be worth nothing according to BlackRock. The news may not come as a surprise given the rocky year Byju’s has had, but as Manish Sing put it, its journey stands to be one of the most “spectacular startup slides in recent memory.”
To close out, we had news of a new fund looking to give the Italian startup ecosystem a boost. We’re optimist about the Italian Founders Fund and what it could contribute to the market, so press play and join the conversation!
Equity is TechCrunch’s flagship podcast, produced by Theresa Loconsolo, and posts every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts.
You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod. For the full episode transcript, for those who prefer reading over listening, check out our full archive of episodes over at Simplecast.
Credits: Equity is produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. Bryce Durbin is our Illustrator. We'd also like to thank the audience development team and Henry Pickavet, who manages TechCrunch audio products.
As always, there was a lot happening in startup land this week, and the Equity team had so much fun breaking it down for you.
On today’s episode of TechCrunch’s Equity podcast, Mary Ann and Rebecca discussed Robinhood’s plans to buy European crypto exchange Bitstamp for $200 million in cash and why they weren’t really surprised by the news.
The duo then dug into not just one but two exciting health-care related deals. Rebecca wanted to riff on Sword Health’s innovative AI-powered virtual physical therapy tech and recent fundraise and corresponding cool valuation bump. Mary Ann then brought up Eko Health, which just raised $41 million after getting FDA clearance to help detect the first signs of heart failure during a routine medical exam (really, how cool is that?!).
From there, they got to grill transportation reporter extraordinaire Sean O’Kane about his in-depth investigation into the mess at electric vehicle manufacturer Fisker. Think hoods flying off and pinching parts from the production line kind of mess. Oof.
From there, they talked about the drama at AI mortgage startup LoanSnap and how that company is being sued left and right among other things. On a more positive note, they then riffed about two very interesting fintech startups focused on Gen Z, Frich (which stands for ‘effin rich) and Fizz – the latter of which is a YC alum just raised $14.4 million in a seed round led by Kleiner Perkins.
That’s it for this week, but we’ll be back bright and early Monday with more tech and startup news. Talk soon!
Equity is TechCrunch’s flagship podcast, produced by Theresa Loconsolo, and posts every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts.
You also can follow Equity on X and Threads at @EquityPod. For the full episode transcript, for those who prefer reading over listening, check out our full archive of episodes over at Simplecast.
Credits: Equity is produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. Bryce Durbin is our Illustrator. We'd also like to thank the audience development team and Henry Pickavet, who manages TechCrunch audio products.
Consumer startups have taken a hit when it comes to venture funding. But according to Eurie Kim, partner at Forerunner Ventures and founding member of All Raise, consumer is where it’s at.
The investor joined Mary Ann Azevedo on Equity to talk through the intricacies of the space. She pointed out that last year, just 7% of seed capital went to consumer startups. Yet, research shows that consumer company performance has outpaced enterprise, Kim contends. Forerunner itself has backed the likes of Oura, Chime and Prose, among others.
Kim also talked about the advantages of being dedicated investors in a space that has seen a number of tourist VCs drift in and out. In addition to discussing the state of consumer investing and what consumer investors are looking for, the venture capitalist shared her thoughts on the investment landscape as a whole, what’s up with IPOs and why every startup should have AI in their pitch deck.
Equity is TechCrunch’s flagship podcast, produced by Theresa Loconsolo, and posts every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts.You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod. For the full episode transcript, for those who prefer reading over listening, check out our full archive of episodes over at Simplecast.
Credits: Equity is produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. Bryce Durbin is our Illustrator. We'd also like to thank the audience development team and Henry Pickavet, who manages TechCrunch audio products.
Welcome to this week's Episode of Equity Monday. We're kicking off the week with a deep dive from this weekend into the demise of electric vehicle startup Fisker at the hands of its founders' whims. Fisker, which was founded by famed vehicle designer Henrik Fisker, is on the brink of bankruptcy after only having delivered a few thousand electric Ocean SUVs. Then, Rebecca Bellan talked about X's new rules to allow adult content (as long as it's "consensually produced," whatever that means), and why that's problematic for the safety of other users -- namely women, who are most often the targets of sexually explicit trolling and harassment. We also touched on Trump's TikTok debut, which came in the wake of the former president's felony conviction. To wrap up, Bellan also discussed a story that TechCrunch published over the weekend looking into the new trend of smaller, lesser-known investors getting shares of hot private AI companies like Anthropic, X.ai and Perplexity by using special purpose vehicles, or SPVs. The result has been a Wild West, high risk, buyer-beware situation, with SPV terms varying wildly. Haje closed out the show with another Pitch Deck Teardown, this time looking into the Angel pitch deck for RAW Dating App. RAW just raised a $3 million friends and family round to shake up the dating scene by shedding fake, TikTok-ified, heavily filtered photos and replacing them with a more genuine, unvarnished experience.
Credits: Equity is produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. Bryce Durbin is our Illustrator. We'd also like to thank the audience development team and Henry Pickavet, who manages TechCrunch audio products.
Welcome back to Equity Friday!
In this week’s episode, Mary Ann, Becca Szkutak,and Haje Kamps tackled three deals of the week: xAI, Elon Musk has once again proven that his name alone can shake up the investment world, raising a staggering $6 billion for his AI startup. Solutions by Text, The Dallas-based company, which has been bootstrapped for over a decade, secured $110 million in funding. And WeatherXM, which is a company bringing Web3 into the weather forecasting space that raised $7.7 million in a Series A.
Then they discussed the Synapse Collapse and what it means for the larger FinTech ecosystem. Synapse, a banking-as-a-service (BaaS) provider, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy leaving many startups and customers in the lurch.
Lastly, the crew wraps it up by discussing Becca’s piece on who is (and is not) going to IPO this year and what that signals to the industry.
That’s it for this week, but we’ll be back bright and early Monday morning with more tech and startup news, along with another round of Pitch Deck Teardown. Talk soon!
Credits: Equity is produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. Bryce Durbin is our Illustrator. We'd also like to thank the audience development team and Henry Pickavet, who manages TechCrunch audio products.
It’s no secret that the bar for startups to land a Series A has risen, but has it risen too high? According to Jenny Fielding, a co-founder and Managing Partner at Everywhere Ventures, startups are facing what she calls “The Series A Chasm.” In a post on X this month, Fielding said, “there’s a huge backlog of seed stage companies with nice traction – just not $3m ARR + 30% MOM growth kinda traction.” The post sparked a conversation online, and Fielding joined Haje Kamps on Equity to talk through it all.
Looking beyond Fielding’s portfolio, we can see that the early stage storm has been brewing for quite some time. According to data from Crunchbase, seed companies have raised about $7 billion so far this year, which is down $1 billion year over year and down significantly in the later stages. Crunchbase has even taken to calling this a moment of “extended adolescence” for startups, with an increase in companies raising $5 million+ seed rounds instead of a Series A.
Of course, this meant we had to address the AI elephant in the room, and the $135 million seed round Musk’s xAI raised last December. Note that after 6 months, the company behind Grok has already announced a $6 billion Series B round. It was an interesting chat, so press play and join the conversation!
Equity is TechCrunch’s flagship podcast, produced by Theresa Loconsolo, and posts every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts.
You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod. For the full episode transcript, for those who prefer reading over listening, check out our full archive of episodes over at Simplecast.
Credits: Equity is produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. Bryce Durbin is our Illustrator. We'd also like to thank the audience development team and Henry Pickavet, who manages TechCrunch audio products.
We’re kicking off the short week with news about Elon Musk, and no, it’s not about X or Tesla. Instead, we’re talking about Musk’s other other company, xAI. In a blog post this weekend, xAI announced it raised $6 billion in Series B funding, confirming earlier reports that the AI startup was looking to raise at a pre-money valuation of $18 billion. With Andreessen Horowitz, Sequoia Capital and Valor among its backers, it looks like Musk is taking steps to catch up and compete with the likes of OpenAI, Microsoft and Alphabet.
The ongoing AI race was only the beginning of what we covered on today’s episode of Equity. This morning, Becca Szkutak dove deep into the collapse of Synapse, a banking-as-a-service company whose bankruptcy could impact an estimated 10 million end customers and 100 fintechs, including teen banking-focused Copper. While this is not the only troubling headline in the fintech space, as our co-host Mary Ann Azevedo put it, “it shows just how treacherous things are for the often-interdependent fintech world when one key player hits trouble.”
To wrap up this morning’s news segment, we also discussed a report from The Washington Post that election officials and researchers are considering a new approach to combating misinformation called “pre-bunking.” Companies like Google are testing it out in the lead up to the European Union election, but we remain skeptical about how successful the technique could be.
Haje closed out the show with another Pitch Deck Teardown, this time examining Berlin-based Terra One’s deck. The startup just raised a cool $7.5 million to make sure Germany’s clean energy isn’t going to waste. Listen through to the end to hear how they made it happen!
Equity is TechCrunch’s flagship podcast, produced by Theresa Loconsolo, and posts every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts.
You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod. For the full episode transcript, for those who prefer reading over listening, check out our full archive of episodes over at Simplecast.
Credits: Equity is produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. Bryce Durbin is our Illustrator. We'd also like to thank the audience development team and Henry Pickavet, who manages TechCrunch audio products.
Say hi to the new Equity crew! To kick off today's show, Mary Ann invited her new co-hosts - Becca Szkutak, Rebecca Bellan, and Haje Kamps - to introduce themselves and shared a bit more about what they do here at TC. The team then jumped right into the news, starting with Techstars CEO Maëlle Gavet announcing she is leaving the company, just weeks after TechCrunch reporter Dominic Madori-Davis published an in-depth investigative article on what’s been going on behind the scenes at the accelerator in recent years. (You can listen to Dom talk more about it here).
As always, there was plenty more to uncover in the world of startups and venture. Mary Ann, Rebecca and Haje dug into two funding deals, one straddling the lines of crypto and social media and the other in the fintech space.
Rebecca wanted to talk about Farcaster, a blockchain-based social protocol that invites developers to build other apps on top of it. The startup raised a $150 million round, news that had the Equity team asking, “Is crypto back?” Mary Ann dug into immigrant banking platform Majority securing $20M in funding after notching an impressive $40 million in ARR as of April.
Last but not least, our trio riffed on the fact that a bunch of tech majors made commitments to the safe development of their AI models, including a potential “kill switch.” While we felt the news was mostly positive, we are also skeptical, too. The team also discussed the challenging environment for emerging fund managers, and our surprise at just how many of them there are.
That’s it for this week, but we’ll be back bright and early Tuesday morning (thanks to a U.S. holiday on Monday) with more tech and startup news, along with another round of Pitch Deck Teardown. Talk soon!
Equity is TechCrunch’s flagship podcast, produced by Theresa Loconsolo, and posts every Monday, Wednesday and Friday.
Subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. You also can follow Equity on X and Threads at @EquityPod. For the full episode transcript, for those who prefer reading over listening, check out our full archive of episodes over at Simplecast.
Credits: Equity is produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. Bryce Durbin is our Illustrator. We'd also like to thank the audience development team and Henry Pickavet, who manages TechCrunch audio products.
Today, we’re listening back to not one but two interviews from the other side of the globe, thanks to our new co-host Rebecca Bellan, who spent three years in Auckland, New Zealand. Late last year, Rebecca hopped across the Tasman to Australia to report on the startup scene in Australia, and came back to us with a temperature check on VC in the Antipodes.
Rebecca spoke to two Aussie VCs: Dan Krasnostein from Square Peg and Gabrielle Munzer from Main Sequence. Rebecca and our guests dug into why early stage funding is popping off in the region, the government's role in growing a startup ecosystem, fintech, climate tech, and what it’s like to compete and collaborate with Silicon Valley.
In addition to these conversations, Rebecca wrote a few deep dive stories from her time in Australia, including a look at its burgeoning climate tech scene and some of the people who are fighting to lift women up in the ecosystem. Rebecca also chatted with Canva — the SaaS darling of Australia — to learn how the company is embracing generative AI at its core and pursuing more B2B clients.
Equity is TechCrunch’s flagship podcast and posts every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts.
You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod.
For the full episode transcript, for those who prefer reading over listening, check out our full archive of episodes over at Simplecast.
Credits: Equity is produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. Bryce Durbin is our Illustrator. We'd also like to thank the audience development team and Henry Pickavet, who manages TechCrunch audio products.
Last week was a big one for AI news, and one thing that stood out to us was OpenAI's deal with Reddit. Per the terms of the deal, OpenAI will get to use content from Reddit like posts and replies to train its AI, and Reddit will get access to some unspecified AI tools. Reddit's stock soared 11% in extended trading following the news.
That's not all we talked about on today's episode of Equity. This morning, Rebecca Bellan also walked us through a new social media platform called Maven that wants to do away with likes, followers and clout-chasing in favor of more serendipitous internet exploration. Maven was co-founded by OpenAI alum Kenneth Stanley and is backed by Twitter co-founder Ev Williams. Speaking of Twitter, X.com is officially live as a platform. Annoyingly for Elon Musk, so is Twitter.com.
Bellan also covered some fresh cybersecurity consolidation. Israeli security firm CyberArk has purchased Venafi out from Thoma Bravo for $1.54 billion -- that's $1 billion in cash and the rest in shares.
Before you go, don't miss the latest Pitch Deck Teardown from Haje Kamps. In today's segment Haje digs deep on Berlin-based startup Goodcarbon's deck. The startup just raised a €5.25 million (around $5.5 million) seed round to make its mark on the big business of carbon credits, and its pitch deck does a great job at showing traction, but is not so great its team slide. Listen to the end to learn more!
Equity is TechCrunch’s flagship podcast, produced by Theresa Loconsolo, and posts every Monday, Wednesday and Friday.
Subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. You also can follow Equity on X and Threads at @EquityPod. For the full episode transcript, for those who prefer reading over listening, check out our full archive of episodes over at Simplecast.
Credits: Equity is produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. Bryce Durbin is our Illustrator. We'd also like to thank the audience development team and Henry Pickavet, who manages TechCrunch audio products.
This week, Mary Ann, Becca and Haje dug into three funding deals, proving that bigger is not always better (or more interesting).
Becca wanted to talk about Spoor, an Oslo, Norway-based startup using AI to help wind farms mitigate its impact on birds (how cool is that?) while Haje wanted to discuss how fintech Layer is looking to take on QuickBooks in the SMB accounting space. Mary Ann, meanwhile, was excited to look into one Kentucky-based startup’s decision to raise $27.5 million in venture capital after being bootstrapped for six years and achieving profitability.
We then moved on to AI-land, and all the fascinating new features revealed by OpenAI and Google this past week. And of course, we had to riff on what all of that means for startups.
Last but not least, the trio examined the trend of venture capital investors leaving their firms to do other things – including starting their own new firms, or going back to old ones, in some cases. We're still wondering what could be behind all the moves, but it doesn't look like the trend is not going anywhere anytime soon.
That’s it for this week but never fear, we’ll be back bright and early Monday morning with your tech and startup news, along with another round of Pitch Deck Teardown. Talk soon!
Equity is TechCrunch’s flagship podcast, produced by Theresa Loconsolo, and posts every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts.
You also can follow Equity on X and Threads at @EquityPod. For the full episode transcript, for those who prefer reading over listening, check out our full archive of episodes over at Simplecast.
Credits: Equity is produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. Bryce Durbin is our Illustrator. We'd also like to thank the audience development team and Henry Pickavet, who manages TechCrunch audio products.
For months, TechCrunch Senior Reporters Mary Ann Azevedo and Christine Hall have been following the story of Newchip's bankruptcy and its impact on founders and today on Equity, they're joined by Haje Kamps to dig deep into how the accelerator’s fall from grace threatened the cap tables of thousands of startups. In some cases, companies suddenly were so high risk to banks and investors that they had to shut down.
The trio also discussed the broader accelerator landscape as a whole, considering what also recently took place at Techstars. It's a lively and hopefully helpful discussion you won't want to miss!
Equity is TechCrunch’s flagship podcast, produced by Theresa Loconsolo, and posts every Monday, Wednesday and Friday.
Subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. You also can follow Equity on X and Threads at @EquityPod. For the full episode transcript, for those who prefer reading over listening, check out our full archive of episodes over at Simplecast.
Credits: Equity is produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. Bryce Durbin is our Illustrator. We'd also like to thank the audience development team and Henry Pickavet, who manages TechCrunch audio products.
Last week was a busy one for some Apple Store employees. Over the weekend, workers at Apple’s Townson, Maryland store — the first Apple retail store to have a formally recognized union — voted to authorize a strike. While the date of the strike is still being determined, the union has been negotiating with Apple since January 2023 over work-life balance, unpredictable scheduling, and wages, among other issues.
But that wasn't all we discussed on today’s episode of Equity. This morning, Rebecca Szkutak also broke down what we can and can’t expect from OpenAI’s livestream event later today. On Friday, Sam Altman put a stop to rumors that the company will release a Google search competitor, but he did say OpenAI could announce a search feature within ChatGPT.
To close out, Haje took the reins with another Pitch Deck Teardown. This time, we’re highlighting Cloudsmith, which secured $15 million for its cloud platform. The startup's 2021 round was the largest Series A for a company from Northern Ireland since 2005, so clearly they got a thing or two right. Listen through to the end to find out how the company pulled it off!
Equity is TechCrunch’s flagship podcast, produced by Theresa Loconsolo, and posts every Monday, Wednesday and Friday.
Subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. You also can follow Equity on X and Threads at @EquityPod. For the full episode transcript, for those who prefer reading over listening, check out our full archive of episodes over at Simplecast.
Credits: Equity is produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. Bryce Durbin is our Illustrator. We'd also like to thank the audience development team and Henry Pickavet, who manages TechCrunch audio products.
Finally, some good news! This week, we were pleasantly surprised to see that FTX victims would be getting some money back – even if it’s not as much as they might have hoped.
That wasn’t all, though: Mary Ann Azevedo, Kirsten Korosec, and Alex Wilhelm had plenty else to talk about this week on Equity.
We discussed why investors are drawn to the fact that Amae Health is building an in-person approach to mental healthcare in an increasingly digital space and also how one North Carolina startup that started out by building drones to clean windows in tall buildings has also become a robotics company.
Kirsten helped us understand what was behind Motional’s decision to delay its commercial robotaxi plans amid restructuring, and the greater context around that.
We then dug into digital banking startup Mercury’s plans to branch out into software, and how it now fits into the increasingly crowded spend management landscape. And, we riffed on the fact that we covered three M&A deals this week (read about them here, here and here) and how refreshing that was considering M&A activity has been lighter than expected. (Spoiler alert: AI was involved in at least two of them).
Last but certainly not least, we close out the show with an announcement. After 7 amazing years, Alex's time with the podcast, and TechCrunch, is coming to a close. We're excited to see what he does next, but we are sure going to miss him dearly. Thank you for everything, Alex!
This is not, however, the end of Equity. We'll be back bright and early Monday morning with your tech and startup news, along with another round of Pitch Deck Teardown. Talk soon! Equity is TechCrunch’s flagship podcast, produced by Theresa Loconsolo, and posts every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod. For the full episode transcript, for those who prefer reading over listening, check out our full archive of episodes over at Simplecast.
Credits: Equity is hosted by TechCrunch's Alex Wilhelm and Mary Ann Azevedo. We are produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. Bryce Durbin is our Illustrator. We'd also like to thank the audience development team and Henry Pickavet, who manages TechCrunch audio products.
Good news, crypto founders: Venture capital activity is picking up in your sector after falling to multi-year lows in late 2023. Put another way, venture folks appear more web3-bullish than before, even if recent tallies are far under highs seen in late 2021.
But that was hardly the only news item we had to dig into on Equity this morning. Akamai is spending $450 million for API security firm Noname, a deal that TechCrunch previously reported was looking to get done at around $500 million. The transaction, notable for its size, is also worth considering given that Noname was valued at a unicorn price tag back in 2021.
Wiz is another name in the cybersecurity space that could do deals, thanks to a recent $1 billion fundraise. It intends to buy both wounded unicorns and hot, smaller startups to bolster its business. The company is now valued at $12 billion, which is a lot. (Wayve also raised north of $1 billion, but is focused on the self-driving space instead of security.)
We also saw Monzo snag $190 million more, bringing its full-year fundraising score to more than $600 million as TikTok fights a ban, and Oyo tries to raise new capital at a fraction of its prior worth.
And to close, Haje is bringing Pitch Deck Teardown to Equity! If you have not read the series — start here — you are in for a treat. We're kicking the new segment off with a look at NOQX's deck, what worked, what didn't, and what's next.
Chat Friday!
Equity is TechCrunch’s flagship podcast and posts every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts.
You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod.
For the full episode transcript, for those who prefer reading over listening, check out our full archive of episodes over at Simplecast.
Credits: Equity is hosted by TechCrunch's Alex Wilhelm and Mary Ann Azevedo. We are produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. Bryce Durbin is our Illustrator. We'd also like to thank the audience development team and Henry Pickavet, who manages TechCrunch audio products.
News that Jack Dorsey is out at Bluesky caused a stir this weekend. After all, Dorsey is a former Twitter co-founder and CEO, so his investment of time into the rival social network carried weight. The decentralized social networking service said that it is looking for a new board member.
But while we had to talk about Dorsey’s latest on Equity today, it was far from the only topic we got to chat about. Past a busy earnings week ahead of us, we also dug into the latest employment news concerning China’s tech giants. Like many large U.S. tech shops, they are shedding staff. Tech shops around the world are showing that they can do more with less.
Sticking to China, the country is set to deliver another IPO, this time in the United States. Momenta could raise up to $300 million in its debut, meaning that its upcoming listing is is going to carry real weight. (More on Momenta here.)
And to close out we took a look at new capital that the U.S. government is putting into digital twins, and why alt-clouds are making real progress but could run into growth speedbumps in time. Equity is back on Wednesday — we’ll chat with you then!
Equity is TechCrunch’s flagship podcast and posts every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts.
You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod.
For the full episode transcript, for those who prefer reading over listening, check out our full archive of episodes over at Simplecast.
Credits: Equity is hosted by TechCrunch's Alex Wilhelm and Mary Ann Azevedo. We are produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. Bryce Durbin is our Illustrator. We'd also like to thank the audience development team and Henry Pickavet, who manages TechCrunch audio products.
Mary Ann Azevedo, Kirsten Korosec, and Alex Wilhelm had a lot to parse this week.
We had notes on wallet-as-a-service’ startup Ansa's latest fundraise, and how Alex initially misunderstood its business model. Then Kirsten talked us through a simply massive deal in the self-driving space, while Alex wanted to riff on Beehiiv and its own funding round. $33 million is no small Series B in 2024!
From there, we had a few minutes to discuss Anna Heim's recent reporting on disability tech and how AI is taking and industry and accelerating it. Even better, there appear to be a mix of business models approached by the startups we discussed. That means that there could be many avenues to making tech that works better for more folks into real, and large businesses.
To close out, Dominic-Madori Davis joined us to chat about her reporting on Techstars. The company has been shaking up its operations for some time now, leading to certain departures from its ranks. TechCrunch's deep-dive into how it all went down is well worth your time.
Equity is TechCrunch’s flagship podcast and posts every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts.
You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod.
For the full episode transcript, for those who prefer reading over listening, check out our full archive of episodes over at Simplecast.
Credits: Equity is hosted by TechCrunch's Alex Wilhelm and Mary Ann Azevedo. We are produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. Bryce Durbin is our Illustrator. We'd also like to thank the audience development team and Henry Pickavet, who manages TechCrunch audio products.
Startups are not shying away from big projects. That’s my takeaway from news that The Browser Company’s Arc browser is now generally available for Windows users, just as Island raised a massive grip of capital for its enterprise-focused browser tool. It’s very encouraging to see startups going after core pieces of technology, and not just the apps that sit atop platforms.
Of course, Chromium still reigns supreme, but unseating that horse might take a while.
Elsewhere in startup-land this week on Equity, we dug into the Chowdeck round. It’s a Nigerian company that is putting up impressive growth with its food delivery business. Keep an eye on it, Nigeria is a big market and TechCrunch writes that no single company has its delivery business on lock. Yet, at least.
On this morning’s episode we also took a look at the recent Corelight round, which given its valuation and revenue growth, is one to chew on.
From the venture side of things, we discussed two stories. First, that Intuition is going after the consumer market. From Paris, the smaller fund is betting that going the opposite direction as most VCs is how to make the most money. And second, a new venture capital supergroup is forming. Axios reports that investors with backgrounds at a16z, Bessemer and Index are building a new firm.
Equity is TechCrunch’s flagship podcast and posts every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, and you can subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts.
You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod.
For the full interview transcript, for those who prefer reading over listening, read on, or check out our full archive of episodes over at Simplecast.
Credits: Equity is hosted by TechCrunch's Alex Wilhelm and Mary Ann Azevedo. We are produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. Bryce Durbin is our Illustrator. We'd also like to thank the audience development team and Henry Pickavet, who manages TechCrunch audio products.
We’re off to an AI-heavy start to the week. OpenAI has a new deal with the Financial Times that caught our eye. Sure, it’s another content licensing deal, but there appears to be a bit more in the tie-up than just content flowing one way, and money the other.
On this early-week episode of Equity, we also dug into the xAI news that TechCrunch broke recently; namely that Musk’s AI enterprise is not looking to raise $3 billion on a $15 billion valuation. No, it’s now looking for $6 billion at an $18 billion valuation. That’s a lot of capital.
But there was even more to chat about, including the EU handing Apple even more bad news in the form of placing iPadOS under its DMA rules that should force third-party app stores on the tablet line in time. And Tesla got some good news in China, though just how impactful it will prove is not 100% certain at this juncture.
And to close out, the Times has a fascinating look at pace at which venture capitalists are putting money into AI startups. Given the ability of OpenAI to land big deals with Microsoft money, I wonder if it is enough?
Equity is TechCrunch’s flagship podcast and posts every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, and you can subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts.
You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod.
For the full interview transcript, for those who prefer reading over listening, read on, or check out our full archive of episodes over at Simplecast.
Credits: Equity is hosted by TechCrunch's Alex Wilhelm and Mary Ann Azevedo. We are produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. Bryce Durbin is our Illustrator. We'd also like to thank the audience development team and Henry Pickavet, who manages TechCrunch audio products.
Rubrik’s strong IPO pricing and warm reception by the public markets after its listing add more weight to the perspective that the public markets are not as closed to tech startups as some thought. If Rubrik’s result isn’t enough to break the logjam, well, maybe there’s something else going on.
But there was a lot more that happened this week, which meant that the Equity crew had a pile of news to get through as always, with a little bit of our own mixed in. Happily it was all pretty darn interesting, so Mary Ann and Alex started with Rubrik before pivoting to Pomelo, a startup that has a very interesting twist on the remittances market.
From there it was time to talk about TikTok. What was once an unfathomable result — TikTok being forced to divest from its parent company or face a ban — became reality pretty darn quickly. The United States is not the first company to ban the service, but we noted during the show that the company we are keeping is not the most enticing. Still, here we are, what does it mean for consumers?
And to close, Early Stage. TechCrunch held its annual early-stage focused even this year, and it was a banger. Not to toot our own horn, but it was the second year in a row that our shindig in Boston was packed, useful, and lots of fun. The coffee was even good. At a tech conference. Alex had notes.
Equity is back on Monday. Thanks for hanging out with us!
Equity is TechCrunch’s flagship podcast and posts every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, and you can subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts.
You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod.
For the full interview transcript, for those who prefer reading over listening, read on, or check out our full archive of episodes over at Simplecast.
Credits: Equity is hosted by TechCrunch's Alex Wilhelm and Mary Ann Azevedo. We are produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. Bryce Durbin is our Illustrator. We'd also like to thank the audience development team and Henry Pickavet, who manages TechCrunch audio products.
Well, if you are a big TikTok fan and live in the United States, I have some bad news for you: A bill that would force a sale of TikTok or ban it in the United States passed the Senate. And the President is expected to sign it. Given that China has made noise that it will not allow a sale of the social media company that is headquartered in Singapore, but is owned by Chinese company Bytedance, it’s not looking good for TikTok in the States.
But if that has you bummed out, don’t worry, we have lots of pretty positive news to discuss as well. News like two AI startups in Europe that are making a bit of noise that caught our attention. There’s a lot more AI in Europe than just Mistral, of course.
And we had to discuss the latest from Perplexity AI, which just raised money and is shaking up its operating plans by raising even more money. It’s a good time to be an AI startup.
Not that that is the only thing going on. The Framework laptops folks just raised more capital, Pony.AI is considering a U.S. IPO, and Volition Capital is expanding. Hit play, let’s have a chat!
Equity is TechCrunch’s flagship podcast and posts every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, and you can subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts.
You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod.
For the full interview transcript, for those who prefer reading over listening, read on, or check out our full archive of episodes over at Simplecast.
Credits: Equity is hosted by TechCrunch's Alex Wilhelm and Mary Ann Azevedo. We are produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. Bryce Durbin is our Illustrator. We'd also like to thank the audience development team and Henry Pickavet, who manages TechCrunch audio products.
Today we dug into the latest markets news, including upcoming earnings, IPOs, and what impact — if any — the recent bitcoin halving had on its value. But the money news did not stop there.
We also had two new venture capital funds to discuss, including a new vehicle from Seraphim focused on space, and TLcom Capital’s new Africa-focused fund. From there, it was time to chat EVs and what impact recent price cuts are having on the value of EV companies.
To close out, we dug into the emerging startup cluster in vector databases and search. In short, normal databases are hot garb at the sort of queries we need for AI, while vector search is pretty good at it. Enter startups, enter venture capital. And, enter the biggest tech companies. May the startups win.
Equity is TechCrunch’s flagship podcast and posts every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, and you can subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts.
You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod.
For the full interview transcript, for those who prefer reading over listening, read on, or check out our full archive of episodes over at Simplecast.
Credits: Equity is hosted by TechCrunch's Alex Wilhelm and Mary Ann Azevedo. We are produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. Bryce Durbin is our Illustrator. We'd also like to thank the audience development team and Henry Pickavet, who manages TechCrunch audio products.
This week, Mary Ann talked to Hans Tung, managing partner of Notable Capital (formerly GGV Capital), which is focused on investing in the US as well as in Europe and Latin America.
Long-time listeners may recall that Hans, whose portfolio includes the likes of Airbnb, StockX and Slack, joined Equity last year to focus on down rounds, a term often treated like an evil phrase. Today, we're digging into why Hans still believes in down rounds, the importance of long-term thinking and the current state of startup investment.
We'll also dive into:
- Why Hans is so bullish on fintech, and what sectors within fintech especially has him psyched.
- Recent changes at his own firm, and why there have been so many personnel changes at VC firms as of late
- And more!
All right, sit back, hit play and have some fun with us. Equity will be back on Monday. See you then!
Equity is TechCrunch’s flagship podcast and posts every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. You can subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts.
You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod.
For the full interview transcript, for those who prefer reading over listening, read on, or check out our full archive of episodes over at Simplecast.
Credits: Equity is hosted by TechCrunch's Alex Wilhelm and Mary Ann Azevedo. We are produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. Bryce Durbin is our Illustrator. We'd also like to thank the audience development team and Henry Pickavet, who manages TechCrunch audio products.
It’s been more than a minute since Tesla went public, but the EV company was inescapable on TechCrunch this week. From layoffs to pricing changes and more, it was a week dyed deeply in Tesla colors so we had to chat through the latest.
But that was just one element of what we got into on Equity this week. We also dug into Mary Ann’s reporting about Ramp’s latest round — and up valuation — that fit neatly next to Rippling’s own impending fundraise. If you are handling money, it’s a good time to be a startup.
The team also dug into Cherub, which wants to connect investors and founders, Maven Ventures’ consumer investing push, and touched on what Mercury is up to. All told, we were fortunate to have Kirsten Korosec along with us this week given the sheer volume, and diversity of transportation news to chew through, especially as it relates to Tesla.
Equity is back tomorrow with a special interview between Mary Ann and Notable Capital's Hans Tung, so stay tuned! Until then, hit play and let’s have some fun.
Equity is TechCrunch’s flagship podcast and posts every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. You can subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts.
You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod.
Credits: Equity is hosted by TechCrunch's Alex Wilhelm and Mary Ann Azevedo. We are produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. Bryce Durbin is our Illustrator. We'd also like to thank the audience development team and Henry Pickavet, who manages TechCrunch audio products.
What is worth $11 billion and wants to go to Mars to collect rocks? NASA’s mission to Mars to collect rocks that was expected to cost $11 billion and take ages. So, the U.S. space agency is throwing the doors open to get more input, and that means that startups are looking at an opportunity that is truly out of this world.
But that’s not the only thing going on. Today’s Equity episode is focused on all things startups, which means we also got to chat through Two Chairs’ recent and massive Series C, Quilt’s heat pump work and fundraise, and several IPO updates. Here’s hoping that after Ibotta and Rubrik get out the door, more IPOs follow.
Also on the show today was a grip of venture capital news. Bay Bridge Ventures is raising a $200 million climate fund — it has lots of good company there, given rising LP interest in climatetech more generally — and a SpaceX alum is building a new VC firm that we covered.
To close, the massive, gobsmackingly big $7.2 billion worth of new funds from a16z. We dug into their breakdown on the podcast, but the short version is that it appears that the venture slowdown has not managed to impede the venture firm’s golden touch when it comes to fundraising. Hit play, let’s have some fun!
Equity is TechCrunch’s flagship podcast and posts every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. You can subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts.
You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod.
For the full interview transcript, for those who prefer reading over listening, read on, or check out our full archive of episodes over at Simplecast.
Credits: Equity is hosted by TechCrunch's Alex Wilhelm and Mary Ann Azevedo. We are produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. Bryce Durbin is our Illustrator. We'd also like to thank the audience development team and Henry Pickavet, who manages TechCrunch audio products.
It’s only Monday morning, but it already feels like Thursday given the sheer amount of news that’s flowing in.
We have two critical headlines for you today:
- OpenAI is planning to open an office in Tokyo and launch a new GPT-4 model for the Japanese language. The U.S., EU, and China are all racing for leadership in AI, and OpenAI’s foray into Japan could expand the list of leading blocs and nations.
- Tesla is cutting more than 10% of its total global workforce. CEO Elon Musk told employees in an internal email that the cuts were aimed at eliminating role duplications, but the company has been seeing its sales start to slow down, and some concern around waning demand for EVs could be playing a part in the decision to slash costs.
There’s lots more going on: The price ranges for Rubrik’s IPO have been leaked; ShareChat has suffered a valuation beheading haircut, and global smartphone sales are picking up again. Hit play to catch up on what’s going to be the talk of Tech Twitter this week.
We'll be back Wednesday with our mid-week startup and venture highlights!
Equity is TechCrunch’s flagship podcast and posts every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. You can subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts.
You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod.
For the full interview transcript, for those who prefer reading over listening, read on, or check out our full archive of episodes over at Simplecast.
Credits: Equity is hosted by TechCrunch's Alex Wilhelm and Mary Ann Azevedo. We are produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. Bryce Durbin is our Illustrator. We'd also like to thank the audience development team and Henry Pickavet, who manages TechCrunch audio products.
Today, the Equity crew dug into Automattic buying Beeper for $125 million. Recall that the WordPress parent company bought Texts.com last year for $50 million. Elsewhere in deal-land, Proton bought Standard Notes, and we recently discussed the Wonderschool-Early Day purchase. More, please!
In the Deals of the Week column, Mary Ann chose Payjoy’s massive new run rate, while Alex wanted to riff on the Proxima Fusion round that could help bring the next energy revolution a little bit closer to reality.
And to close out, we looked at Anna Heim’s latest on Y Combinator’s evaporating number of participating startups from Latin America, which we posit could have something to do with fintech falling out of favor with investors — and fintech being the startup category that we most associated with Latin America founder activity.
Not that fintech is dead, far from it. But certainly we are an ocean or two away from the heady days we saw back in 2021. Equity is back Monday morning to kickstart your week! We’ll see you then!
Equity is TechCrunch’s flagship podcast and posts every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. You can subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts.
You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod.
For the full interview transcript, for those who prefer reading over listening, read on, or check out our full archive of episodes over at Simplecast.
Credits: Equity is hosted by TechCrunch's Alex Wilhelm and Mary Ann Azevedo. We are produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. Bryce Durbin is our Illustrator. We'd also like to thank the audience development team and Henry Pickavet, who manages TechCrunch audio products.
Today on Equity’s startup-focused Wednesday show, we dug into the Multiverse-Searchlight deal that reminded us of the Wonderschool-Early Day transaction that we covered on the show a few weeks back.
We also dug into the latest Guesty round, which was both large and interesting from a financial perspective, the Monad Labs transaction that led us to try and explain the difference between L1 and L2 blockchains, and Cyera’s quick recent megaround. Put more simply, startup news is feeling very busy, and very high-dollar again, and that’s a lot of fun for the show.
To round things out, we also squeezed in a new venture capital fund targeting growth-rounds in Africa.
That's it for us today, but join us on Friday for our roundtable news roundup!
Equity is TechCrunch’s flagship podcast and posts every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, and you can subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts.
You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod.
For the full interview transcript, for those who prefer reading over listening, read on, or check out our full archive of episodes over at Simplecast.
Credits: Equity is hosted by TechCrunch's Alex Wilhelm and Mary Ann Azevedo. We are produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. Bryce Durbin is our Illustrator. We'd also like to thank the audience development team and Henry Pickavet, who manages TechCrunch audio products.
Now that we are finally past Y Combinator’s demo day — though our Friday show is worth listening if you haven’t had a chance yet — we can dive into the latest news. So, this morning on Equity Monday we got into the chance that the United States might pass a real data privacy law. There’s movement to report, but we’re still very, very far from anything becoming law.
Elsewhere, the U.S. and TSMC have a new deal, there’s gaming news to consider (and a venture tie-in), and Spotify’s latest AI plans, which I am sure will delight some and annoy others.
Lastly, on the crypto front, trading volume of digital tokens seems to have partially arrested its free fall, which should help some exchanges breath a bit more easily.
Equity is TechCrunch’s flagship podcast and posts every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, and you can subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts.
You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod.
For the full interview transcript, for those who prefer reading over listening, read on, or check out our full archive of episodes over at Simplecast.
Credits: Equity is hosted by TechCrunch's Alex Wilhelm and Mary Ann Azevedo. We are produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. Bryce Durbin is our Illustrator. We'd also like to thank the audience development team and Henry Pickavet, who manages TechCrunch audio products.
The AI boom, love it or find it to be a bit more hype than substance, is here to stay. That means lots of companies are raising oodles of dollars, a healthy dose of regulatory concern, academic work, and corporate jockeying. For startups, it means a huge opportunity to bring new technology to bear on a host of industries that could use a bit of polish.
But if you read the news, you might notice that men are the far and away most cited, and discussed players in AI today. So, TechCrunch’s Dominic-Madori Davis and Kyle Wiggers decided to go out and talk to women working in AI to learn more about their work, how they got into the world of artificial intelligence, and more. The series has been running for some time now, so it was the perfect moment to get the pair of them onto the show for a chat about the project.
Thus far they have interviewed folks like Irene Solaiman, head of global policy at Hugging Face, Sarah Kreps, professor of government at Cornell, and Heidy Khlaaf, safety engineering director at Trail of Bits.
See you bright and early Monday morning for more!
Equity is TechCrunch’s flagship podcast and posts every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. You can subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts.
You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod.
For the full interview transcript, for those who prefer reading over listening, read on, or check out our full archive of episodes over at Simplecast.
Credits: Equity is hosted by TechCrunch's Alex Wilhelm and Mary Ann Azevedo. We are produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. Bryce Durbin is our Illustrator. We'd also like to thank the audience development team and Henry Pickavet, who manages TechCrunch audio products.
What a week, everyone. Two full days of Y Combinator demo day activity kept us busy, but the latest accelerator cohort’s launch was far from the only big story in startup-land. Today on the Equity’s Friday news roundup, Mary Ann, Becca, and Alex gathered to dig into favorites from the hundreds of new YC companies that pitched, and a new venture capital fund that wants to become “the investment and innovation arm of the autism community.”
Becca wanted to talk about Seso and its fascinating fintech play in the agricultural space, while Alex brought Home From College and its recent Seed round to the mix.
Then to close out, we chatted through the impending Ibotta and Rubrik IPOs. The latter deal could provide a fascinating heat-check for unprofitable unicorns that need to find some sort of exit, and quickly. All told we chatted through startups from their very earliest form all the way through their most mature. A very fitting capstone to the week! Hit play, and let’s have some fun.
Equity is TechCrunch’s flagship podcast and posts every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. You can subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts.
You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod.
For the full interview transcript, for those who prefer reading over listening, read on, or check out our full archive of episodes over at Simplecast.
Credits: Equity is hosted by TechCrunch's Alex Wilhelm and Mary Ann Azevedo. We are produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. Bryce Durbin is our Illustrator. We'd also like to thank the audience development team and Henry Pickavet, who manages TechCrunch audio products.
This is our Wednesday show, when we take a moment to dig into a raft of startup and venture capital news. No big tech here!
Keep in mind that Y Combinator's demo day kicks off today, so we're going to be snowed-under in startup news the rest of the week. Consider today's show the calm before the storm.
AUDIO
On the podcast this morning we have BlaBlaCar's new credit facility and how it managed to land it, how PipeDreams could be onto a new model of startup construction, GoStudent's rebound and profitability, Hailo's chip business and massive new funding round, and the two new brands that GGV calls home as it divides up its operations on both sides of the Pacific Ocean.
Equity is TechCrunch’s flagship podcast and posts every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, and you can subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts.
You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod.
For the full interview transcript, for those who prefer reading over listening, read on, or check out our full archive of episodes over at Simplecast.
Credits: Equity is hosted by TechCrunch's Alex Wilhelm and Mary Ann Azevedo. We are produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. Bryce Durbin is our Illustrator. We'd also like to thank the audience development team and Henry Pickavet, who manages TechCrunch audio products.
Hello, and welcome back to Equity, a podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines. This is our Monday show, where we dig into the weekend and take a peek at the week that is to come. We’ll talk more about Wednesday, but this is Y Combinator Demo Day week, so expect a deluge of startup news.
On the podcast today we dug into the latest news from Discord that indicates it is moving towards opening its gates for advertisements. As I wrote back in 2022, this is the standard practice for tech companies that get big, even if we don’t love it as consumers. (Just look at YouTube’s ad load, for example.)
We also got into this super-neat startup round concerning trucking, TechCrunch’s latest cybersecurity scoop which is big news for AT&T customers, and even upcoming changes to the Android podcasting ecosystem that will see YouTube Music gain even more prominence inside of Alphabet’s consumer empire. Hit play, and let’s have some fun!
Equity is TechCrunch’s flagship podcast and posts every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, and you can subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts.
You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod.
For the full interview transcript, for those who prefer reading over listening, read on, or check out our full archive of episodes over at Simplecast.
Credits: Equity is hosted by TechCrunch's Alex Wilhelm and Mary Ann Azevedo. We are produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. Bryce Durbin is our Illustrator. We'd also like to thank the audience development team and Henry Pickavet, who manages TechCrunch audio products.
As the week comes to a close, we're also shutting the book on the trial of former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried, the erstwhile crypto baron who is heading to prison for 25 years. But while the SBF news was a big deal, there was so very much more to cover on today's news roundup episode of Equity.
With Kirsten Korosec, Mary Ann Azevedo, and Alex Wilhelm aboard this week, the crew dug into Robinhood's new credit card and what it can tell us about the strategy of major tech companies, Fisker's latest woes, and even Databricks' new AI model that it spent $10 million to spin up.
But that wasn't enough. We also dug into two companies building startups focused around kids. One wants to help tots learn how to produce music, while the other is working to reduce waste and help parents care for their kids on a budget. Then, to wrap up, a look at just who unicorn founders really are, and a new $100 million fund that to back climate tech.
Equity is TechCrunch’s flagship podcast and posts every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, and you can subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts.
Credits: Equity is hosted by TechCrunch's Alex Wilhelm and Mary Ann Azevedo. We are produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. Bryce Durbin is our Illustrator. We'd also like to thank the audience development team and Henry Pickavet, who manages TechCrunch audio products.
This is our interview show, where we sit down with guests, think about their work, and unpack the rest. This week, Wonderschool, a startup that works with individuals and local governments to spin up more childcare businesses by providing software and other support, has acquired EarlyDay. EarlyDay, another venture-backed startup, operates a early childhood educator marketplace.
Alex caught up with EarlyDay’s two former CEOs, Emma Harris and Melissa Tran, and their new boss, Chris Bennett at Wonderschool, to chat through the deal, what’s ahead for their sector, and more.
Credits: Equity is hosted by TechCrunch's Alex Wilhelm and Mary Ann Azevedo. We are produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. Bryce Durbin is our Illustrator. We'd also like to thank the audience development team and Henry Pickavet, who manages TechCrunch audio products.
Today on the show we had a lot of ground to cover: Stocks around the world are in retreat to start the week, while crypto prices have themselves given back some recent gains. The biggest news item that we covered this morning was the exit of Stability AI’s CEO, the company’s revenue growth and burn rate have come into question before, making the move all the more newsy.
Over in the EU, a number of U.S.-based tech companies are under inquiry thanks to the new Digital Markets Act. At some point you have to wonder if tech giants are going to find a better working relationship with the bloc.
And speaking of Europe, Spotify’s next push is another non-musical effort, which I had a few thoughts about. None of which were incredibly excited, I have to admit. The news from China, including it getting the Vision Pro next, and a push to get Intel and AMD chips out of state computers. And we closed with this beverage startup report!
For episode transcripts and more, head to Equity’s Simplecast website.
Equity drops at 7 a.m. PT every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders and more!
Credits: Equity is hosted by TechCrunch's Alex Wilhelm and Mary Ann Azevedo. We are produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. Bryce Durbin is our Illustrator. We'd also like to thank the audience development team and Henry Pickavet, who manages TechCrunch audio products.
This week we had Mary Ann, Becca, and Alex aboard.
Here's what the crew got into:
- Deals of the Week: Mary Ann wanted to talk about Onyx, a neobank aimed at wealthy early-to-middle career adults. It's pivoting to B2B and is not, despite what the Internet said, dead. Alex wanted to discuss Montauk Climate, a climate incubator set up by the former co-founder of Casper and the recent Marc Lore/Wonder deal. The climate isn't doing well, in case you've missed the news. So, projects like this are welcome. And Becca brought Ethos Fund to the table, allowing us to discuss cross-border investing.
- The upcoming Saudi AI push: What has lots of capital and is ready to pour it into AI investments? Sure, your local venture scene but also the Saudi Arabian government. Notable venture funds have been flying to the Middle Eastern state to raise capital, but perhaps in the future the capital will come for them.
- How some VCs are holding back an IPO rush: A recent Becca investigation unearthed an interesting finding, namely that it may not be the fault of late-stage founders that their companies are not going public. Their backers might actually be the ones holding the door closed.
- Oh, and Reddit started trading during our recording slot, and it's doing well!
We are back Monday with more! Chat then!
For episode transcripts and more, head to Equity’s Simplecast website.
Equity drops at 7 a.m. PT every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders and more!
Credits: Equity is hosted by TechCrunch's Alex Wilhelm and Mary Ann Azevedo. We are produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. Bryce Durbin is our Illustrator. We'd also like to thank the audience development team and Henry Pickavet, who manages TechCrunch audio products.
Today we have a grip of startup stories, and a venture capital item that isn’t as bad of news as it seems at first blush. Here’s the rundown:
- Astera Labs is going public after pricing above-range. We’ll see how it trades today, but it’s good news that the first real tech IPO of the year set its share price at $36, higher than even its raised price interval.
- TigerEye’s $35 million round for business intelligence gives us a peek at how tech could help businesses navigate the future. There’s a YC connection as well, which is worth keeping in mind.
- Pocket FM’s mega round shows that consumer-focused technology plays can still pay handsomely. Even more notably, Pocket FM’s business model is contra-subscription, which is delightfully different.
- And then there’s the Inflection AI-Microsoft-saga, which is part startup story, part corporate venture capital story, and part antitrust story.
- We also touched on the boom in two-wheel electric vehicle companies in India, and why one pension fund’s move to lower its venture allocation isn’t as worrying as it might sound.
For episode transcripts and more, head to Equity’s Simplecast website.
Equity drops at 7 a.m. PT every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders and more!
Credits: Equity is hosted by TechCrunch's Alex Wilhelm and Mary Ann Azevedo. We are produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. Bryce Durbin is our Illustrator. We'd also like to thank the audience development team and Henry Pickavet, who manages TechCrunch audio products.
This is our Monday show, in which we take a look back at the weekend and what’s ahead in the week. We’re coming to the end of earnings season, which means that there are just a few weeks left in the first quarter.
With spring in the air, here’s what we got into this morning:
- Apple may tap Google for AI: Sure, Apple is working on its own AI tech, but Google’s Gemini model could be headed for an iPhone near you. Bloomberg broke the news.
- Grok goes open source: As promised, xAI’s LLM Grok is out for people to play with. Most importantly, startup founders seem excited.
- Reddit’s IPO makes progress: Oversubscription is always a good signal, but is also no promise of IPO riches to come.
- Gumroad says ‘no thanks’ to NSFW content: Another year, another platform booting adult creators. It’s a tale as old as time!
- Gaming is coming to LinkedIn: Look I don’t know what to tell you other than that all platforms eventually become one.
For episode transcripts and more, head to Equity’s Simplecast website.
Equity drops at 7 a.m. PT every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders and more!
Credits: Equity is hosted by TechCrunch's Alex Wilhelm and Mary Ann Azevedo. We are produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. Bryce Durbin is our Illustrator. We'd also like to thank the audience development team and Henry Pickavet, who manages TechCrunch audio products.
Hello, and welcome back to Equity, a podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines. The podcast turns seven this week, so in honor of its birthday drop us a review? More, newer reviews helps more folks discover the show, and makes our corporate parent happy!
Today our beloved Mary Ann was off on well-deserved break, so our friend and fellow-podcaster Rebecca Szkutak was kind enough to bring her insight and humor to the podcast this fine Friday. Here’s what we got into:
- The latest in legal: The push to force a divestment of TikTok or ban it in the United States is making progress, as the EU finishes hammering out its new AI regulations.
- Deals of the Week: Peak XV’s new, fascinating fund vehicle and what it may tell us about the Indian startup market. And, Ad Ventures’ new $80 million fund that felt rather contra-narrative in the best possible way.
- AI, privacy: In the wake of AI getting booed at SXSW, we took a look at several new AI startups that are raising rounds for their audio-focused projects. These included Nijta and Tavus, not to mention a host of startups from the current Y Combinator cohort.
- What to do when there’s no liquidity? Becca has the answer, and the answer is not going public. That’s the bad news. The good news is that secondary transactions might be a way to resolve lots of founder-investor tension regarding exit timing.
And with that, we are back on Monday! Chat then!
For episode transcripts and more, head to Equity’s Simplecast website.
Equity drops at 7 a.m. PT every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders and more!
Credits: Equity is hosted by TechCrunch's Alex Wilhelm and Mary Ann Azevedo. We are produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. Bryce Durbin is our Illustrator. We'd also like to thank the audience development team and Henry Pickavet, who manages TechCrunch audio products.
This is our Wednesday episode, in which we dig into critical startup news to stay abreast of what founders and venture capitalists are working on.
Today on the podcast, we got through the following:
- New data from Carta digging into startup compensation, and how it is changing;
- How one startup is profiting off death, but in a way that is actually great;
- Bear Robotics, and its killer new round for cute serving robots;
- New stuff from BlueSky (all about moderation and choosing one’s own adventure) and Brave (getting a boost from the EU’s DMA);
- And finally, some venture capital news that was a legit surprise.
For episode transcripts and more, head to Equity’s Simplecast website.
Equity drops at 7 a.m. PT every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders and more!
Credits: Equity is hosted by TechCrunch's Alex Wilhelm and Mary Ann Azevedo. We are produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. Bryce Durbin is our Illustrator. We'd also like to thank the audience development team and Henry Pickavet, who manages TechCrunch audio products.
This is our Monday show, in which we take a look back at the weekend and what’s ahead in the week. Over the weekend, we dropped an interview with Roger Lee that is well worth your time, and here's our take on Reddit's IPO financials.
Here's what we got into today:
- Crypto is taking flight, with bitcoin and ethereum notching big gains in recent days as the crypto winter fades to a fresh spring.
- Reddit dropped a new IPO filing, which includes a price range target of between $31 and $34 per share. That values the company as high as $6.4 billion.
- Musk intends to open-source Grok, the LLM that subscribers of X's most expensive tier have access to. The move comes after a recent debate regarding AI tech and how open it should be.
- Bobby Kotick wants to buy TikTok?
- Techstars' $80 million Advancing Cities Fund could be its first and last fund.
- In closing, Griffin Bank's $24 million Series A extension caught our eye, and we're reading Ron Miller's interview with Slack's new CEO.
For episode transcripts and more, head to Equity’s Simplecast website.
Equity drops at 7 a.m. PT every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders and more!
Credits: Equity is hosted by TechCrunch's Alex Wilhelm and Mary Ann Azevedo. We are produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. Bryce Durbin is our Illustrator. We'd also like to thank the audience development team and Henry Pickavet, who manages TechCrunch audio products.
This is our interview show, where we sit down with a guest, think about their work, and unpack the rest. This week, Mary Ann interviewed Roger Lee, an entrepreneur who’s spent the better part of a decade building tools for employees and employers alike. Lee is an angel investor as well the creator of Layoffs.FYI and co-founder of Comprehensive and Human Interest.
Roger joined us on the show last year in the wake of 2022’s tech layoffs, but this week we’re focusing on the business of shutting down and why investors are lining up to back startups in the space, including Roger.
We also talked about:
- Just how many more companies shut down in 2023 compared to 2022 (spoiler alert, it was a lot!)
- How many more layoffs we saw last year compared to years prior
- The types of companies winding down and laying off
- How his work is tied to all of it and the role of AI
Equity will be back on Monday for our weekly kick-off show, but don't forget to keep up with us in the meantime on X and Threads @EquityPod.
For episode transcripts and more, head to Equity’s Simplecast website.
Equity drops at 7 a.m. PT every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders and more!
Credits: Equity is hosted by TechCrunch's Alex Wilhelm and Mary Ann Azevedo. We are produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. Bryce Durbin is our Illustrator. We'd also like to thank the audience development team and Henry Pickavet, who manages TechCrunch audio products.
Today on the pod, Mary Ann and Alex dug into a whole mess of news, including:
- Mews' massive new round is proof that vertical SaaS + payments remains a great way to build a big business, and earn a unicorn valuation at a time when those are growing rarer.
- The global companies taking on Carta, including QuotaLab in South Korea. An acquisition has helped QuotaLab expand its product remit to founders, investors and their LPs.
- Deel's purchase of Africa’s PaySpace got us talking about how acquisitive the HRtech company has been lately. We also dug into news that Deel crossed the $500 million ARR mark, a feat that other companies in its market have managed, like Gusto. (Remofirst also raised more capital, showing just how competitive Deel's market is today.)
- Venture capital musical chairs: One Founders Fund investor has left the firm to go back to building things, while Benchmark lost a partner to their prior home at Thrive. Expect more, similar moves this year as venture resets from its last boom.
We have an interview coming out tomorrow that we're stoked about, and will be back on Monday. Talk soon!
For episode transcripts and more, head to Equity’s Simplecast website.
Equity drops at 7 a.m. PT every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders and more!
Credits: Equity is hosted by TechCrunch's Alex Wilhelm and Mary Ann Azevedo. We are produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. Bryce Durbin is our Illustrator. We'd also like to thank the audience development team and Henry Pickavet, who manages TechCrunch audio products.
This is our Wednesday show, focused on startup and venture capital news that matters. If you are a founder or an investor, this one is for you!
Here’s the day’s rundown:
- OpenAI fires back at Musk: In the wake of a lawsuit from former backer Elon Musk, OpenAI is bringing receipts and an argument that Musk wanted to run the company’s for-profit arm. Hard to argue against something that you wanted to run, yeah?
- Monzo raises megaround: Monzo’s latest round is proof that the worst of the fintech slump is behind us.
- All eyes on Ema: With $25 million and a launch from stealth, Ema’s work to bring AI to the enterprise is notable. But in such a crowded market, are many startups aiming too high on the stack?
- Accenture buys Udacity: The former unicorn’s final resting place is not what it had dreamed of before, but this deal does bring welcome liquidity to at least one venture-backed startup.
- A climate boost? An upcoming regulatory choice could unlock a massive wave of demand for carbon-tracking startups.
- And the latest from OpenView: The Information reports that OpenView is returning most of its latest fund to backers. A weird and slightly sad final chapter for the firm.
For episode transcripts and more, head to Equity’s Simplecast website.
Equity drops at 7 a.m. PT every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders and more!
Credits: Equity is hosted by TechCrunch's Alex Wilhelm and Mary Ann Azevedo. We are produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. Bryce Durbin is our Illustrator. We'd also like to thank the audience development team and Henry Pickavet, who manages TechCrunch audio products.
This is our Monday show, in which we take a look back at the weekend and what’s ahead in the week. Over the weekend we had a great chat with Nubank’s CEO, which you can find here. Ok, onto the show notes!
- Stocks and Crypto: With some indices reaching fresh record highs, the good times are also rolling along in crypto where token prices are also on the ascent.
- Apple and the EU: Apple has been hit by a massive fine in the EU, which it intends to appeal. Spotify, which was the progenitor of the complaint, hailed the choice.
- New AI rules in India: The Indian government has a new tune when it comes to AI regulation. Big tech companies are now going to need its nod to launch models in the country, which could shake up how quickly new €1.84BN artificial intelligence products reach the massive market.
- Self-driving wins: Waymo is able to charge for its self-driving service in more markets, and can now do airport runs in San Francisco for a fee. I cannot wait to try this out.
- Other key news: Salla raised a huge pre-IPO round, and with the market improving, why aren’t folks in tech walking with more swagger?
We are back Wednesday, see you then!
For episode transcripts and more, head to Equity’s Simplecast website.
Equity drops at 7 a.m. PT every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders and more!
Credits: Equity is hosted by TechCrunch's Alex Wilhelm and Mary Ann Azevedo. We are produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. Bryce Durbin is our Illustrator. We'd also like to thank the audience development team and Henry Pickavet, who manages TechCrunch audio products.
This week, Mary Ann talked to David Vélez, the co-founder and CEO of Nubank, the $50 billion São Paulo, Brazil-based digital bank that offers credit cards, checking accounts and life insurance to consumers.
- How Nubank has managed to increase its market cap by over 40% in eight months’ time.
- Why some investors are sticking it out in LatAm, and why it’s a great place to still put venture dollars.
- Which startups in LatAm have been the most resilient and what other regions can learn from them.
All right, sit back, hit play and have some fun with us. Equity will be back next Tuesday due to a U.S. holiday on Monday. See you then!
For episode transcripts and more, head to Equity’s Simplecast website.
Equity drops at 7 a.m. PT every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders and more!
Credits: Equity is hosted by TechCrunch's Alex Wilhelm and Mary Ann Azevedo. We are produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. Bryce Durbin is our Illustrator. We'd also like to thank the audience development team and Henry Pickavet, who manages TechCrunch audio products.
Here’s what Mary Ann and Alex got into:
- Stripe’s valuation recovers: As part of a tender offer, Stripe is now worth $65 billion. The company’s valuation has been on an up-and-down path in recent years as the company works to make its massive bulk fit into the private markets. Alex has thoughts on when it should go public, as you might imagine.
- Fervo Energy’s $200M+ round: What if the solution to our energy problems was not in the stars, but beneath our feet? And no, I am not talking about carbon-based fuels. No, instead, what if geothermal energy is what we’ve been waiting for? Fervo wants to make that question into a reality.
- Why VCs are investing in companies that shut down companies: With more startups than usual heading for closure, there’s a mountain of work ahead for founders and backers to shutter companies. Now some angels and other investors are putting their own capital into several companies that specialize in helping other firms close. Grim, but necessary.
- AI and the law: Microsoft’s move to invest in French AI company Mistral is not a bad way to spread its bets. Or to potentially fend of regulatory scrutiny that is building. AI in general is having a bit of a time sorting out rights — or lack thereof — that some training data may retain.
Coming up this weekend we have an interview with Nubank’s CEO, and we have another great interview planned for the weekend after! Chat soon!
For episode transcripts and more, head to Equity’s Simplecast website.
Equity drops at 7 a.m. PT every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders and more!
Credits: Equity is hosted by TechCrunch's Alex Wilhelm and Mary Ann Azevedo. We are produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. Bryce Durbin is our Illustrator. We'd also like to thank the audience development team and Henry Pickavet, who manages TechCrunch audio products.
This is our Wednesday show, focused on startup and venture capital news that matters. We pull the top stories from the week thus far, and give them the Equity treatment to put them into proper context.
On the show today:
- Microsoft invests in Mistral AI: Sure, it's not the biggest check, but as regulatory oversight hovers over Microsoft's shoulder, the deal makes sense.
- Thrasio files for bankruptcy: What happens if you raise billions to pursue a market opportunity, but the market shifts under your feet?
- Glean raises $200M: It turns out that you can raise mega rounds in 2024, you just need to work in enterprise AI, have a few hundred customers, and collect checks from a host of VCs at once.
- And on the venture side of things: COTU Ventures has put together a $54 million fund, while Zacua Ventures has put together a $56 million vehicle.
For episode transcripts and more, head to Equity’s Simplecast website.
Equity drops at 7 a.m. PT every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders and more!
Credits: Equity is hosted by TechCrunch's Alex Wilhelm and Mary Ann Azevedo. We are produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. Bryce Durbin is our Illustrator. We'd also like to thank the audience development team and Henry Pickavet, who manages TechCrunch audio products.
This is our Monday show, which looks back at the weekend and ahead to the week. We are back bright and early this week, but we also had an extra episode this weekend digging into the Reddit IPO; you can find that here.
On the pod this morning, here’s what we got into:
- Stocks are mixed around the world as crypto prices gyrate; it’s a big earnings week including data from Workday, Zoom, Unity, Coupang, Klaviyo, Salesforce, Snowflake, Okta, and Duolingo among other names.
- Google, and its work to bring Gemini to a host of hardware endpoints.
- How U.S-.based venture capitalists are taking on the European market — or not.
- Interview Kickstart is the latest startup to self-fund for a long time before taking on venture capital. In its case that meant a $10 million round.
- And to close, who is the CEO of Byju’s?
For episode transcripts and more, head to Equity’s Simplecast website.
Equity drops at 7 a.m. PT every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders and more!
Credits: Equity is hosted by TechCrunch's Alex Wilhelm and Mary Ann Azevedo. We are produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. Bryce Durbin is our Illustrator. We'd also like to thank the audience development team and Henry Pickavet, who manages TechCrunch audio products.
Hello, and welcome to Equity, a podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines.
Weekend team, we have something both short and sweet for you: A dig into the Reddit IPO filing that came out just after we recorded our final, regular episode of the week. Since we could not wait until Monday to talk about the numbers, we have an overview here for your delectation.
If you want to read along:
- Reddit IPO filing, first look, written by Mary Ann and Alex
- Inside Reddit’s AI revenues, written by Kyle Wiggers
- The Reddit S-1 filing, via the SEC
The Reddit IPO could be this year’s public-offering starting gun, or it could be a wet blanket on the year’s liquidity cycle. We’ll see how it prices, and even more how it trades when it does list. For now, we’re counting down until we get an S-1/A!
For episode transcripts and more, head to Equity’s Simplecast website.
Equity drops at 7 a.m. PT every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders and more!
Credits: Equity is hosted by TechCrunch's Alex Wilhelm and Mary Ann Azevedo. We are produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. Bryce Durbin is our Illustrator. We'd also like to thank the audience development team and Henry Pickavet, who manages TechCrunch audio products.
This week Mary Ann, Kirsten, and Alex gathered to chat through a massive sheaf of news. A note before we get to the rundown that Reddit filed to go public after we had recorded this episode, so notes on its IPO filing are not included in this particular episode. Don’t think that we won’t discuss its S-1, it just came too late for this particular entry. More to come!
Here’s the rundown:
- Deals of the Week: PermitFlow raised $31 million to bring software to the construction permitting market, one man’s plan to keep Cake ebike’s alive for just a while longer caught our eye, and we had thoughts about Match Group’s tie-up with OpenAI.
- Fintech drama: With Reddit’s IPO in the hopper, eyes are turning to other companies that are expected to list this year. One such company is Klarna. And, the buy now, pay later company has been the latest recipient of governance drama. Former Sequoia leader Michael Moritz won this round, unsurprisingly.
- Video game startups could prove surprise 2024 winner: While the venture market retreats and venture funding for gaming companies slows, there’s good reason to expect fortunes to turn around for the startup genre. And while venture wallets might open for gaming companies this year, some others like Frost Giant are turning to their own community to raise.
More to come, including Reddit IPO notes!
For episode transcripts and more, head to Equity’s Simplecast website.
Equity drops at 7 a.m. PT every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders and more!
Credits: Equity is hosted by TechCrunch's Alex Wilhelm and Mary Ann Azevedo. We are produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. Bryce Durbin is our Illustrator. We'd also like to thank the audience development team and Henry Pickavet, who manages TechCrunch audio products.
This is our Wednesday show, in which we talk through the week’s leading startup and venture capital news. This is short week, but there’s still a lot to talk about:
- Loora’s $12 million round is a reminder that AI is going to find purchase in a host of new markets. The company wants to use AI for conversational language training. Sure, humans are good at that, but they are also expensive. Software aims to be more affordable.
- Dili is building an AI service to help investors handle their due diligence. Given that some accounting and financial work can be described as rote, the concept here makes good sense. The company just closed $3.6 million.
- Reddit may include a neat way to get some of its power users onto its ownership docket for its upcoming IPO.
- And from the venture side of the startup coin, Bluestein Ventures has a new foodtech fund, while Partech has put together the largest African venture fund out there.
We’ll be back Friday morning! Chat then!
For episode transcripts and more, head to Equity’s Simplecast website.
Equity drops at 7 a.m. PT every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders and more!
Credits: Equity is hosted by TechCrunch's Alex Wilhelm and Mary Ann Azevedo. We are produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. Bryce Durbin is our Illustrator. We'd also like to thank the audience development team and Henry Pickavet, who manages TechCrunch audio products.
This is our weekly kick-off show, coming to you Tuesday morning as yesterday was a holiday here in the States. Here’s the rundown:
- Crypto prices are up, and we’re looking at another busy earnings week. Palo Alto Networks, Sprout Social, Nvidia and Block will report this week.
- Planity has put together a $48 million Series C, which is a super neat vertical SaaS deal. Software and payments make for a tasty combo, and Planity wants to bring those benefits to salons in Europe.
- The EU is after TikTok under the DSA, which could have major implications for social media regulation.
- And Walmart is buying Vizio; LockBit got smashed; and MariaDB has a buyer on the horizon.
- In closing, this WSJ piece on San Francisco is worth your time.
For episode transcripts and more, head to Equity’s Simplecast website.
Equity drops at 7 a.m. PT every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders and more!
Credits: Equity is hosted by TechCrunch's Alex Wilhelm and Mary Ann Azevedo. We are produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. Bryce Durbin is our Illustrator. We'd also like to thank the audience development team and Henry Pickavet, who manages TechCrunch audio products.
On today's news round up, Alex, Mary Ann and Karyne are looking at:
- Deals of the Week: Rasa’s $30 million Series C had our tongues wagging. The startup is building finservice-focused conversational AI tools. Karyne wanted to talk about the latest round at the intersection of AI and crypto, while Alex wanted to riff on Hippo Harvest’s $21 million round for indoor robot farming.
- Venture capital’s year of transition: After OpenView called it quits, and Countdown Capital returned funds to LPs it became clear that venture is evolving. New news that Foundry is not going to raise another fund after its current $500 million vehicle added another name to our roster of venture firms that are taking a different direction in the future.
- YC’s new call for startups: Well-known startup accelerator Y Combinator has a new request for startup list. Given the weight that YC carries in startup-land, we had to dig into what it’s proposing. Though we’re a little skeptical of the near-term impact of spatial computing, the other updates made good sense to our minds.
We’ll be back on Monday!
For episode transcripts and more, head to Equity’s Simplecast website.
Equity drops at 7 a.m. PT every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders and more!
Credits: Equity is hosted by TechCrunch's Alex Wilhelm and Mary Ann Azevedo. We are produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. Bryce Durbin is our Illustrator. We'd also like to thank the audience development team and Henry Pickavet, who manages TechCrunch audio products.
Welcome to our Wednesday show, in which we talk through the week’s leading startup and venture capital news. Today we have an absolute pile of material, so let’s get to work:
- Bret Taylor’s new startup is turning heads: Known for his work at Facebook, Salesforce and OpenAI, Taylor’s new startup Sierra is building conversational AI agents. It has raised a mountain of capital to date, which it might need given that it’s not alone in its niche.
- FlowFi’s counter-cultural decision: FlowFi is building software to help startups keep their books more intelligently. But it’s not going to try and replace human inputs into financial work. Instead, it’s pairing its software with a labor marketplace so that startups can blend human and computer intelligence. If this means more GAAP accounting for startups, we’re here for it.
- Bold and Antithesis snag new capital: Bold raised $50 million for its Latin American fintech business, in good news for the sector and region that once went together like peanut butter and honey. Meanwhile Antithesis raised $47 million for its software testing service.
- Homebrew up, Foundry out: Homebrew is putting together an interesting new $50 million fund, while Foundry has announced that after its current, $500 million fund, it’s out of the game.
We also talked mushrooms — it’s PG-13, I promise — and Earlybird Health’s latest fund.
For episode transcripts and more, head to Equity’s Simplecast website.
Equity drops at 7 a.m. PT every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders and more!
Credits: Equity is hosted by TechCrunch's Alex Wilhelm and Mary Ann Azevedo. We are produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. Bryce Durbin is our Illustrator. We'd also like to thank the audience development team and Henry Pickavet, who manages TechCrunch audio products.
This morning we have an interesting mix of stories, which bring technology, politics and AI together in interesting ways. To work:
- Stocks: It’s another big week for earnings, including Hubspot, Instacart, Monday.com, and Cisco. We should learn a lot about the state of software and hardware sales as last year ended, and what some critical tech names see for the rest of the year.
- Crypto: Prices are up in the crypto world over the last week. Coinbase reports this week as well, which should give us a feel for how optimistic the leading North American crypto company is feeling.
- Waymo: Some folks set fire to a Waymo car in San Francisco. Which is so goddamned dumb that I would pull my hair out if I had any.
- Bugcrowd: A $102 million round? You love to see it. Mega-rounds have become less common in recent quarters, so when bug-bounty-focused Bugcrowd put together just such a round, we had to talk about it.
- AI field trips: No matter where you are founded, you are going to need to keep tabs on the AI work going on in Silicon Valley.
We are back on Wednesday morning at the latest!
For episode transcripts and more, head to Equity’s Simplecast website.
Equity drops at 7 a.m. PT every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders and more!
Credits: Equity is hosted by TechCrunch's Alex Wilhelm and Mary Ann Azevedo. We are produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. Bryce Durbin is our Illustrator. We'd also like to thank the audience development team and Henry Pickavet, who manages TechCrunch audio products.
Here’s the rundown:
- Deals of the Week: Adam Neumann wants to buy WeWork from bankruptcy, Starship Technologies raised $90 million for a product that 100% of the crew love, and Ambience Healthcare’s massive $70 million round also got a warm reception for its target market.
- LatAm Rising: We love Latin America here at Equity, but have been a bit puzzled why its venture capital totals have fallen as far as they have. New data makes it plain that startups in the region are doing rather well. What gives?
- And to close out, earnings, ad spend, and the state of the economy. Advertising can operate a bit as a ‘canary in the coal mine‘ for economic health, Kirsten points out. Alex also brought up AI as a potential growth catalyst for tech companies. All told? Things aren’t perfectly sunny, but when we consider the tech forecast there’s no rain to be found.
We’ll be back on Monday!
For episode transcripts and more, head to Equity’s Simplecast website.
Equity drops at 7 a.m. PT every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders and more!
Credits: Equity is hosted by TechCrunch's Alex Wilhelm and Mary Ann Azevedo. We are produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. Bryce Durbin is our Illustrator. We'd also like to thank the audience development team and Henry Pickavet, who manages TechCrunch audio products.
This is our startup-focused Wednesday episode, so we’re taking a deep look at a number of startup fundraisings, and the latest from the world of venture capital itself. Startups and capital, it’s our jam!
Here’s what we got into on the show today:
- Goodshuffle raised $5 million, showing that vertical SaaS is far from kaput, even if software valuations remain under strain.
- SUMA Wealth put $2.2 million into its own accounts, showing that audience-tuned fintech products still have legs. SUMA Wealth’s target Latinx demographic seems to be resonating with what the startup is building.
- Behold! A crypto startup showing hella consumer traction.
- On the social media side, Bluesky is now open to everyone and growing quickly, and Blush raised $7 million more to keep its dating app invite-only.
- And then there were more rounds! Finally closed $10 million, while Klas put together $1 million for its edtech efforts.
- In closing, Episode 1 has a new early-stage UK fund that we wanted to talk about.
For episode transcripts and more, head to Equity’s Simplecast website.
Equity drops at 7 a.m. PT every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders and more!
Credits: Equity is hosted by TechCrunch's Alex Wilhelm and Mary Ann Azevedo. We are produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. Bryce Durbin is our Illustrator. We'd also like to thank the audience development team and Henry Pickavet, who manages TechCrunch audio products.
This is our Monday show, in which we look back at the weekend and the week ahead. A big thanks to Maggie for stepping back into the Equity seat while Theresa is out today.
Here’s what we got into:
- Stocks are mixed around the world as investors digest the possibility of high interest rates persisting for longer.
- Crypto price movements seem to have eased in recent weeks in the wake of bitcoin spot ETF launches.
- Yandex’s parent to exit Russia: At a huge cost, it turns out. Given Russian sanctions, owning tech assets inside the country is not a good proposition. But when you sell, you will take more than a haircut.
- Everbridge is going private: For $1.5 billion, we hasten to add. Not a bad price bump for the 2016-era IPO, but still far from the value it commanded in 2021.
- And from Startup Land, Wonder Ventures has two new funds, Naboo raised $8 million, and ProducePay put together $38 million to tackle food waste.
- We closed out with this fascinating CNN story about how a finance worker was scammed out of $25M after a deepfaked conference call.
We’ll be back on Wednesday morning!
For episode transcripts and more, head to Equity’s Simplecast website.
Equity drops at 7 a.m. PT every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders and more!
Credits: Equity is hosted by TechCrunch's Alex Wilhelm and Mary Ann Azevedo. We are produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. Bryce Durbin is our Illustrator. We'd also like to thank the audience development team and Henry Pickavet, who manages TechCrunch audio products.
The amazing Mary Ann Azevedo was out this week, so Kirsten Korosec, Karyne Levy and Alex Wilhelm took to the mics to chat through the most important tech news of the week. And if you haven't already, head here to listen to our interview with founder and former VC Anshu Sharma about building competitive products and defining new markets.
Here's what we got into on the show today:
- The latest Congressional hearing went about as expected: Poorly.
- Deals of the Week: Zum has raised $140 million for EV school transit; Ramp is still out there buying smaller companies despite a slew of layoffs across fintech; and Metronome's usage-based billing software is growing fast.
- Speaking of fintech layoffs: Job cuts at Block and Paypal underscore the fact that we are not out of the tech layoffs era. Indeed, it's getting worse.
- And in closing: Cap VC is building AI tools for venture investors. How much of a venture capitalist's work can be automated? As with every industry, we're going to find out.
We'll be back on Monday!
For episode transcripts and more, head to Equity’s Simplecast website.
Equity drops at 7 a.m. PT every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders and more!
Credits: Equity is hosted by TechCrunch's Alex Wilhelm and Mary Ann Azevedo. We are produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. Bryce Durbin is our Illustrator. We'd also like to thank the audience development team and Henry Pickavet, who manages TechCrunch audio products.
This is our interview show, where we sit down with interesting, knowledgeable folks and dive deep into what they are building, designing, or thinking about.
Today, we have Anshu Sharma back on the podcast. Last time, the Skyflow CEO riffed with us on interest rates and business cycles. This time, we wanted to talk to him about a theory he recently wrote up for TechCrunch: The Innovator’s Dilemma.
Or perhaps, a partial solution to that dilemma. The gist is that instead of using lower-cost products to take on incumbents, you might want to start at the top end of the market. This comes to bear today with the Apple Vision Pro headset, which is very expensive, and is entering a category replete with big investments and occasional returns.
Equity will be back tomorrow with our regular news roundtable, so we’ll chat with you soon!
For episode transcripts and more, head to Equity’s Simplecast website.
Equity drops at 7 a.m. PT every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders and more!
Credits: Equity is hosted by TechCrunch's Alex Wilhelm and Mary Ann Azevedo. We are produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. Bryce Durbin is our Illustrator. We'd also like to thank the audience development team and Henry Pickavet, who manages TechCrunch audio products.
This is our startup-focused, Wednesday episode, so today we’re counting down important venture rounds and chatting our way through other startup and VC news. Here’s the rundown:
- Plex raises $40M, targets profitability: The media streaming company thinks that it can reach black ink by the end of this year, or early 2025. Not bad for a very expensive industry.
- Rebellions raises $124M to take on Nvidia: What is designing new AI chips and is partnered up with Samsung? Rebellions, which is now quite a lot richer in cash terms thanks to a new round.
- Nile is building a new data system for SaaS: Multi-tenancy is tricky, but why should SaaS companies have to reinvent the wheel?
- Aurora Solar joins the layoff parade: Solar is booming, but that doesn’t mean that vertical SaaS companies in the space are growing as fast as they planned.
- And on the venture front, Giant Ventures raised $250 million for two funds, Poland’s SMOK Ventures closed a new $25 million vehicle, while Ubiquity Ventures proves that solo GPs are not dead yet, want to go for a walk.
For episode transcripts and more, head to Equity’s Simplecast website.
Equity drops at 7 a.m. PT every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders and more!
Credits: Equity is hosted by TechCrunch's Alex Wilhelm and Mary Ann Azevedo. We are produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. Bryce Durbin is our Illustrator. We'd also like to thank the audience development team and Henry Pickavet, who manages TechCrunch audio products.
Here's what we got into today:
- Massive earnings week ahead: Big tech companies are dropping their quarterly results in the coming days, so we'll hear from Microsoft, Apple, Alphabet and Amazon. Other companies are reporting as well, but the bigger the market cap, the bigger the splash.
- Arc's new mobile app is a cool search concept: Best known for its desktop browser, The Browser Company has a new mobile app that could change how we search on the go.
- Reddit could target $5 billion valuation in its IPO: The number makes a lot of sense given what we know about Reddit's revenue history. More on that here.
- And in closing: Meta and Apple, what Garry said, and OpenAI vs. the EU.
We have a packed week coming up, so check your favorite podcast app soon!
For episode transcripts and more, head to Equity’s Simplecast website.
Equity drops at 7 a.m. PT every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders and more!
Credits: Equity is hosted by TechCrunch's Alex Wilhelm and Mary Ann Azevedo. We are produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. Bryce Durbin is our Illustrator. We'd also like to thank the audience development team and Henry Pickavet, who manages TechCrunch audio products.
This is our interview show, where we sit down with an interesting, knowledgeable guest and dive deep into their favorite topics. For this weekend’s Special Equity Edition, we invited Gené Teare to come back on the podcast. Longtime listeners will recall that we’ve had Gené on a time or two to chat venture capital data with us, and she’s back to do the same this week!
We’re back to dig into Q4 2023 venture capital results and what’s coming up this year. For backing data, here’s Gené’s Crunchbase News author archive, and here are a few posts that I have put out on the same set of topics.
On the show we looked into stages, sectors — including both AI and web3 — and where we are seeing both weakness and strength. Gené was a treat to have on the show, and we’ll have her back this year as 2024 comes into sharper focus.
Equity is back on Monday, so see you in a couple days!
For episode transcripts and more, head to Equity’s Simplecast website.
Equity drops at 7 a.m. PT every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders and more!
Credits: Equity is hosted by TechCrunch's Alex Wilhelm and Mary Ann Azevedo. We are produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. Bryce Durbin is our Illustrator. We'd also like to thank the audience development team and Henry Pickavet, who manages TechCrunch audio products.
Here’s what we got up to on our Friday show:
- Deals of the Week: Plural has a new $432 million fund, Vroom is no longer in the car selling business, oddly, and we chatted through the Fantuan-Chowbus deal.
- From there we turned to fintech (generally) and Brex (more specifically). In short, Brex is a big company today but not one that is having a lot of fun at the moment, it appears. With reports indicating that its growth has slowed and its burn remained sticky, it recently cut staff.
- To close, we dug into why edtech might not be in the dire straits that many presume that it is. A recent TechCrunch+ investor survey finds notable pockets of enthusiasm in the sector. AI, as you may have heard, is a big deal.
That’s our week concluded! We start back up on Monday morning! See you there.
For episode transcripts and more, head to Equity’s Simplecast website.
Equity drops at 7 a.m. PT every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders and more!
Credits: Equity is hosted by TechCrunch's Alex Wilhelm and Mary Ann Azevedo. We are produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. Bryce Durbin is our Illustrator. We'd also like to thank the audience development team and Henry Pickavet, who manages TechCrunch audio products.
This is our startup-focused, Wednesday episode, so today we're counting down important venture rounds, and chatting our way through other startup and VC news.
Here's what we got into:
- Artisse AI's seed round caught our eye for two big reasons: First, its selfie app is cool; and second, despite competing in a crowded space, it's seen revenue climb rapidly. It's gotta be doing something right.
- Elsewhere, Bilt Rewards is proof that fintech is still alive and kicking, and Kittl is another example of a European startup taking on a massive global market.
- And Bulk Exchange has raised $4.5 million, and I'm still shocked at how far Byju's has fallen.
- In Venture Capital Land, General Catalyst might buy an Indian venture capital firm — further evidence of just how critical India might prove in the coming years for tech companies. Also: some former Xerox investors have their own new fund to report.
We'll be digging into the Brex situation on Friday, so stay tuned for more about fintech soon!
For episode transcripts and more, head to Equity’s Simplecast website.
Equity drops at 7 a.m. PT every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders and more!
Credits: Equity is hosted by TechCrunch's Alex Wilhelm and Mary Ann Azevedo. We are produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. Bryce Durbin is our Illustrator. We'd also like to thank the audience development team and Henry Pickavet, who manages TechCrunch audio products.
Here's the rundown:
- The Q4 2023 earnings cycle will kick off this week with names like Intel and Visa reporting results. The largest tech companies will start to report next week.
- Crypto is not enjoying a post-ETF boom for reasons that are yet to be nailed down. Then again, when have crypto price movements ever made complete sense?
- ElevenLabs is the newest AI unicorn. With $80 million in fresh capital, the synthetic voice startup now has oodles of cash to try and run its market.
- Canva is big! Who knew?
- Elsewhere, Crunchbase News reports that cybersecurity fundraising fell again last year. Given the number of breaches in the market, that feels off, yeah?
- Developers and Apple Vision Pro are not seeing eye to eye. Perhaps Apple should work to rectify its developer relationships?
- And in closing, it turns out you can slow down TikTok.
That's all for this morning, and we'll be back on Wednesday. Talk soon!
For episode transcripts and more, head to Equity’s Simplecast website.
Equity drops at 7 a.m. PT every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders and more!
Credits: Equity is hosted by TechCrunch's Alex Wilhelm and Mary Ann Azevedo. We are produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. Bryce Durbin is our Illustrator. We'd also like to thank the audience development team and Henry Pickavet, who manages TechCrunch audio products.
This week, Mary Ann Azevedo and Alex Wilhelm took to the mics to chew through funding rounds and trends galore. Enjoy, and don’t forget that our interview with Aileen Lee is here.
- Pomelo: $40 million more dollars for Latin American fintech? It’s the perfect Mary Ann story. Even better, we got growth data from the company to noodle on. It turns out you can raise up rounds in 2024!
- Tandem: Alex chose the Tandem Seed round for his deal of the week, even if he doesn’t want to use it. In short, couples of all types have different money management needs, making Tandem a potential hit.
- Briq: Mary Ann has been covering this company for some time, making its recent extension round well worth our time.
- AI and the enterprise: AI is going to change everything, AI is going to make your job irrelevant, AI is going to eat your lunch. So we hear. The enterprise, however, is singing a slightly different tune.
- Valuations, and their potential recovery: Sadly it doesn’t seem too likely that we are about to see a massive rebound in startup valuations this year. The good news? It doesn’t seem too likely that we are about to see massive price erosion, either.
For episode transcripts and more, head to Equity’s Simplecast website.
Equity drops at 7 a.m. PT every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders and more!
Credits: Equity is hosted by TechCrunch's Alex Wilhelm and Mary Ann Azevedo. We are produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. Bryce Durbin is our Illustrator. We'd also like to thank the audience development team and Henry Pickavet, who manages TechCrunch audio products.
This is our interview show, where we sit down with interesting, knowledgeable folks and dive deep into their favorite topics. This time around, we invited Cowboy Ventures’ Aileen Lee to chat through her massive new article concerning the unicorn world. If you didn’t know, it was Lee who initially coined the term “unicorn” in a TechCrunch article back in 2013.
Lee talked us through the data and taught us all sorts of new terms. You can sort of understand what one means when they say “unicorpse” or “zombiecorn,” but apparently there are even more exotic unicorn forms out there. We even wound up comparing venture capital returns to peaches in a bucket of piss (her words, not ours!).
We also talked about where unicorns are based today (19% in New York, for example), and why seed rounds are getting bigger. But really, you should read her post while you listen so you can have all the context while we chew through the numbers!
And for those of you who are here for the answer to our question, “How are Fortune 500 companies ranked?”, well, the answer is revenue and not market cap.
For episode transcripts and more, head to Equity’s Simplecast website.
Equity drops at 7 a.m. PT every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders and more!
Credits: Equity is hosted by TechCrunch's Alex Wilhelm and Mary Ann Azevedo. We are produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. Bryce Durbin is our Illustrator. We'd also like to thank the audience development team and Henry Pickavet, who manages TechCrunch audio products.
Here’s what we got into this morning:
- Vertice raises $25M: The bet here is that companies are willing to pay to have another company, Vertice in this case, to help them find savings in their existing software and cloud spend.
- Electra snags $330M: Charging EVs is big business, and Electra is wagering that building out its own charging network will pay dividends for a long time into the future.
- Build a Rocket Boy collects $110M: This is a big round for a company with unlaunched gaming titles. That said, it must have a few super-cool things cooking to raise that kinda of cash in today’s market.
- We also looked at rounds from Onera, Weavix, Long Story Short, and Xyte. There’s a lot going on!
- Thomvest raises new fund: Another day, another new fund, that’s the $250 million Thomvest story.
We closed with what could be good news for African startups. And with that, we’ll see you back here bright and early on Friday!
For episode transcripts and more, head to Equity’s Simplecast website.
Equity drops at 7 a.m. PT every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders and more!
Credits: Equity is hosted by TechCrunch's Alex Wilhelm and Mary Ann Azevedo. We are produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. Bryce Durbin is our Illustrator. We'd also like to thank the audience development team and Henry Pickavet, who manages TechCrunch audio products.
Here's what we got into:
- Stocks are down around the world to start a week that only features a single key earnings report, TSMC this Thursday. Next week really starts the tech reporting deluge, so get ready.
- In crypto, bitcoin's price failed to pump after its ETF products launched, which surprised some. Also surprising was the value jump that the Ethereum blockchain offers. Buy the rumor, sell the news? (Elsewhere, a crypto exchange raised around $100 million. In 2024! Who would have expected that!)
- Uber is killing Drizly: You can still get booze delivered to your house, but Axios notes that the $1.1 billion acquisition by Uber has run its course. Pour one out.
- On the deal front, Spot Technologies raised $2 million, while TechCrunch reports that Kuda raised $20 million last year at a flat valuation. That's pretty solid a result for a fintech startup that last raised in 2021.
- To close out, Apple is the world's smartphone king and has found a way to sell its Watch product sans legal issues, while Microsoft is very busy with AI.
Credits: Equity is hosted by TechCrunch's Alex Wilhelm and Mary Ann Azevedo. We are produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. Bryce Durbin is our Illustrator. We'd also like to thank the audience development team and Henry Pickavet, who manages TechCrunch audio products.
This is our interview show, where we sit down with a guest, think about their work, and unpack the rest. This week, we talked to Jenny Fielding, co-founder and managing partner at Everywhere Ventures, a founder collective and early-stage (think pre-seed) venture firm. Jenny and I discussed a wide variety of topics, including startups’ flight to quality in 2024 and how smaller firms are competing with larger firms in the current investment landscape.
We also dug into the “great VC resignation” so stay through to the end for that. Jenny was a great guest – not afraid to speak her mind and share valuable insights.
Besides founding her own venture firm, Jenny previously worked as a managing director for accelerator Techstars and founded several companies including mobile software company Switch Mobile, which was acquired by Via One.
Equity will be back next Tuesday due to a U.S. holiday on Monday. See you then!
For episode transcripts and more, head to Equity’s Simplecast website.
Equity drops at 7 a.m. PT every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders and more!
Credits: Equity is hosted by TechCrunch's Alex Wilhelm and Mary Ann Azevedo. We are produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. Bryce Durbin is our Illustrator. We'd also like to thank the audience development team and Henry Pickavet, who manages TechCrunch audio products.
Today, Alex Wilhelm and Mary Ann Azevedo dig through the key stories from the week. Then, Kirsten Korosec and Haje Jan Kamps are aboard to bring us the latest from CES!
- Deals of the Week: Shimmer raised $2.2 million to bring one-on-one ADHD care at a lower price point; Alex chose this one because mental health care startups that try to expand access are cool. Overmoon's recent fundraising and business progress were Mary Ann's choice for the week, showing that proptech is not dead yet!
- Circle is going public: Yep, the company behind the USDC stablecoin is once again heading for the public markets. The company's confidential IPO filing follows an aborted SPAC attempt in the past. Alex is bullish on the deal, though we'll need to wait for the full details before we can actually make some predictions.
- And speaking of IPOs, we're really far behind on how many exits are needed to clear the venture capital decks.
- CES: We went over a ton of cool stuff this year, including this Bane-style mask, ChatGPT in cars, eVTOLs and more!
Equity will be back next Tuesday due to a U.S. holiday on Monday. See you then!
For episode transcripts and more, head to Equity’s Simplecast website.
Equity drops at 7 a.m. PT every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews foundersand more!
Credits: Equity is hosted by TechCrunch's Alex Wilhelm and Mary Ann Azevedo. We are produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. Bryce Durbin is our Illustrator. We'd also like to thank the audience development team and Henry Pickavet, who manages TechCrunch audio products.
This is our newly revamped Wednesday episode, and we’re going to be digging deep into critical startup and venture capital news. If you are a long-time Equity listener, you will note that this is not the same interview show that we used to run mid-week! Don’t worry, we are still going to do interviews, so keep an eye out for those on Saturdays.
Here’s what’s we got into on the show today:
- PhotoRoom is raising more money. French startup PhotoRoom is raising $50 million to $60 million at a $500 million to $600 million valuation. The round marks another potential win for AI in France, a market that is working to set itself apart in the EU.
- Treasure Financial cuts 14 staff members. The reductions in personnel represent a material percentage of the startup’s headcount, which feels a little weird given that the company raised $7.5 million last year, and reportedly saw its AUM soar.
- Tier and Dott are betting that 1+1=3. Two micromobility companies are tying the knot to try and use scale to their advantage. The moves comes in the wake of U.S. scooter company Bird filing for bankruptcy.
- AI Hardware, Part 1: The new rabbit r1 looks super cool, and is surprisingly cheap. I dig it.
- AI Hardware, Part 2: Humane trimmed staff before shipping its AI hardware.
- On the venture capital side, Keith Rabois is heading back to Khosla Ventures, and Seedstars Africa Ventures added $30 million to its upcoming fund.
We’ll be back on Friday with our weekly roundtable!
For episode transcripts and more, head to Equity’s Simplecast website.
Equity drops at 7 a.m. PT every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders and more!
Credits: Equity is hosted by TechCrunch's Alex Wilhelm and Mary Ann Azevedo. We are produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. Bryce Durbin is our Illustrator. We'd also like to thank the audience development team and Henry Pickavet, who manages TechCrunch audio products.
Here’s what we got into on the show today:
- Stocks and Crypto: Tech stocks aren’t moving too much this morning as the market digests the Boeing mess. In crypto-land, the price of bitcoin is up.
- Bitcoin ETFs: And this is why. A rush of new filings this morning showed that bitcoin spot ETFs are targeting a very low-fee structure as they compete for investor dollars. These investment vehicles are expected to get approved this week, or at least some of them, so expect a little market turbulence ahead.
- Carta is once again in trouble: Carta, which makes cap table software for startups, is in trouble after some of its sales people used internal information to try and broker trades without customer consent. Guess how well that is going over.
- The ULA managed to get its rocket into the sky! This is great news for space launch competition. And for going back to the Moon.
- And the GPT store is supposed to come this very week.
All that and more, we promise. Talk to you in two days!
For episode transcripts and more, head to Equity’s Simplecast website.
Equity drops at 7 a.m. PT every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders and more!
Credits: Equity is hosted by TechCrunch's Alex Wilhelm and Mary Ann Azevedo. We are produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. Bryce Durbin is our Illustrator. We'd also like to thank the audience development team and Henry Pickavet, who manages TechCrunch audio products.
Here’s what we got into:
- Deals of the Week: Ruth Foxe Blader is leaving Anthemis, albeit slowly; Exponent has a second fund set up, but without a pure fintech focus; and Alex wanted to talk about why 2024 could be a pretty alright year for crypto.
- Layoffs, shutdowns: Frontdesk laid off 200 people and is shutting down, which makes for a good conversation about its business model. Countdown Capital is also throwing in the towel, due in part to larger multi-stage funds inflating the entry point for hot seed deals. It’s a trend worth keeping an eye on.
- Helping one another: Israel is working to support its startup industry which has been disrupted by the Israel-Hamas war, and how the new Tech for Palestine group was formed.
And that’s Equity for this week! We’ll be back on Monday!
Connect with Equity on X and Threads @EquityPod, and keep up with all of TechCrunch's podcasts @TechCrunchPods on TikTok.
For episode transcripts and more, head to Equity’s Simplecast website.
Equity drops at 7 a.m. PT every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders and more!
Credits: Equity is hosted by TechCrunch's Alex Wilhelm and Mary Ann Azevedo. We are produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. Bryce Durbin is our Illustrator. We'd also like to thank the audience development team and Henry Pickavet, who manages TechCrunch audio products.
Today — ahead of the relaunch of our Wednesday episode that we discussed earlier this week — we have an interview to share featuring TechCrunch’s very own Morgan Sung and Shruti Dwivedi, the co-founder and CEO of health-tech startup, Duly.
Duly took part in TechCrunch Disrupt’s 2023 Battlefield cohort, showing a global audience its contraceptive care platform that is initially targeted at the Indian market.
Why India? The company cites a large, young population in the country with more than 700 million people under the age of 30. However, Duly also reports that fewer than 15% of Indians have access to sexual education. Even more, the startup notes that condom usage in the country is modest at best, and nearly half of young, unmarried women felt “judged when seeking contraception.”
Put that all together, there’s a massive market gap that Duly wants to bridge.
Sexual wellness is not a small market, naturally, and other startups are active in the space. News broke late last year, for example, that Evofem Biosciences — which makes Phexxi, a non-hormonal contraceptive gel — found a buyer after financial struggles. Changes to American law regarding abortion make it clear that access to contraceptive care is critical for women around the world.
A big thanks to Morgan for the interview, Mary Ann for the intro, and Theresa and Kell for the edit and production!
For episode transcripts and more, head to Equity’s Simplecast website.
Equity drops at 7 a.m. PT every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders and more!
Credits: Equity is hosted by TechCrunch's Alex Wilhelm and Mary Ann Azevedo. We are produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. Bryce Durbin is our Illustrator. We'd also like to thank the audience development team and Henry Pickavet, who manages TechCrunch audio products.
We're covering the latest in tech news from the weekend and what’s making headlines early in the week. This being the first week of the year, we had to go over a thing or two that broke just as 2023 gave up the ghost. Here's what we have on deck for you!
- Financial updates: Global stock market news, and the latest from crypto. On the decentralized front, strong price movements are driving trading volume. That's good news for exchanges around the world.
- AI versus Copyright: The New York Times suit against OpenAI that dropped in the final days of 2023 is still the biggest story in tech at the moment. If major LLMs are built on shaky grounds, what does that mean for the generative AI boom?
- X's value continues to fall, further evidence that social media is hard to monetize for nearly anyone who isn't Meta.
- Climatetech job growth could bode well for the startup genre.
- And, to close out, this Times story is fascinating if you want to understand where venture dollars are flowing.
That’s it for today! More on Wednesday and Friday!
Connect with Equity on X and Threads @EquityPod, and keep up with all of TechCrunch's podcasts @TechCrunchPods on TikTok.
For episode transcripts and more, head to Equity’s Simplecast website.
Equity drops at 7 a.m. PT every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders and more!
Credits: Equity is hosted by TechCrunch's Alex Wilhelm and Mary Ann Azevedo. We are produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. Bryce Durbin is our Illustrator. We'd also like to thank the audience development team and Henry Pickavet, who manages TechCrunch audio products.
It's time to brush the dust off of an Equity tradition that stretches back into the years: our predictions episode.
As we try to do every year, we brought in a number of voices to ensure that we covered a good amount of ground. And, we went back and vetted our predictions from last year as well, in case you wanted to see how off we were!
Who took part? Alex Wilhelm, Mary Ann Azevedo, Kirsten Korosec, and Becca Szkutak. The voices you heard the most on the podcast this year! (A big thanks to Theresa Loconsolo for getting the whole gang together!)
We bucketed our predictions into a few categories, including startup trends, media, proptech, AI, and transport. Mary Ann expects venture to continue contracting in personnel terms, Alex wanted to talk about AI at the OS level, Becca had notes on media, and more.
There are other themes mixed in as well, but find your headphones and get ready for some Hot Takes, yeah?
That is a wrap on Equity in 2023. We recorded something around 150 episodes, racked up seven-figures worth of downloads, oodles of streams, and more. But most importantly, we got to spend time with you. Thank you, for being you. Hugs, and more soon!
Connect with Equity on X and Threads @EquityPod, and keep up with all of TechCrunch's podcasts @TechCrunchPods on TikTok.
For episode transcripts and more, head to Equity’s Simplecast website.
Equity drops at 7 a.m. PT every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders and more!
Credits: Equity is hosted by TechCrunch's Alex Wilhelm and Mary Ann Azevedo. We are produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. Bryce Durbin is our Illustrator. We'd also like to thank the audience development team and Henry Pickavet, who manages TechCrunch audio products.
Today, we’re spinning the globe with not one but two interviews, thanks to our friend and colleague Rebecca Bellan, who’s been in Auckland, New Zealand for the past three years. She recently hopped across the Tasman to Australia to report on the startup scene in Australia, and is coming back to us with a temperature check on VC in the Antipodes.
Rebecca spoke to two Aussie VCs: Dan Krasnostein from Square Peg and Gabrielle Munzer from Main Sequence. Rebecca and our guests dug into why early stage funding is popping off in the region, the government's role in growing a startup ecosystem, fintech, climate tech, and what it’s like to compete and collaborate with Silicon Valley.
In addition to these conversations, Rebecca wrote a few deep dive stories from her time in Australia, including a look at its burgeoning climate tech scene and some of the people who are fighting to lift women up in the ecosystem. Rebecca also chatted with Canva — the SaaS darling of Australia — to learn how the company is embracing generative AI at its core and pursuing more B2B clients.
We have one more episode to share before saying goodbye to 2023. It's a fun one and a tradition: Equity's 2024 predictions. Stay tuned!
Connect with Equity on X and Threads @EquityPod, and keep up with all of TechCrunch's podcasts @TechCrunchPods on TikTok.
For episode transcripts and more, head to Equity’s Simplecast website.
Equity drops at 7 a.m. PT every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders and more!
Credits: Equity is hosted by TechCrunch's Alex Wilhelm and Mary Ann Azevedo. We are produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. Bryce Durbin is our Illustrator. We'd also like to thank the audience development team and Henry Pickavet, who manages TechCrunch audio products.
Today, Alex got Deepka Rana from Northzone on the mic to chat through a bevy of key topics for the new year:
- Where venture capital is heading in the new year
- The prognosis for startups at different stages of maturity
- Why 2023 was the year of adjustment, and 2024 could be the new venture-startup normal
- And, the fate of AI in the EU where regulation is afoot. (n.b. When we recorded this, the EU's first-draft of AI regulation had not yet dropped).
We think that every person in startups and venture is hoping that 2024 brings a warmer macroeconomic environment, and lots of exits. We'll see. What was clear from our chat with Rana, however, is that the new year is going to be anything but boring.
We have two more episodes headed your way before we officially wrap up 2023, so stay close to Equity!
Connect with Equity on X and Threads @EquityPods, and keep up with all of TechCrunch's podcasts @TechCrunchPods on TikTok.
For episode transcripts and more, head to Equity’s Simplecast website.
Equity drops at 7 a.m. PT every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders and more!
Credits: Equity is hosted by TechCrunch's Alex Wilhelm and Mary Ann Azevedo. We are produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. Bryce Durbin is our Illustrator. We'd also like to thank the audience development team and Henry Pickavet, who manages TechCrunch audio products.
This is the second of a two-part series looking back at 2023. Mary Ann and Alex called on two colleagues to help us chat through some of the year’s biggest events. Here’s what we got into!
- The decline, fall of SVB: It’s a bit hard to believe, but the chaos at Silicon Valley Bank happened earlier this year. Yes, much has happened since, but the sudden, and shocking collapse of what was effectively the family bank of tech sent waves throughout the global technology landscape. Venture was impacted. Public companies were impacted, and some startups actually got a boost!
- Chaos at OpenAI: Another weekend-powered period of high-drama in tech this year was the defenstration of Sam Altman from his role at OpenAI, only for the tide to entirely flip in short order, Altman back the co, and most of the folks who wanted him out gone themselves. This one is still developing, so we had Devin Coldewey on to help us understand what is coming next.
- SBF’s trial: It was long. It was tedious. It was occasionally very interesting. But in the end, former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried was found super-duper guilty for various financial crimes relating to his now-failed crypto exchange. We invited Jacquie Melinek back on the show to tell us more.
You can find part one of our year-end roundup here if you need even more! And don’t forget, Equity has even more great stuff coming your way, so stick close to your favorite podcast app.
Connect with Equity on X and Threads @EquityPods, and keep up with all of TechCrunch's podcasts @TechCrunchPods on TikTok.
For episode transcripts and more, head to Equity’s Simplecast website.
Equity drops at 7 a.m. PT every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders and more!
Credits: Equity is hosted by TechCrunch's Alex Wilhelm and Mary Ann Azevedo. We are produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. Bryce Durbin is our Illustrator. We'd also like to thank the audience development team and Henry Pickavet, who manages TechCrunch audio products.
Today, we’re bringing you a special mini episode led by TechCrunch senior reporter and co-host of our sister podcast, Found, Dominic Madori-Davis. During this year’s Disrupt, Dom caught up with Hilary Mason from Hidden Door, an AI-driven narrative game engine. Dom and Hilary got into how generative AI is changing online gaming, building a team of creatives, fundraising in the gaming space, and more.
Connect with Equity on X and Threads @EquityPods, and keep up with all of TechCrunch's podcasts @TechCrunchPods on TikTok.
For episode transcripts and more, head to Equity’s Simplecast website.
Equity drops at 7 a.m. PT every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders and more!
Credits: Equity is hosted by TechCrunch's Alex Wilhelm and Mary Ann Azevedo. We are produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. Bryce Durbin is our Illustrator. We'd also like to thank the audience development team and Henry Pickavet, who manages TechCrunch audio products.
Hello and welcome back to Equity, a podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines.
This is the first of a two-part series that we built for you going back over critical themes from 2023. It was a very, very busy year in the worlds of technology, startups, and venture capital. This is the first of a two-part series that we built for you going back over critical themes from 2023.
It was a very, very busy year in the worlds of technology, startups, and venture capital -- so busy that we asked for your 2023 in a headline, and you delivered!
Mary Ann and Alex dug into a host of key topics:
- Venture capital in 2023: The numbers started off the year poor, but got a bit better as time went along. In part as year-over-year comps became less onerous as we got deeper into the year thanks to 2022's own results having a downward tilt. Still, there's a lot of capital still in the market so we are closing out the year far from a freeze.
- Elsewhere in venture? California's new diversity reporting rule made an appearance, we discussed which stage of startups are struggling the most, and even riffed on some new fintech unicorns.
- Then there was fintech in 2023: Despite a hot start to M&A in the fintech realm to start the year, deals slowed as the year went on. Though we did see a handful of critical transactions. Alex brought up some fintech-adjacent deals that he felt were notable as well, to round out our recap.
- Then we had to touch on the creator economy in 2023: Recall that this was the year that we saw the writer's strike, the mess at Reddit, the brouhaha at Twitch, and the rise of several Twitter alts. Busy time for creators, even if the hopes of yesteryear that the middle class of creatordom would expand more rapidly than it has.
- And then there was the return of key-person syndrome, which we'll explain more of on the show!
In Part 2 -- coming soon! -- we brought in several TechCrunch experts to help us get even deeper on the SBF trial and crypto more generally, the OpenAI fracas and where that technology is today, and more. Stay close to Equity! We have a lot planned for you.
Connect with Equity on X and Threads @EquityPods, and keep up with all of TechCrunch's podcasts @TechCrunchPods on TikTok.
For episode transcripts and more, head to Equity’s Simplecast website.
Equity drops at 7 a.m. PT every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders and more!
Credits: Equity is hosted by TechCrunch's Alex Wilhelm and Mary Ann Azevedo. We are produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. Bryce Durbin is our Illustrator. We'd also like to thank the audience development team and Henry Pickavet, who manages TechCrunch audio products.
This is our very last regular news roundup of the year. We still have a lot planned for you, though, with special interviews, guest appearances, and predictions. But that’s all to come. This time ’round we once again had Mary Ann Azevedo and Alex Wilhelm together to hammer through the key news from the week:
- Cruise layoffs: Breaking as we went to record, self-driving company Cruise is cutting a simply massive number of staff.
- Deals of the Week: Prevu’s $6 million Series A and why proptech is Not Dead Yet, and why Verve Motion just raised $20 million for supportive lifting suits.
- What’s up with France? With Mistral AI making waves, other French startups are also snagging our attention. This includes Pivot which just raised $21.6 million, and what’s going on with startup studio Hexa.
- And then there’s AI: We can’t not talk about it, yeah? Sorry if you are a bit over AI, but while deals keep happening and founders keep building, it’s going to be in the rundown. This time we’re digging how a few mega-deals are changing the numbers, and also how AI might need to pay for itself.
We are back Monday with some really fun stuff! Stay tuned, we have done work just for you!
Connect with Equity on X and Threads @EquityPods, and keep up with all of TechCrunch's podcasts @TechCrunchPods on TikTok.
For episode transcripts and more, head to Equity’s Simplecast website.
Equity drops at 7 a.m. PT every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders and more!
Credits: Equity is hosted by TechCrunch's Alex Wilhelm and Mary Ann Azevedo. We are produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. Bryce Durbin is our Illustrator. We'd also like to thank the audience development team and Henry Pickavet, who manages TechCrunch audio products.
This week we brought Matt Mullenweg, the CEO of Automattic and co-founder of WordPress onto the show, along with Kishan Bagaria, the founder of Texts.com. Automattic bought all-in-one messaging app Texts.com for $50 million back in October. Well, we had questions, not only about the deal, but also the state of the written word online.
A few notes before you hit play. First, Automattic is more acquisitive than you thought. A look at its history of purchases is critical context for our conversation. And, second, TechCrunch uses WordPress. We in fact are WordPress VIP customers. Neither fact is news, and of course had no bearing on our choice to bring Mullenweg and Bagaria on the podcast, but felt worth noting all the same.
Alright, sit back, hit play, and have some fun with us! We’re back on Friday with our news roundup!
Connect with Equity on X and Threads @EquityPods, and keep up with all of TechCrunch's podcasts @TechCrunchPods on TikTok.
For episode transcripts and more, head to Equity’s Simplecast website.
Equity drops at 7 a.m. PT every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders and more!
Credits: Equity is hosted by TechCrunch's Alex Wilhelm and Mary Ann Azevedo. We are produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. Bryce Durbin is our Illustrator. We'd also like to thank the audience development team and Henry Pickavet, who manages TechCrunch audio products.
Our Monday show covers the latest in tech news from the weekend and what’s making headlines early in the week. Here's what Alex got into:
- The end of earnings: With just Adobe and Oracle from the tech world reporting this week, we have finally (mostly) wrapped up earnings season for Q4 2023, and thus the year.
- Crypto’s doing things again: Recent price appreciation is driving another massive spike in trading activity.
- TikTok forms joint venture: Teaming up with Tokopedia, the Bytedance company has its eyes on the Indonesian ecommerce market. But the tie-up comes at a stiff price.
- EU&AI: Last Friday the EU got its regulatory plan in place for AI. Criticism followed. Then on Monday Mistral AI raised a bunch more money. So is European AI work kaput, or just getting started?
- Elsewhere, don’t forget that the chip war is still raging, there are more fintech unicorns being born lately than before, and SumUp raised again.
That’s it for today! More on Wednesday and Friday!
For episode transcripts and more, head to Equity’s Simplecast website.
Equity drops at 7 a.m. PT every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders and more!
Credits: Equity is hosted by TechCrunch's Alex Wilhelm and Mary Ann Azevedo. We are produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. Bryce Durbin is our Illustrator. We'd also like to thank the audience development team and Henry Pickavet, who manages TechCrunch audio products.
This week on Chain Reaction, Jacquelyn interviewed David Pakman, managing partner and head of venture investments at CoinFund.
Before CoinFund, David spent 14 years at the venture capital firm Venrock. He also led the Series A and B rounds at Dollar Shave Club which was acquired by Unilever for $1 billion. And in 1991, David co-created Apple Music when he was a part of Apple’s system software product marketing group
We discussed the state of the crypto VC environment, areas he’s focusing on for investments and what he thinks investors are missing.
We also talked about:
- AI compared to crypto
- Future of NFTs
- Regulatory impact on investors
- 2024 outlook
- Advice for startups
Chain Reaction comes out every Thursday at 12:00 p.m. ET, so be sure to subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or your favorite pod platform to keep up with the action.
Connect with us:
- TikTok
- Newsletter
Credits: Equity is hosted by TechCrunch's Alex Wilhelm and Mary Ann Azevedo. We are produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. Bryce Durbin is our Illustrator. We'd also like to thank the audience development team and Henry Pickavet, who manages TechCrunch audio products.
This week Mary Ann Azevedo, Kirsten Korosec, and Alex Wilhelm gathered to hash out the news over some coffee and good times. Here’s what the gang got into today:
- Deals of the Week: Simply Homes raises $22 million for an interesting property play, SoftBank buys majority share of connected-vehicles company Cubic Telecom, and OurSky raises $9.2 million for its space-viewing software system.
- Troubles in Fintech: With ZestMoney shutting down, and layoffs at Navan (fka TripAction) it seems that fintech is not out of the woods yet. That said, Alex has some notes on enthusiasm in one area of financial technology.
- What’s up with software? TechCrunch coverage of tech earnings is leading to a mess of mixed signals for startups, and VCs to interpolate; are valuations rising again, or will 2023 end as it began? For more on the software market today, head here.
For episode transcripts and more, head to Equity’s Simplecast website.
Equity drops at 7 a.m. PT every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews foundersand more!
Credits: Equity is hosted by TechCrunch's Alex Wilhelm and Mary Ann Azevedo. We are produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. Bryce Durbin is our Illustrator. We'd also like to thank the audience development team and Henry Pickavet, who manages TechCrunch audio products.
Today, we’re bringing you another conversation from TechCrunch Disrupt 2023, when Alex sat down with Serhii Bohoslovskyi, the founder of no-code app-builder Trible. Trible is a no-code software product that helps folks construct online courses.
We love Disrupt because it gives us lots of room to chat with founders that we might otherwise have missed. We even had a dedicated podcasting area! Expect even more of this sort of chat in the future.
Here’s what we got into with Bohoslovskyi:
- The state of the creator economy now that the hype has somewhat worn off the product category. How are creators doing today?
- The use of no-code tooling today, and how it is received by non-technical creators.
- And the state of startups that have roots in Ukraine, given that the nation is currently defending itself from external invasion.
Talking to founders never, ever gets boring. That’s all for us today, and we’ll be back on Friday!
For episode transcripts and more, head to Equity’s Simplecast website.
Equity drops at 7 a.m. PT every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders and more!
Credits: Equity is hosted by TechCrunch's Alex Wilhelm and Mary Ann Azevedo. We are produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. Bryce Durbin is our Illustrator. We'd also like to thank the audience development team and Henry Pickavet, who manages TechCrunch audio products.
Our Monday show covers the latest in tech news from the weekend and what’s making headlines early in the week. And we had a lot to cover this morning!
- Crypto prices are rising, which is good news for the decentralized economy, as increasing prices track with heightened trading activity and consumer interest.
- We have another busy week of SaaS companies reporting quarterly results, which will hopefully provide a useful temperature check for tech valuations.
- CoreWeave's new $7 billion valuation had our tongues wagging, as did delays at Google's AI project.
- And then there was Spotify cutting staff in light of economic conditions. The company can't outgrow its core market forever, and with largely static gross margins, the only lever it can really pull is its cost base.
That's it for today! More on Wednesday and Friday!
For episode transcripts and more, head to Equity’s Simplecast website.
Equity drops at 7 a.m. PT every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders and more!
Credits: Equity is hosted by TechCrunch's Alex Wilhelm and Mary Ann Azevedo. We are produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. Bryce Durbin is our Illustrator. We'd also like to thank the audience development team and Henry Pickavet, who manages TechCrunch audio products.
Here's what the Equity crew got into today:
- Self-driving setbacks: Cruise is set to slash its costs in the wake of a safety mess, and greater scrutiny from regulators. Alex hopes that the current set of news items doesn’t slow down the progress of self-driving tech.
- Webull snaps up Flink: Free trading is not just a business model that is popular in the United States. Webull is taking the Latin American market more seriously with its purchase of Flink.
- Uber <3’s taxis: What are London’s iconic black cabs doing on Uber’s platform? And how long does it take to go from enemies to frenemies?
- Rover finds the exit: Who would have guessed that dog walking would be worth $2.3 billion?
- IPOs are heating back up (a little): With Shein and Reddit targeting the IPO market in the coming months, it’s time to get our S-1 boots back on and prepare for some new debuts.
- Venture downturns are not death sentences: EU venture funding levels are down, but not out. And what’s going on Down Under?
We are back on Monday! Chat then!
For episode transcripts and more, head to Equity’s Simplecast website.
Equity drops at 7 a.m. PT every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders and more!
Credits: Equity is hosted by TechCrunch's Alex Wilhelm and Mary Ann Azevedo. We are produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. Bryce Durbin is our Illustrator. We'd also like to thank the audience development team and Henry Pickavet, who manages TechCrunch audio products.
Anu Hariharan, who previously led YC Continuity, has partnered with two of her former colleagues and former Brex executive Lucas Fox to launch a new fund, Avra. The fund aims to raise about $350 million and operate a program that some are referring to as a “YC for growth.” In light of the news, we’re throwing it back to a conversation we had with Anu earlier this year:
Alex spoke to Anu back in August, after she tweeted about how "great" founders were successfully guiding their companies towards cash flow positivity. Since that very interesting post, both Instacart (a former Y Combinator company) and Klaviyo have filed to go public. And both have super strong cash flows.
Our chat could not have come at a better time. We dug into how early- and late-stage startups should approach growth and cash conservation (in her view), the future of venture as an asset class, and how healthy the unicorn herd really is. We had a blast recording this one! Enjoy!
For episode transcripts and more, head to Equity’s Simplecast website.
Equity drops at 7 a.m. PT every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders and more!
Credits: Equity is hosted by TechCrunch's Alex Wilhelm and Mary Ann Azevedo. We are produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. Bryce Durbin is our Illustrator. We'd also like to thank the audience development team and Henry Pickavet, who manages TechCrunch audio products.
You might be glad to know today was not all about OpenAI. Instead, we took on a bunch of news from the weekend that had to do with other companies:
- It’s a big earnings week for software companies, which means we’re about to get a bushel of information on how things are shaping up for SaaS startups in the latter half of 2023.
- On the crypto front, price movements have slowed as the industry digests the recent Binance verdict.
- Neuralink has raised more capital, which is great news for nerds like myself.
- Gaming layoffs are still coming in hot and heavy, adding to a long list of cuts this year.
- In the wake of a massive shopping weekend, how did e-commerce hold up? Here’s data from the U.S., and from around the world.
- China-linked groups are coming for your industrial secrets, and Meta is again in regulatory hot water.
And that’s that! We'll be back on Wednesday, but keep up with us in the meantime @EquityPod.
For episode transcripts and more, head to Equity’s Simplecast website.
Equity drops at 7 a.m. PT every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders and more!
Credits: Equity is hosted by TechCrunch's Alex Wilhelm and Mary Ann Azevedo. We are produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. Bryce Durbin is our Illustrator. We'd also like to thank the audience development team and Henry Pickavet, who manages TechCrunch audio products.
Today on Equity, we’re bringing you two bonus conversations all about sustainability in fashion from TechCrunch Disrupt 2023. First up you’ll hear our very own Harri Weber sit down with three guests: Jim Ajioka from Colorifix, Beth Esponnette from unspun and Julie Willoughby from Circ. They are all powerhouses in sustainable fashion and they all happened to join Harri on the Sustainability Stage. Watch their full conversation here.
In part two, we have a great conversation between TechCrunch’s Morgan Sung and Jemima Bunbury from BLEND, a curated fashion app that is changing the way we shop online. BLEND uses AI-powered personalized recommendations to help customers quickly and easily find products that suit their style, size and budget. Their goal is to prevent impulse purchases, and of course, make it possible to stay trendy and shop sustainably.
Here's what our guests are diving into:
- Fixing the fashion supply chain so all the materials are created in a sustainable way
- Helping consumers find products that will last
- Enticing larger brands to shift to sustainable practices
- Why a holistic approach to sustainable fashion is crucial when trying to eliminate waste in the industry
That's all for us today, but we'll catch up again on Monday!
For episode transcripts and more, head to Equity’s Simplecast website.
Equity drops at 7 a.m. PT every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders and more!
Credits: Equity is hosted by TechCrunch's Alex Wilhelm and Mary Ann Azevedo. We are produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. Bryce Durbin is our Illustrator. We'd also like to thank the audience development team and Henry Pickavet, who manages TechCrunch audio products.
We’re discussing the recent turmoil in the AI market today. OpenAI has kept the journalistic corps busy, but we also need to consider what the latest twists and turns in the l’affaire Altman may bring for startup founders.
So, I rallied TechCrunch’s own Kyle Wiggers, and Supervised founder and former Equity host Matthew Lynley to help me dig into the latest. Here’s the show rundown:
- What has happened to OpenAI since Monday morning when we last recorded the podcast?
- What do the two experts think will happen to OpenAI’s staff in the coming weeks?
- What should startups that use OpenAI technology do to lower their platform risk?
- And, does the OpenAI mess provide a boost to open-source AI models?
We had a really lovely time. A big thank you to our ever-busy producer Theresa Loconsolo for getting an extra episode out on a holiday week!
For episode transcripts and more, head to Equity’s Simplecast website.
Equity drops at 7 a.m. PT every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders and more!
Credits: Equity is hosted by TechCrunch's Alex Wilhelm and Mary Ann Azevedo. We are produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. Bryce Durbin is our Illustrator. We'd also like to thank the audience development team and Henry Pickavet, who manages TechCrunch audio products.
Listen here or wherever you get your podcasts.
Hello, and welcome back to Equity, the podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines.
Our Monday show covers the latest in tech news from the weekend and what’s making headlines early in the week. This past weekend was all about the massive shakeup at OpenAI, and the high-impact machinations that the last few days brought. We discussed the following:
- The timeline that brought us to today regarding OpenAI, from the firing of Sam Altman through all the recent activity.
- The latest, including Emmett Shear being appointed interim CEO of Open AI, Sam Altman and others heading to Microsoft, and a seeming recantation of everything that happened by Ilya Sutskever at OpenAI.
The situation remains far from settled, but you only have to stick close to TechCrunch to stay updated. The above podcast is going to age quickly, so we may have extra episodes in the coming days.
For episode transcripts and more, head to Equity’s Simplecast website.
Equity drops at 7 a.m. PT every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders and more!
Credits: Equity is hosted by TechCrunch's Alex Wilhelm and Mary Ann Azevedo. We are produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. Bryce Durbin is our Illustrator. We'd also like to thank the audience development team and Henry Pickavet, who manages TechCrunch audio products.
This week Mary Ann and Alex covered a host of news events. Here's the rundown:
- Fintech + AI = ? News that Ramp and Brex are working to lever AI in the wake of reporting that Brex's growth this year on a sequential-quarterly basis slowed had us thinking. Can AI help fintech startups grow more quickly? The fintech sector could use a boon at this juncture, perhaps this is it.
- Help I drink too much: Alex dug up a recent venture round in the sobriety space. This time it was Sunnyside, which just raised $11.5 million for its subscription service that helps folks cut back on their drinking. We've discussed other players in the space before, including Reframe.
- What's ahead for the startup M&A market? The Getir-FreshDirect deal had us thinking. Becca Szkutak thinks that it represents the sort of deal that we'll see next year. Even more, we may see more, similar deals next year.
- Will AI help startups regain their former value? A recent report from Battery Ventures had Alex thinking about how AI-powered automation could help startups spend less as they grow; Rule of 40, here we come!
- Hormonal health will be is big: The Equity team dug into Allara the other week. Now we're adding Inito, which just raised $6 million, to our list of startups that are building in the hormonal health market. Natasha was right.
And that was the show! Next week is a holiday week here in the United States, so expect something special from us next Friday. We'll be on our regular schedule Monday and Wednesday!
For episode transcripts and more, head to Equity’s Simplecast website.
Equity drops at 7 a.m. PT every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews foundersand more!
Credits: Equity is hosted by TechCrunch's Alex Wilhelm and Mary Ann Azevedo. We are produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. Bryce Durbin is our Illustrator. We'd also like to thank the audience development team and Henry Pickavet, who manages TechCrunch audio products.
This week we brought TechCrunch’s own Rebecca Bellan onto the podcast to help us better understand Google’s search-related anti-trust case that is currently ongoing in the United States.
There are a number of major legal cases involving tech giants and their in-market heft and behavior, from Google v. Epic to what’s going on in the EU and the U.S. government’s adtech-related suit against Google, but our focus is search.
Catch up on the state of affairs with Bellan’s reporting here.
Now, the startup angle. Why is this a topic for Equity? A few reasons:
- If Google’s current methods of maintaining its domestic search market share are forced to change, it could create a more competitive search market, full stop. That could change up where startups advertise, and how much they pay for those ads.
- More competitive search results amongst emboldened rivals could also lead to search results that lean more towards organic information instead of paid insertions. That would be good for startups looking to get the word out, without having to get their wallet out.
We could go on. But hit play and hang out with Rebecca and Alex for more. We’ll have her back on when the verdict comes down. Talk to you Friday for our news roundup!
For episode transcripts and more, head to Equity’s Simplecast website.
Equity drops at 7 a.m. PT every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders and more!
Credits: Equity is hosted by TechCrunch's Alex Wilhelm and Mary Ann Azevedo. We are produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. Bryce Durbin is our Illustrator. We'd also like to thank the audience development team and Henry Pickavet, who manages TechCrunch audio products.
Here’s what we got into on this very cold November morning:
- Crypto’s melt-up is continuing, with rising trading volumes following in the wake of the price gains. For web3 believers, it’s great news.
- The FT has a great interview with Sam Altman about how AI training is going to stay expensive for a long while; Microsoft is probably not worried about the costs, however.
- Didi’s earnings dropped, kicking off a busy week for Chinese tech companies including Alibaba, NetEase, and Tencent Music.
- The Block is getting its cap table into shape.
- And Shekel Mobility raised an interesting round that we just had to talk about.
Don’t forget that next week is a holiday week here in the United States!
For episode transcripts and more, head to Equity’s Simplecast website.
Equity drops at 7 a.m. PT every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders and more!
Credits: Equity is hosted by TechCrunch's Alex Wilhelm and Mary Ann Azevedo. We are produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. Bryce Durbin is our Illustrator. We'd also like to thank the audience development team and Henry Pickavet, who manages TechCrunch audio products.
This is our Friday show, and we’re talking about the week’s biggest startup and tech news. This time ’round we had Kirsten Korosec, Mary Ann Azevedo, and Alex Wilhelm on the job to chat through a massive pile of news:
- For everyone who listened to our fintech deep-dive, here are Affirm’s results.
- Deals of the Week: $105 million for May Mobility, $3.6 million for Mogul Club, and Microsoft’s latest startup wooing trend.
- WeWork is bankrupt, and we are Not Shocked.
- All things from OpenAI’s developer day, and how its latest news is a good example of platform risk.
- It’s raining IPOs! Here, there, everywhere!
And with that, we’re going to go rest for the weekend and come back Monday at full steam!
For episode transcripts and more, head to Equity’s Simplecast website.
Equity drops at 7 a.m. PT every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders and more!
Credits: Equity is hosted by TechCrunch's Alex Wilhelm and Mary Ann Azevedo. We are produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. Bryce Durbin is our Illustrator. We'd also like to thank the audience development team and Henry Pickavet, who manages TechCrunch audio products.
Today, Mary Ann and Alex dove deep into encouraging signs from the fintech startup market:
- Solid results from Klarna are on top of Alex’s mind. The company’s ability to continue growing while staying profitable is a reminder that one down-round does not a company kill.
- Fintech fundraising results were on Mary Ann’s mind as we wait for venture capitalists to re-accelerate their investments in the space. Sure, no one wants to return to 2021-era insanity, but after so long in the valuation doghouse, perhaps fintech has reached its nadir?
- And we leaned on data. Here’s the American consumer debt information Alex referenced, Affirm results will drop here, and the CB Insights venture data we cited is here.
More to come in our Friday news roundup! Talk to you then!
For episode transcripts and more, head to Equity’s Simplecast website.
Equity drops at 7 a.m. PT every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders and more!
Credits: Equity is hosted by TechCrunch's Alex Wilhelm and Mary Ann Azevedo. We are produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. Bryce Durbin is our Illustrator. We'd also like to thank the audience development team and Henry Pickavet, who manages TechCrunch audio products.
Here’s what we got into on this fine morning:
- Stocks and crypto: Stocks are higher in Asia, lower in Europe, and nearly flat in the United States. More interestingly, crypto prices are continuing their ascent. Even NFTs are picking up a little bit!
- It’s another busy week on the earnings front, meaning we’ll hear from Uber and Lyft and Hubspot, among others.
- On the AI front, TechCrunch is tracking 01.AI in China, which is now a unicorn, and the latest offering from Elon Musk’s X.AI service. The latter will have some sort of tie to X, formerly known as Twitter.
- In India, a former Sequoia group is racking up impressive results.
- Elsewhere in technology-land, OpenSea cut staff, and China’s government is still writing big checks to chip firms. Let’s see how the latter plays out this time.
Equity is back in Wednesday! We’ll see you then!
For episode transcripts and more, head to Equity’s Simplecast website.
Equity drops at 7 a.m. PT every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders and more!
Credits: Equity is hosted by TechCrunch's Alex Wilhelm and Mary Ann Azevedo. We are produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. Bryce Durbin is our Illustrator. We'd also like to thank the audience development team and Henry Pickavet, who manages TechCrunch audio products.
We’re talking about the week’s biggest startup and tech news with Mary Ann, Becca, and Alex.
Here's what we got into:
- What happened to WeWork? As the shared office space company struggles to stay alive, we had a lot to say.
- Deals of the Week: Mary Ann wanted to chat about Charlie, which is building a neobank for seniors; Alex wanted to talk about an interesting non-profit-ish model to get startups and others access to H100s; Becca brought Almouneer to the table, an interesting healthtech play in the Middle East.
- From there we dug into massive fintech rounds, which are seemingly back. For more, you can read up on QI Tech, Tabby, and Next Insurance.
- And, finally, what to do when founding teams break up? Becca has notes.
As always, Equity is back for you on Monday, but you can catch up with us in the meantime on X and Threads @EquityPod. Talk soon!
For episode transcripts and more, head to Equity’s Simplecast website.
Equity drops at 7 a.m. PT every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews foundersand more!
Credits: Equity is hosted by TechCrunch's Alex Wilhelm and Mary Ann Azevedo. We are produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. Bryce Durbin is our Illustrator. We'd also like to thank the audience development team and Henry Pickavet, who manages TechCrunch audio products.
This is our Wednesday show, where we sit down with a guest, talk about their work and dive deep into the rest. Mary Ann and Alex invited Marisa Warren onto the show. You may remember that we discussed her new fund — ALIAVIA Ventures’ first — on the show the other week.
We wanted to talk with her to go over a few key topics that we care a lot about:
- The current state of venture investment in women; why the numbers aren’t changing, and what she thinks could make a difference.
- When startups should target their second market, and how.
The two themes are not as far apart as they may initially seem. ALIAVIA invests in startups based in the US and Australia that have at least one female founder, and also helps their portfolio companies tackle new markets. It was a really interesting, and fun conversation. Enjoy!
For episode transcripts and more, head to Equity’s Simplecast website.
Equity drops at 7 a.m. PT every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders and more!
Credits: Equity is hosted by TechCrunch's Alex Wilhelm and Mary Ann Azevedo. We are produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. Bryce Durbin is our Illustrator. We'd also like to thank the audience development team and Henry Pickavet, who manages TechCrunch audio products.
Our Monday show covers the latest in tech news from the weekend and what’s making headlines early in the week. Here’s what we got into today:
- It's a massive earnings week, unlocking a massive wave of new data concerning the performance of tech public tech companies. We're hoping to learn more about the market that startups are selling into in the process.
- The recent crypto rally is helping bolster spot trading results, good news for Coinbase ahead of its own earnings report.
- The Biden administration's executive order regarding AI is out, as G7 countries look to create a code of AI conduct for companies.
- X users that want to make a little money from their engagement will now have to avoid getting hit with community notes.
- And Web Summit has a new CEO.
That's all for today! We have notes coming on Wednesday all about international startups and selling cross-border! Talk then!
For episode transcripts and more, head to Equity’s Simplecast website.
Equity drops at 7 a.m. PT every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders and more!
Credits: Equity is hosted by TechCrunch's Alex Wilhelm and Mary Ann Azevedo. We are produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. Bryce Durbin is our Illustrator. We'd also like to thank the audience development team and Henry Pickavet, who manages TechCrunch audio products.
Happy Saturday! We have a special bonus episode for you from our sister pod, Chain Reaction. Alex joins Jacquelyn Melinek go over the FTX/Sam Bankman-Fried trial before getting into his testimony from Thursday and Friday. They talked about:
- Why the judge had the jury leave the courthouse for SBF’s testimony Thursday
- The general feeling of the courthouse on the fourth week of the trial
- A possible timeline for next week and what to look out for as the prosecution gets a chance to cross examines defendant
Keep up to date with Jacquie's coverage at techcrunch.com
For episode transcripts and more, head to Equity’s Simplecast website.
Equity drops at 7 a.m. PT every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews foundersand more!
Credits: Equity is hosted by TechCrunch's Alex Wilhelm and Mary Ann Azevedo. We are produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. Bryce Durbin is our Illustrator. We'd also like to thank the audience development team and Henry Pickavet, who manages TechCrunch audio products.
Hello and welcome back to Equity, a podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines.
This is our Friday show, and we’re talking about the week’s biggest startup and tech news. Mary Ann and Alex were lucky enough to have Kirsten aboard for the roundup, which means we got to tackle an even wider array of stories than usual:
- Updates from the trial of former FTX CEO SBF, more here from our own Jacquie.
- Deals of the Week: Mary Ann was very interested in I Own My Data, while Alex wanted to talk more about AgentSync's latest venture round.
- Carta's CEO tried to beat back criticism, but wound up making more noise about his company's missteps.
- Cruise hit a roadblock with its self-driving program; we dig into how to handle a crisis and how not to handle a crisis.
- And to close out, notes on earnings from Alphabet and Microsoft and what they may portend for startup-related AI software demand.
Equity comes out thrice-weekly for your delectation. We are back early on Monday with our weekly kickoff, see you there!
P.S. Pay attention to our sister podcast Chain Reaction, we have more coming on the FTX trial that you will not want to miss.
For episode transcripts and more, head to Equity’s Simplecast website.
Equity drops at 7 a.m. PT every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews foundersand more!
Credits: Equity is hosted by TechCrunch's Alex Wilhelm and Mary Ann Azevedo. We are produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. Bryce Durbin is our Illustrator. We'd also like to thank the audience development team and Henry Pickavet, who manages TechCrunch audio products.
Hello, and welcome back to Equity, the podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines.
This is our Wednesday show, where we sit down with a guest, talk about their work and dive deep into the rest. This week, we had Theory Ventures founder Tomasz Tunguz on the show. As long-time readers of his work, having the former Redpoint investor on the show was a no-brainer.
While it would have been fun to spend our time chatting about the ups and down of writing or the Internet, we instead explored a wide range of topics:
- Why Tunguz left Redpoint and started his own fund;
- Why seed deals do not get smaller over time;
- The thesis that underpins Theory Ventures’ investments and the future of machine learning;
- Why Tunguz is bullish on Ethereum;
- The value of software, the health of software companies, and why venture math still holds up at lower valuation multiples.
And more! It was a great chat; Equity will be back on Friday!
For episode transcripts and more, head to Equity’s Simplecast website.
Equity drops at 7 a.m. PT every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders and more!
Credits: Equity is hosted by TechCrunch's Alex Wilhelm and Mary Ann Azevedo. We are produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. Bryce Durbin is our Illustrator. We'd also like to thank the audience development team and Henry Pickavet, who manages TechCrunch audio products.
Hello, and welcome back to Equity, the podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines.
Our Monday show covers the latest in tech news from the weekend and what’s making headlines early in the week. Here’s what we got into today:
- Stocks are down around the world, while the value of crypto tokens is heading higher. Crypto trading volume is also trending north.
- It’s a huge week for earnings with names like Microsoft, Alphabet, Spotify, Snap, Meta, IBM, Amazon and Mobileye reporting, among others.
- Apple is spending big on generative AI, and TechCrunch has notes on just where the company intends to bring the tech.
- ZenML is proof that startups are not dropping the ball when it comes to generative AI more generally.
- Foxconn is under investigation, which is notable for its timing.
- And venture capital raised by Black American founders has fallen sharply in recent quarters.
And that’s that! We have a cracking episode coming on Wednesday, so stay tuned!
For episode transcripts and more, head to Equity’s Simplecast website.
Equity drops at 7 a.m. PT every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders and more!
Credits: Equity is hosted by TechCrunch's Alex Wilhelm and Mary Ann Azevedo. We are produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. Bryce Durbin is our Illustrator. We'd also like to thank the audience development team and Henry Pickavet, who manages TechCrunch audio products.
This is our Friday show, and we’re talking about the week’s biggest startup and tech news. Mary Ann and Alex ran as a pair this week, and here's what they got into:
- Deals of the Week: Allara raised $10 million for women's hormonal health, Agnikul raised $26.7 million for its orbital launch technologies.
- Beef in the (leased) boardroom: WeWork is irked by Codi, which is hammering the well-known shared-office giant in an advertising campaign. Meanwhile, Anyplace raised more capital to fund its digital-nomad friendly home rental business.
- Plaid wants to get Paid: News that Plaid hired a CFO kicked off a predictable cycle of speculation that it will go public. Yes, but when is the question, and our view is not for a while.
- Finally, ChatGPT is online, and VCs are pretty darn bullish about the current AI wave.
In case you missed it, we had a great chat with a Crunchbase analyst earlier this week about all things Q3 VC! As always, Equity is back on Monday, but you can keep up with us in the meantime on X and Threads.
For episode transcripts and more, head to Equity’s Simplecast website.
Equity drops at 7 a.m. PT every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders and more!
Credits: Equity is hosted by TechCrunch's Alex Wilhelm and Mary Ann Azevedo. We are produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. Bryce Durbin is our Illustrator. We'd also like to thank the audience development team and Henry Pickavet, who manages TechCrunch audio products.
This week Gené Teare from Crunchbase and Crunchbase News joined the podcast. She's a well-known analyst of the global venture capital market, and was instrumental to Crunchbase's early life and remains one of its more tenured staffers.
So, what did the three of us get into? Here's the rundown:
- The big picture: What should we think about when we consider the Q3 2023 venture capital market as a whole. (More on Latin America here, Canada here, and global data here from TechCrunch+.) Here's Gené on Q3 data as well.
- Stage-level health. Which level of startup maturity is seeing the most capital? The least?
- And, venture capital flows around the world. As always, where venture dollars land is nearly as important as their total number for any particular period.
Equity is back on Friday with our weekly news roundup. Chat then!
For episode transcripts and more, head to Equity’s Simplecast website.
Equity drops at 7 a.m. PT every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders and more!
Credits: Equity is hosted by TechCrunch's Alex Wilhelm and Mary Ann Azevedo. We are produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. Bryce Durbin is our Illustrator. We'd also like to thank the audience development team and Henry Pickavet, who manages TechCrunch audio products.
Here's what we got into today:
- Earnings season is here, and we'll hear from Tesla and Netflix this week. Expect a lot of new data to drop in the coming weeks.
- If we bundle a number of headlines together, it's clear that running a social media company in the modern era can be a very expensive proposition. Though, what you think about regulation may color how you view the situation.
- Funding to web3 gaming companies declined in Q3, but it's not all that bad.
- The U.S. may not see IPOs happening, but the rest of the world is not similarly bereft.
- Creative Force's Series A was too cool to not mention.
Equity will be back Wednesday with a killer episode on all things venture capital in Q3. See you then!
For episode transcripts and more, head to Equity’s Simplecast website.
Equity drops at 7 a.m. PT every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders and more!
Credits: Equity is hosted by TechCrunch's Alex Wilhelm and Mary Ann Azevedo. We are produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. Bryce Durbin is our Illustrator. We'd also like to thank the audience development team and Henry Pickavet, who manages TechCrunch audio products.
This week, we have a bonus mini episode where Jacquelyn talks with TechCrunch+ editor-in-chief Alex Wilhelm to dive back into the Sam Bankman-Fried trial and what has transpired in its second week.
Major witnesses who were involved in the downfall of FTX and its sister company Alameda testified like Gary Wang, CTO and cofounder of FTX, and Caroline Ellison, CEO of Alameda.
The two of them plead guilty to a number of charges and could face maximum sentences of 50 to 110 years, respectively. It’s also worth noting Wang and Ellison testified as part of a cooperation agreement for pleading guilty.
Jacquelyn and Alex talk about key points from the trial, anecdotes that you can’t read on a transcript and what she anticipates from both the prosecutors and defense going forward.
Want more? Here’s the latest on the SBF trial:
- Former Alameda CEO Caroline Ellison explains how FTX hid losses, sandbagged lenders
- Alameda Research allegedly paid Chinese officials around $150M to regain $1B worth of exchange accounts
- Alameda Research’s ex-CEO Caroline Ellison testifies, claims SBF directed her to commit crimes
- Alameda had a $65B line of credit and ‘unlimited withdrawals’
- As SBF’s trial heads into its second week, here’s what we know so far
Chain Reaction comes out every Thursday at 12:00 p.m. ET, so be sure to subscribe to us on
Apple Podcasts, Spotify or your favorite pod platform to keep up with the action.
Credits: Equity is hosted by TechCrunch's Alex Wilhelm and Mary Ann Azevedo. We are produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. Bryce Durbin is our Illustrator. We'd also like to thank the audience development team and Henry Pickavet, who manages TechCrunch audio products.
Mary Ann and Alex were joined by Kirsten once again to parse the week’s news and call out the biggest stories in startups and venture:
- California passed a law that will require venture firms to disclose certain market data concerning whom they are investing in. Some investors and venture groups are opposed to the law.
- ALIAVIA Ventures has put together a new fund to invest in women building tech companies in Australia and the United States, with a focus on helping Aussie companies reach the American market.
- Canopy Servicing raised a $15.2 million Series A1. Alex caught up with the company, hoping to learn what it took to raise a fintech round in 2023. Things have changed since the go-go days of 2021 when every round felt like a fintech round and every fintech round felt like a pre-IPO deal.
- And rounding out our deals of the week, Kirsten brought a fascinating $200 million deal between a private equity group and EVPassport. If the world is going to move more toward electric cars, then we’re going to need more plugs in more places.
- From there, we worked to draw a connective line between the startup turbulence we’ve seen recently, with Braid shutting down, Shift and IronNet going under, and Blue Apron selling for a fraction of its former value.
- And to close, can technology solve a labor shortage in construction? And if so, what role will startups play in that work?
We had a great chat with the CEO of Medium earlier this week, and have a packed agenda for you including another interview that we’re excited about. More soon!
For episode transcripts and more, head to Equity’s Simplecast website.
Equity drops at 7 a.m. PT every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders and more!
Credits: Equity is hosted by TechCrunch's Alex Wilhelm and Mary Ann Azevedo. We are produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. Bryce Durbin is our Illustrator. We'd also like to thank the audience development team and Henry Pickavet, who manages TechCrunch audio products.
This week we had Medium CEO Tony Stubblebine, the CEO of Medium.com, a publishing platform that he has helmed for more than a year.
Medium has gone through a number of versions over the years. Pivots, if you will. But what has been a steady focus in Medium's life in recent years has been its subscription business. Medium offers a paid membership tier that costs $5 per month or $50 per year. And, Tony was willing to share, it's growing once again and is heading toward a pretty key milestone.
We also got into:
- The business of the written word.
- Medium's stance on AI and what its posture says about how the company views the value of writing. (More on the matter from TechCrunch here.)
- Why Medium thinks that everyone has something worth saying.
There's a little bit of media insider chat during this podcast, which we hope you enjoy. As always, we're back with our weekly roundup on Friday. Talk then!
For episode transcripts and more, head to Equity’s Simplecast website.
Equity drops at 7 a.m. PT every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders and more!
Credits: Equity is hosted by TechCrunch's Alex Wilhelm and Mary Ann Azevedo. We are produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. Bryce Durbin is our Illustrator. We'd also like to thank the audience development team and Henry Pickavet, who manages TechCrunch audio products.
This time around we had a bit of a theme. See if you can spot it:
- Stocks are down around the world in the wake of Hamas' attack in Israel. Crypto is similarly in the red.
- China is working to bolster its national computing and data infrastructure. You know, the things that make AI function. In other words: the AI race between China and the United States is far from over.
- This Anthropic paper is a potentially big deal. The more that we understand LLMs, the better we can use them, right?
- Changes at YC!
- And from Startup Land: Wanda Fish Technologies just raised $7 million to make fake fish, and Lottie raised $21 million to keep tackling the UK care home market.
That's our show for today! We have some really fun interviews coming up, so make sure to tune in on Wednesday!
For episode transcripts and more, head to Equity’s Simplecast website.
Equity drops at 7 a.m. PT every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders and more!
Credits: Equity is hosted by TechCrunch's Alex Wilhelm and Mary Ann Azevedo. We are produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. Bryce Durbin is our Illustrator. We'd also like to thank the audience development team and Henry Pickavet, who manages TechCrunch audio products.
This week, Mary Ann and Alex had the pleasure of having TC reporter extraordinaire Dominic Madori-Davis as a guest on the show.
Here’s what we got into:
- A quick update on the SBF trial, which quite frankly, has us all riveted.
- An Atlanta-based fintech startup called Rainforest’s $8.25M equity raise and how it is hoping to take market share away from the likes of Stripe.
- A bunch of new fund raises this week, including At One’s $375M climate-focused raise; Section 32’s $525M fund close and Greylock’s $1 billion haul.
- With so much capital flowing to VCs, it is more than a little mind-boggling that venture funding declined for yet another quarter in the three-month period ending September 30. But it did.
- Dom came on to talk about Fearless Fund’s being barred from awarding grants to Black women founders and how how data can help improve social impact investing.
Equity is back next week bright and early on Monday. And we have a lot of really cool interviews coming up. So make sure that you are tuned in and caught up!
For episode transcripts and more, head to Equity’s Simplecast website.
Equity drops at 7 a.m. PT every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders and more!
Credits: Equity is hosted by TechCrunch's Alex Wilhelm and Mary Ann Azevedo. We are produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. Bryce Durbin is our Illustrator. We'd also like to thank the audience development team and Henry Pickavet, who manages TechCrunch audio products.
This time, we teamed up with the Chain Reaction podcast and Jacquelyn Melinek to talk about the ongoing trial of former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried, also known as SBF.
The rise of FTX and its later implosion rocked the crypto world when the formerly massive crypto exchange went under last year. In the aftermath, the company's executives have been charged with financial crimes. Many have pleaded guilty and are cooperating with the government. SBF is not.
Here's TechCrunch's reporting on the trial thus far that we went over on the show:
- SBF’s trial has started, this is how he and FTX got here
- SBF’s trial promises to be just as riveting as the rest of the FTX drama
- US government confirms it didn’t offer any plea deals to Sam Bankman-Fried
- Meet the 12 jurors on Sam Bankman-Fried’s trial
- Was FTX an empire ‘built on lies’ or a startup that ‘grew too quickly’?
That last entry goes over the opening statements, which we got into during the show. Jacquie, of course, hosts TechCrunch's Chain Reaction podcast, which is focused on all things crypto. We're lucky to have her back on the mic.
More to come on the SBF trial. Stick close to TechCrunch!
For episode transcripts and more, head to Equity’s Simplecast website.
Equity drops at 7 a.m. PT every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders and more!
Credits: Equity is hosted by TechCrunch's Alex Wilhelm and Mary Ann Azevedo. We are produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. Bryce Durbin is our Illustrator. We'd also like to thank the audience development team and Henry Pickavet, who manages TechCrunch audio products.
Welcome to Q4 2023, the period in which we are all going to pretend to have gotten enough done this year.
Here’s what we got into on the show today:
- Stocks are mixed around the world while crypto tokens are enjoying a nice price-upswing in recent days.
- A recent article argues that Apple has all the ingredients it needs to build a search engine to take on Google and Microsoft. At issue? The fact that Apple makes so much money not having a search engine. For startups, more competition here could be good.
- EU telcos want to get paid twice, unsurprisingly.
- While the Amazon-FTC case is still big news, this week we’ll see the trial of former FTX maven SBF kick off. TechCrunch is ready.
- And to close out, why are we seeing so many Seed-stage fintech deals? Here’s the answer.
Stick close to TechCrunch this week, it’s going to be busy.
For episode transcripts and more, head to Equity’s Simplecast website.
Equity drops at 7 a.m. PT every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders and more!
Credits: Equity is hosted by TechCrunch's Alex Wilhelm and Mary Ann Azevedo. We are produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. Bryce Durbin is our Illustrator. We'd also like to thank the audience development team and Henry Pickavet, who manages TechCrunch audio products.
Here's what Mary Ann, Alex and Kirsten got into this week:
- The writer’s strike is over, and we have thoughts about its implications on AI.
- OpenAI is allowing some shareholders to sell stock, and the resulting valuation could be pretty darn high.
- Electric boat startup Arc has raised about $70 million? We aren’t about to drop the coin needed to buy one of those, but the idea is neat nevertheless.
- Alex wanted to talk about fluctuations in the venture and stock markets. Is the mini-tech recovery already fading after a dismal September?
- Mary Ann wanted to talk about YC. Kirsten broadened the conversation to include the role of accelerators in the startup world more generally. Are the vibes shifting?
- Finally, the tech labor market: As layoffs subside — though new cuts are still being announced — it may be a great time for startups to hire key talent.
And before we go: check out the UpFlip Podcast where you get to unravel how great businesses are built, how they are run behind the scenes and how their success can be replicated. We think you'll love episode 79 where they featured this guest who transformed his passion for gardening into a $7.3 million-a-year venture. You can find the podcast on Youtube or wherever you listen to podcasts.
For episode transcripts and more, head to Equity’s Simplecast website.
Equity drops at 7 a.m. PT every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders and more!
Credits: Equity is hosted by TechCrunch's Alex Wilhelm and Mary Ann Azevedo. We are produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. Bryce Durbin is our Illustrator. We'd also like to thank the audience development team and Henry Pickavet, who manages TechCrunch audio products.
This week on Equity, Alex was joined by Nathan Baschez, the CEO and founder of Lex, an AI-infused online writing tool that recently raised capital. Together, we're talking through a few key topics that have been top of mind in recent months:
- How many AI-powered, or AI-using writing tools can the market support?
- How far into the generative AI moment we are, and how much we should anticipate in the form of technology improvements?
- And then we discussed the nuts and bolts aspects of pricing an AI-powered service and other financial matters related to building a service today that leans on artificial intelligence.
The last question is far from idle. Recall that back in 2020 there was conversation amongst venture players about the economics of AI startups, with the perspective at the time indicating that while the cohort might have more difficult early economics, that their numbers (gross margins, really) would improve over time. But what about when a startup is using, say, an OpenAI API for its core AI work? Will similar efficiencies bloom?
Equity is back into its regular groove now that Disrupt is behind us — more to come!
And before we go: Check out the UpFlip Podcast where you get to unravel how great businesses are built, how they are run behind the scenes and how their success can be replicated. We think you'll love episode 79 where they featured this guest who transformed his passion for gardening into a $7.3 million-a-year venture. You can find the podcast on Youtube or where ever you listen to podcasts.
For episode transcripts and more, head to Equity’s Simplecast website.
Equity drops at 7 a.m. PT every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders and more!
Credits: Equity is hosted by TechCrunch's Alex Wilhelm and Mary Ann Azevedo. We are produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. Bryce Durbin is our Illustrator. We'd also like to thank the audience development team and Henry Pickavet, who manages TechCrunch audio products.
Equity is back from Disrupt and fired up for the rest of the year. Here’s what Alex got into today:
- Stocks are not peppy to start the week, while crypto prices have also moderated in recent days.
- Alex could not not talk about the Cisco-Splunk deal, mostly to promise that he’ll finish that post today come hell or high water.
- The Amazon + Anthropic news is the biggest item of the day. A $1.25 billion deal that could stretch to $4 billion is no small fee. And with Google and Amazon and Anthropic tied up and Microsoft buddied to OpenAI we could be seeing big tech choosing sides in the LLM model war.
- Meta is building AI chatbots, while Apple is working to build more stuff in India.
- To close out, Correcto’s neat round, and the finalists from Startup Battlefield 2023 — more on the winner of Battlefield here.
For episode transcripts and more, head to Equity’s Simplecast website.
Equity drops at 7 a.m. PT every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders and more!
Credits: Equity is hosted by TechCrunch's Alex Wilhelm and Mary Ann Azevedo. We are produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. Bryce Durbin is our Illustrator. We'd also like to thank the audience development team and Henry Pickavet, who manages TechCrunch audio products.
The Equity crew is back with another live recording from the Moscone Center in San Francisco for TechCrunch Disrupt 2023. Alex, Kirsten and Becca sat down to recap a very busy (and dare we say successful) event, and walk through our favorite moments for the listeners who couldn't make it out this year.
Here's what we got into:
- Providing early liquidity to founders and employees
- What advice VCs are giving their early stage founders
- Why Cruise might join the call to ban human drivers in city centers
- And why Shaq can do whatever he wants.
We recorded shortly before the winner of Startup Battlefield was announced, but you can get caught up on that here.
Now, it's time to fly back home. Equity will be back to our regularly scheduled programing bright and early Monday morning! Talk then.
For episode transcripts and more, head to Equity’s Simplecast website.
Equity drops at 7 a.m. PT every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders and more!
Credits: Equity is hosted by TechCrunch's Alex Wilhelm and Mary Ann Azevedo. We are produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. Bryce Durbin is our Illustrator. We'd also like to thank the audience development team and Henry Pickavet, who manages TechCrunch audio products.
We were live at TechCrunch Disrupt 2023! Yes, even though our dear friend and colleague Mary Ann had to handle a family emergency, the larger Equity family rallied to put on a rollicking early-morning show at the venue. From the Builders' stage where Alex had to introduce himself, Kirsten Korosec and Becca Szkutak rounded out our hosting crew and we had a blast.
Here's the rundown:
- Instacart went public! Finally, at last, at long last, Instacart is a public company. It priced at $30, the top-end of its raised range, and then went on to trade higher. More here, but a solid result.
- Joby is all-in on the Buckeye state: What has batteries and goes straight up? EVTOLs, apparently, even if that acronym is a big of a mouthful. Kirsten reports that a TechCrunch scoop was born out when Joby picked Ohio for its manufacturing hub. A lot of state-derived help did not hurt, either.
- Eldertechis a growth market: Becca wanted to talk about her latest Deal Dive, which was all about getting senior citizens to move for. Exercise is a pretty massive hack for a healthy body and life. We also had to point out that a graying world means that elder tech is only seeing expanding TAM.
- Writer brings back nine-figure joy! And to close out, Alex wanted to riff on the latest Writer round, which is building a generative AI service for other companies. With some demonstrated traction, and a model that we think seems well rounded, Writer is one to watch.
Whew! The Equity crew is all over Disrupt for the next few days so make sure to say hello!
For episode transcripts and more, head to Equity’s Simplecast website.
Equity drops at 7 a.m. PT every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews foundersand more!
Credits: Equity is hosted by TechCrunch's Alex Wilhelm and Mary Ann Azevedo. We are produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. Bryce Durbin is our Illustrator. We'd also like to thank the audience development team and Henry Pickavet, who manages TechCrunch audio products.
Here's what Mary Ann, Alex and Kirsten got into:
- More layoffs at Divvy Homes: More cuts at a company that was once richly valued and heavily venture-backed. Rising interest rates are having a ripple effect across startup-land.
- Databricks is big, and now richer: With $500 million in a new Series I, Databricks is now worth more money and has fresh capital to continue working on AI.
- Lime, just go public already: What is profitable and private and a tease? Lime. Well, that last bit is a stretch, but really you can only ring us up and tout profits and growth so many times before we expect an S-1.
- More data is good: Venture capital firms, however, seem to disagree.
- If you want groceries in 15 minutes, here's where to live: Brazil, for one. Or India. Differing labor costs around the world appear to be the axis around which quick deliveries are feasible, or a financial mess.
We are back next week for a busy run at Disrupt! We'll see you there!
For episode transcripts and more, head to Equity’s Simplecast website.
Equity drops at 7 a.m. PT every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders and more!
Credits: Equity is hosted by TechCrunch's Alex Wilhelm and Mary Ann Azevedo. We are produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. Bryce Durbin is our Illustrator. We'd also like to thank the audience development team and Henry Pickavet, who manages TechCrunch audio products.
This week, we brought TechCrunch+ senior climate reporter Tim De Chant on to talk climate tech, hardware breakthroughs, and why we have a whole stage this year at Disrupt focused on sustainability.
On that last point, perhaps you have gone outside recently. Extreme weather around the world, warming oceans, fires — it's a mess out there. That's the bad news. The good news is that a number of startups are working hard to build new technologies that could shoothe our struggling planet. And perhaps make a lot of money in the process.
Here's what we got into on the show:
- Climate tech venture capital activity. Why aren't we seeing more capital despite some interesting activity.
- The question of fusion. Is it really around the corner (this time)?
- Why we're both excited about potential hardware breakthroughs, even if LK-99 was not the real deal.
- Dread about our changing world.
Tim is not only a great journalist, he's also very good at the whole science thing, so he was a treat to talk to!
We're back on Friday for our last recording before we're on stage at Disrupt! Talk soon.
For episode transcripts and more, head to Equity’s Simplecast website.
Equity drops at 7 a.m. PT every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders and more!
Here's what we got into on the show today:
- Instacart IPO: We have a first price range for Instacart! And the company is going to take a roughly $30 billion haircut on the valuation it raised at back in 2021. Still worth north of $7 billion by our math , Instacart is set to raise a lot of money at a multi-billion price. Hard to get too worried about that. (Even more, the company's fully-diluted valuation range is, if we are doing our sums correctly, $8.6 billion to $9.3 billion.)
- Klaviyo IPO: Also taking a price cut is Klaviyo, which also dropped its first IPO price range this morning. It is taking a smaller cut in both absolute and percentage terms, but in aggregate the two companies show just how much room there is for 2021 prices to come down. What we worry about is what less-strong startups will have to endure, as Instacart and Klaviyo are both very healthy.
- Coinbase and India: Coinbase is not leaving India, contrary to reports. What it is doing is shuttering some accounts in the country. Crypto and regulation continue their long, and twisty path.
- Cheap, shared satellites: What raised $50 million and wants you to share a LEO satellite? This startup!
Disrupt is literally around the corner and by that we mean next week! We'll see you there.
For episode transcripts and more, head to Equity’s Simplecast website.
Equity drops at 7 a.m. PT every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders and more!
Here's what Mary Ann, Alex and Kirsten got into:
- Mentra wants to help neurodivergent jobseekers find ideal jobs: We love a startup that is doing good for itself and doing good for others. This deal that Mary Ann wanted to chat through seems to check both boxes.
- SimpleClosure raises $1.5 million: What happens if your startup dies, and you need to wind down? You might need a simple way to close things up, right? Enter SimpleClosure.
- Argo AI founders are building something new: What just raised more than $1 billion to take another crack at self-driving trucks? This company.
- All Things YC: You can find demo day favorites from day one here, and day two here. And, for an overview of sectors, here you go.
- EU x Regulation: We wrapped with a quick look at regulation from the EU that will impact a bunch of major tech companies. It led to a conversation of what sort of market regulatory structure is most conducive for startup growth.
For episode transcripts and more, head to Equity’s Simplecast website.
Equity drops at 7 a.m. PT every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders and more!
While the Equity crew prepares for another Y Combinator Demo Day, we're throwing it back to when Natasha and Alex caught up with current YC Partner and Managing Director of YC Early Stage, Michael Seibel. The main question on the pair's mind was how is YC evolving to meet a changed market?
Seibel doesn't often do press -- and neither does YC -- sothe interview was used to connect the dots on news from the accelerator, cross check top trends from the 2022 summer batch and ask about some of the biggest critiques people have about the institution.
We went a bit long, but figured it was worth it given the way the conversation was going.
As always, we'll be back with our weekly roundup on Friday, and don’t forget that Equity is opening this year’s Disrupt. We’ll see you there!
For episode transcripts and more, head to Equity’s Simplecast website.
Equity drops at 7 a.m. PT every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders and more!
Here's what Alex got into this morning:
- Earnings Season Never Ends: Gitlab, Asana, UiPath, Docusign, Rent the Runway and others will report this week.
- Crypto Down Bad: Prices for major cryptoassets are flat this morning, while the crypto venture picture is looking up to some degree.
- Arm Sets IPO Range: Shares of Arm are expected to sell for $47 to $51 per share, according to the company. The question for investors is whether to value the company on its trailing results, or future profits.
- More on the impact (or lack thereof) of Arm's upcoming debut can be found here.
- The Catalyst Fund: The Africa-focused venture fund has reached a first close, and intends to invest in climate-focused startups on the continent.
- Elon Musk Is Mad
- And to close out, a new Chinese semiconductor fund is potentially coming, while India wrestles with net neutrality.
Don’t forget that Equity is opening this year’s Disrupt. We’ll see you there!
For episode transcripts and more, head to Equity’s Simplecast website.
Equity drops at 7 a.m. PT every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders and more!
Here’s the show rundown:
- Teamshares: Here’s an interesting one. Teamshares has raised a lot of money and is buying a lot of SMBs. But that’s just the start. It also plans to allow employees of those companies to buy most of their stock over time, while serving up centralized fintech services to all its sub-companies. Who doesn’t love to chat about a new model?
- MoonPay’s new venture arm: Crypto payment infra company MoonPay is getting into the venture game, with a focus on crypto, gaming, and fintech. The union of those three is crypto games, of course, but we have two eyes fixed on what MoonPay decides to invest in. New crypto-thematic, or crypto-adjacent funds are rarer these days, making the MoonPay news exciting.
- Rent Butter and Kiki: Now that the zero interest rate period is over, and the experiment in building new iBuying and mortgage service startups has partially concluded, renting is hot again. And thus, so too are rental-focused startups.
- The IPO drought has lasted longer than you anticipated: Working off a Crunchbase dataset, Alex has notes on just how long we have been waiting for real tech IPOs. The good news? They are (partially) back!
- What happens when you bring lean startup ideology into the AI world? A lot of experiments, it turns out.
And that is us until next week. Due to an American holiday, Equity will kick off on Tuesday next week instead of Monday!
For episode transcripts and more, head to Equity’s Simplecast website.
Equity drops at 7 a.m. PT every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews foundersand more!
This week, Alex spoke to Anu Hariharan, who’s previously worked with a16z, sits on Brex’s board, and more recently has been investing in later-stage companies at Y Combinator. She's also working on something new.
Hariharan recently tweeted about how "great" founders were successfully guiding their companies towards cash flow positivity. Since that very interesting post, both Instacart (a former Y Combinator company) and Klaviyo have filed to go public. And both have super strong cash flows.
Our chat could not have come at a better time. We dug into how early- and late-stage startups should approach growth and cash conservation (in her view), the future of venture as an asset class, and how healthy the unicorn herd really is. We had a blast recording this one! Enjoy!
For episode transcripts and more, head to Equity’s Simplecast website.
Equity drops at 7 a.m. PT every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders and more!
As a small heads up, we had a bonus show over the weekend that is well worth your time! Alright, here’s what’s on the show this morning:
- Stocks are up around the world: A good note to start the week on, of course. In the meantime, the crypto market is still dragging. We’re back to minimal week-over-week price movements.
- Tech IPOs are back: After a drought that will be talked about for years, it’s raining tech IPOs again! Instacart and Klaviyo have filed their Form S-1s to go public, and we are busy digesting the numbers.
- On the Instacart front, read our first impressions here. In short, the company’s trailing performance is super solid, but the question is, how much it can scale total transaction volume in the future.
- We are still getting our boots on when it comes to Klaviyo, but the business seems strong. Is it the champion that software companies have waited for? We’ll have to see. More to come on the site later today.
- And Didi is selling part of its business to Xpeng. This is not the first time we’ve seen a ride-hailing company divest non-core assets.
Don’t forget that Equity is opening this year’s Disrupt. We’ll see you there!
For episode transcripts and more, head to Equity’s Simplecast website.
Equity drops at 7 a.m. PT every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders and more!
Why the extra edition? Because Battery Ventures dropped an interesting report on Gen-Z and we wanted to talk about it.
Alex got Courtney Chow, a vice president at Battery and one of the report's authors to chat about it. You can read the report itself here.
This is what we got into:
- The fracturing of culture: Gen-Z is large, and very diverse. The trend away from monolithic cultural primacy that began years ago has accelerated with the generation, making culture itself more personal, and more distinct. For startups, this means branding will become a different challenge if they want to reach this demographic slice.
- Everything is short-form video: Given massive usage of TikTok by Gen-Z and the popularity of other platforms that feature short-form video, we were curious how smaller companies can compete with incumbents that already have a Reels strategy, if you will.
- Ethical capitalism: One of the most interesting areas of the Battery report was its notes on how entrepreneurial Gen-Z is, and how diverse they are. Gen-Z also has expectations around goods and services they purchase relating to the actions of the companies behind the sale. So, if you want to sell to Gen-Z, you might need to care about climate change, for example.
Now, that's officially it for us this week. Enjoy the rest of your weekend, and we'll catch up on Monday!
For episode transcripts and more, head to Equity’s Simplecast website.
Equity drops at 7 a.m. PT every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews foundersand more!
This is our Friday show, and we’re talking about the week’s biggest startup and tech news. Here's what Mary Ann, Alex and Kirsten Korosec got into:
- Nvidia blew the doors off with its earnings report. We talked through some of the high-level numbers and marveled at the company's growth. TechCrunch has more on the matter here.
- Ramp raises $300M: In this market, a multi-billion-dollar valuation is a win for a fintech, even if Ramp's new price tag is a bit lower than it was previously. So, while Ramp likely doesn't love that it raised a down-round, it does have fresh capital and is worth $5.8 billion. That's simply not that bad.
- Lex raised $2.75M: Alex covered AI-powered writing tool's Lex seed round. Kirsten got to give the app a try, and we all had nice things to say about the nascent startup.
- Northvolt is bringing its volts to North America: The global battery-building boom includes Swedish company Northvolt building a new facility in the United States. The company raised $1.2 billion from BlackRock.
- Better.com went public: Mary Ann interviewed the company's CEO ahead of its SPAC-led public market listing, which got panned.
- In the transit world, Cruise got its wings clipped in San Francisco after an accident involving a fire truck. Alex is annoyed. Mary Ann is not.
- This year's TechCrunch Battlefield 200 companies feature a lot of startups focused on excrement. We're not kidding.
That’s all from us this week. We are back Monday morning, chat then!
For episode transcripts and more, head to Equity’s Simplecast website.
Equity drops at 7 a.m. PT every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews foundersand more!
This week, Mary Ann spoke with Mercedes Bent, Partner on the early stage team at Lightspeed Ventures and co-lead of Lightspeed’s LatAm region and angel fund. The pair chewed through a number of topics, including:
- How and why Mercedes started investing in Latin America, and why she thinks the region is more resilient than others
- Why we're early in the hype cycle when it comes to the intersection of AI and fintech
- Why generative AI and fintech aren't always the best combination and much more.
Equity is back on Friday with our weekly news roundup! Talk to you then!
For episode transcripts and more, head to Equity’s Simplecast website.
Equity drops at 7 a.m. PT every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders and more!
Our Monday show covers the latest in tech news from the weekend and what’s making headlines early in the week. Here’s the rundown from this morning, with real news from the crypto-front, and even a neat startup round to round it out!
- Stocks are up in most of the world, China apart. The Chinese economy is a real topic of conversation lately, mostly centered around concerns regarding credit appetite, debt levels, housing costs, and government activity.
- In the crypto-world, prices are sharply lower compared to a week ago, and Recur is no more.
- The partial retrenchment of Cruise in San Francisco is a bummer, but given how poor human drivers are here's hoping that progress doesn't slow on the self-driving front.
- IPOs are back? Kinda, maybe, and perhaps. The good news is that recent data from Instacart and Databricks indicate that we could see some filings soon.
- And to close out, Threads is coming to the desktop web while Enough put together a big round for mushroom-based proteins.
For episode transcripts and more, head to Equity’s Simplecast website.
Equity drops at 7 a.m. PT every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders and more!
This week Mary Ann and Alex were joined by our regular guest host Kirsten Korosec.
Here's what the gang got into:
- FTX's former CEO SBF is heading to jail: We struggled to find much pity for the former celebrity executive.
- Better.com is going public: After much controversy Better.com's SPAC merger is a go. The deal is a fundraising mechanism by our understanding, though we had a bit of a tough time coming up with a bull case for the company in the present moment.
- Monday.com's growth: Alex has kept tabs on the earnings cycle as always, which led him to write rather kind things about Monday.com's most recent quarterly results. In short, the former startup is posting quick and cutting its losses and generating lots of cash. What's not to like?
- Vinfast went public, and investors are stoked: Another SPAC deal for the list today is the Vinfast debut. Vietnamese EV company Vinfast is now worth more than many major auto companies, despite falling revenues and massive unprofitability. So what, says the market.
- The IRA turns one: The Inflation Reduction Act's impact on American manufacturing is big, and growing. Europe might have been irked to start, but it appears that fans of domestic production have found their champion.
- The fundraising market: To close out the show we chatted about Becca's recent article on new venture funds raised by women, and a quick look at the pre-seed market for all the founders out there.
That's all from us this week. We are back Monday morning, chat then!
For episode transcripts and more, head to Equity’s Simplecast website.
Equity drops at 7 a.m. PT every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews foundersand more!
This week, Alex had Amplitude CEO Spenser Skates on the show to talk about the SaaS market journey since his company went public in late 2021, which happened to be right before investor sentiment changed.
After a successful IPO, Amplitude warned analysts and investors alike in early 2022 that it was seeing some macroeconomic pressure, which led to its stock being sharply repriced. (That happened to most companies eventually, to be fair.)
Since then, the digital analytics company has shaken up its organizational structure, launched new AI products, and has continued to grow while becoming cash flow positive. All that made Skates the perfect person to talk about:
- The current state of the business software buyer, and when Skates expects demand for digital goods and services to improve.
- When to charge for AI products, and when not to; also, the power of data moats in AI, and how they may be more durable than they are in other areas of SaaS.
- How to know when you have to cut staff.
- And, critically, how much Baldur's Gate 3 Skates has played so far.
Equity will be back with our news roundup Friday morning! We'll see you then!
For episode transcripts and more, head to Equity’s Simplecast website.
Equity drops at 7 a.m. PT every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders and more!
Here’s the rundown from this morning:
- Worries about the Chinese economy dragged down Asian shares this morning; the equity picture was more mixed in Europe and the United States. Meanwhile, why is crypto so slow lately? What happened to price volatility?
- On the earnings front, we're looking ahead to Monday.com, Getty, Cisco, Bill.com and Palo Alto Networks this week.
- News that Anthropic is raising another $100 million got us talking about a few other AI rounds that are in the pipeline; the gist is that there is a lot of money flowing around AI startup-land these days.
- Indian electronics manufacturing is making real strides, Mastercard is buying some African fintech, and the better.com SPAC is a go.
It's going to be yet another busy week, so strap in and let's go!
For episode transcripts and more, head to Equity’s Simplecast website.
Equity drops at 7 a.m. PT every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders and more!
This week Mary Ann and Alex got into a mix of growth stories, and some less-than-winsome on the startups that are not having the best 2023:
- How Lula went frugal and set itself up for a massive up-round in 2023: Mary Ann's recent reporting on Lula was perfect Equity material as it dealt with capital in motion, and a quickly-growing startup. Even more notably, Lula is in the insurtech space, part of the fintech world that has had an up-and-down few years.
- Weights & Biases raises $50M: Back in the day if a startup raised a big round, and then a smaller round afterwards, we would have worried a little. Today's venture market feels a little bit different. So, MLOps startup Weights & Biases has added $50 million more to its coffers, and we didn't fret too much on the round coming in light compared to its previous tranche. Summing our views, anything ML and AI is hot today, and Weights & Biases is well known. This round was not a shocker.
- BlueJeans folds: Remember when Verizon bought a Zoom competitor during the pandemic? It seems that customers didn't, either.
- Sendy shutters, Proterra reaches for bankruptcy help: While insurtech and MLOps are showing vigor, Kenyan logistics startup Sendy is over, and an EV startup that went public via a SPAC is trying to shake up its accounting so that it can keep going. Not the best news, frankly.
- And we closed with the latest from WeWork (not so good) and its erstwhile bestie, SoftBank, which is getting busier with its checkbook again.
What a strange week and one that went by so quickly. More on Monday! Talk to you then!
For episode transcripts and more, head to Equity’s Simplecast website.
Equity drops at 7 a.m. PT every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews foundersand more!
This week, Dominic-Madori Davis came back on the show to chat with Mary Ann and Alex about two of her latest pieces:
- A lawsuit targeting a grant program that provided small checks to Black women small-business owners. The context here is that there's a movement in the United States to curtail programs that seek to provide access, or opportunity to underrepresented peoples in business and education. Given venture's somewhat embarrassing investment demographics, we struggled to understand the seeming animus behind the suit.
- Some countries are taking a different track, including the United Kingdom. Dom has more on that topic here.
Equity is back on Friday with our weekly news roundup! Talk to you then!
For episode transcripts and more, head to Equity’s Simplecast website.
Equity drops at 7 a.m. PT every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders and more!
Here’s the rundown from this morning, which saw Alex catching up from a few days off last week:
- Earnings season is slowing down, while global stocks slip to start the week. Crypto is not doing too much to start the week, but do recall that Coinbase earnings came last week.
- Peak smartphone? In the wake of Apple earnings, questions linger regarding just what is ahead for smartphones and what could get that market moving again. Thankfully for Apple shareholders, the company has done yeoman’s work to build out a services and subscription business. Enough to compensate? Perhaps.
- A controversial privacy-Internet law in India passed.
- Triller’s IPO is going to be fun, though your humble podcast team have yet to fully dive into it.
- And, finally, how do you get a shareholder off your cap table while respecting their upside? Like this!
We may be deep in Disrupt prep, but the show continues! We’ll see you Wednesday (and on day one, when Equity will kick off our major event in San Francisco)!
For episode transcripts and more, head to Equity’s Simplecast website.
Equity drops at 7 a.m. PT every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders and more!
Today, we're bringing you an episode of our sister podcast, Chain Reaction.
Chain Reaction unpacks and dives deep into the latest trends, drama and news in crypto with some of the biggest names in the industry to break things down block by block for the crypto curious.
Jacquelyn interviewed Stu Alderoty, chief legal officer of Ripple Labs.
Stu spent most of his career working for traditional financial institutions in legal roles at firms like CIT Group, American Express and HSBC and left that world in 2019 to join Ripple.
Ripple has been around since 2012, but has been making headlines lately for the recent federal court ruling that stated the XRP token, which is linked to Ripple, is not a security when sold to the general public but can be treated as a security for past XRP sales to institutional clients.
We broke down the nitty gritty details of the U.S. District Court of the Southern District of New York federal court ruling for Ripple and what it means for the company, XRP token and crypto ecosystem.
We also talked about:
- Securities vs. commodities
- Ripple’s SEC lawsuit
- Future regulation and clarity
- Advice for other startups
Need to catch up before you listen? Read these for a quick overview:
- Federal court rules Ripple’s XRP token can be treated as a security… sometimes
- Ripple’s XRP case ‘underscores the need for regulatory clarity’
Chain Reaction comes out every other Thursday at 12:00 p.m. ET, so be sure to subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or your favorite pod platform to keep up with the action.
This week, Alex and Mary Ann had Sara Mauskopf on the show, the CEO and co-founder of the childcare marketplace, Winnie, and a former Postmates and Twitter denizen. Here’s what we got into:
- The progress of Winnie over time, and how it found its niche in the childcare market
- The state of care as a venture-backable category, and where startups can find the most impact and business results
- The reported issues at Papa and the pressures of fundraising-driven growth in care-oriented markets
- And, of course, why care work is not given its full due and value in our society.
We had a blast with this one. Thank you for sticking with Equity for all these years. We’ll see you live at Disrupt!
For episode transcripts and more, head to Equity’s Simplecast website.
Equity drops at 7 a.m. PT every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders and more!
Our Monday show covers the latest in tech news from the weekend and what’s making headlines early in the week. Here’s the rundown from this morning!
- Stocks are higher around the world today, but the real story in equities is earnings. This week we are going to hear from AMD, Uber, Pinterest, Shopify, PayPal and Block, Apple and Amazon, Alibaba and Airbnb, Coinbase and Cloudflare. It’s a lot.
- In crypto-land, things are muted, but it appears that the Coinbase-SEC lawsuit had a bit more behind it than we first realized.
- Tiger is out of Flipkart, selling its remaining stake to Walmart for $1.4 billion. The American investor did well on its Flipkart investment.
- Fidelity has cut the value of its investment in Gupshup, but remarked its Reddit, Discord and X investments up some. So, the news is not all bad.
- Twitter’s rebrand is a go on the App Store and the social app has a new tagline that we alluded to in today’s episode title, while Shein and Temu fight it out for global domination of the fast-fashion market.
Whew! What a start to the week, yeah?
For episode transcripts and more, head to Equity’s Simplecast website.
Equity drops at 7 a.m. PT every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders and more!
We had our friend and colleague Kirsten Korosec on the podcast this week, meaning that Mary Ann and Alex got to stretch their legs a bit and talk things that move and beep and boop. Here's what we got into:
- Deals of the Week: AngelList bought Nova, taking the well-known venture service into the more traditional private equity realm; Waymo is focusing on self-driving cars instead of trucks, which has Mary Ann worried; and Alex wanted to talk about interest rates.
- On the subject of Earnings: Guess what? AI costs are here, AI revenues are coming as the ad market recovers. For big tech earnings thus far have generally gone well, though not perfectly.
- Do not miss GM news from the transit desk, of course!
- And we wrapped with some interesting analysis from the TechCrunch+ team on how funds of funds might be one way to get more LP capital into diverse venture funds.
Whew, what a week y'all. It's hot and we are tired, but we had a blast recording this for you. Talk more Monday!
For episode transcripts and more, head to Equity’s Simplecast website.
Equity drops at 7 a.m. PT every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews foundersand more!
This week, Alex had Washington Post columnist Taylor Lorenz on to chat about her upcoming book, Extremely Online, the history of online platforms, and the rise of creators.
We've covered the creator economy a few times on the podcast over the years, but this addition to our historical coverage is more than worth inclusion. Here's what we got into:
- All the cool kids are pre-ordering Lorenz's book, which you can find here.
- Why online work has always been treated like a sideshow: While culture is often created -- or born -- online, there's a disconnect between historical centers of authority and influence, and where it's bubbling up today.
- The rise and fall of Vine: Vine's massive rise and later implosion is a technology story, a startup story, and the saga of how a platform's userbase and its leadership can often be on different pages. In a sense Vine was a warning of what we'd see later on when it came to platforms winding up at odds with the very folks driving attention their way.
- New formats, new platforms: It's worth understanding the progression of online influence shifting from text (blogs) to pictures (social media) to video (TikTok, et al). When new formats have come to the fore, they often bring new platforms along with them, or vice versa. Alex wanted to know what might be next!
And we wrapped with quick notes about AI and Twitter, er X, whatever it's called. As always, we're back on Friday with your news rundown. Talk soon!
For episode transcripts and more, head to Equity’s Simplecast website.
Equity drops at 7 a.m. PT every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders and more!
Here’s the rundown from this morning:
- Stocks are mixed around the world: Chinese equities sold off while American shares were set to rise at the open. A massive run of earnings this week should shake up the stock market for tech companies and their traditional brethren alike.
- In crypto-land, prices are back to where they were pre-XRP decision. I don't know what to make of that, but do know that Worldcoin is still a thing and is now actually out.
- Twitter's new brand: All hail X, I suppose. Musk's work to defenstrate what we all knew about Twitter, the company is being rebranded to X, which the company intends to be a superapp of sorts. Cool if it works, embarrassing if not.
- Spotify is finally raising prices, and all I can say is thank god. It was getting weird to get all the world's music for what felt like a song. I want to pay more making the price hike welcome, if still far smaller than it should be.
- SF really is the new AI hub.
Ahead we have Disrupt, which is taking up more and more of my time. See you there!
For episode transcripts and more, head to Equity’s Simplecast website.
Equity drops at 7 a.m. PT every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders and more!
Here's what we got into today:
- Deals of the Week: Layoffs at Cameo, where fintech valuations are today and where they are going, and Egnyte's slow-burn path to an IPO.
- The end of VanMoof: Raising a lot of money doesn't necessitate a startup's success. Such is the case with VanMoof, which raised nine-figures and built and sold e-bikes. Now it is no more, and we have questions.
- CEO turnover: As the CEO of OnlyFans steps down, the gang dug into when a CEO can or should step down. Certainly some companies do best, for example, with long-term leadership by a founder. But not all.
- Generative AI and the writer's strike: It turns out that we're bigger South Park fans than we knew as a group, but that's not really the point. What matters is that a recently released 'AI-generated' episode of the show is driving a conversation today concerning how critical — or not — humans are to the creative process. Google is also busy here.
And that's the end of the week! Equity is back on Monday! Chat soon!
For episode transcripts and more, head to Equity’s Simplecast website.
Equity drops at 7 a.m. PT every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews foundersand more!
So, what happened in venture capital-land during Q2 2023? A lot, and not very much. We got PitchBook venture guru Kyle Stanford to come back on the podcast to riff with us on the good, the bad, and the late-stage.
Here's what we got into:
- How did American venture perform in Q2 2023? Welcome to the new normal, and why that's actually bad news.
- How are Seed deals faring, and what about later-stage transactions?
- How bad is the slow pace of exits today, and what impact will they have on venture capital fundraising itself? More on the topic here.
- And, any green shoots popping up? Here's a rundown of what could be considered good news.
You can read the underlying dataset we were riffing on here, and we are back on Friday with the news roundup! Chat soon!
For episode transcripts and more, head to Equity’s Simplecast website.
Equity drops at 7 a.m. PT every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders and more!
Hello, and welcome back to Equity, the podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines.
Our Monday show covers the latest in tech news from the weekend and what’s making headlines early in the week. Here’s the rundown from this morning!
- Stocks are largely down around the world following weak Chinese economic data for the second quarter. We’re also heading back into an earnings cycle, so get ready to hear from Tesla and Netflix this week, among other major names.
- In crypto-land, the XRP/Ripple partial victory drove a short-lived boomlet for many crypto tokens; XRP is the clear winner from last week.
- Twitter is cash-flow negative, per its CEO, but the company intends to double-down on paying individual tweeters for their high-view activities.
- While Twitter molts, Threads continues to grow like a weed. Speaking of Meta, the company is in trouble in Norway.
- On the startup front, Intel invested in Figure, which we think is quite neat, and Thunes is now nearly a unicorn!
We will be back on Wednesday and Friday. Talk to you soon!
For episode transcripts and more, head to Equity’s Simplecast website.
Equity drops at 7 a.m. PT every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders, one that details how our stories come together and more!
Here's the rundown from Mary Ann and Alex:
- A new Chinese AI model had us wondering who is really going to win the AI war and whether governments will play a role — perhaps not the role that they are expecting.
- A founder that Founders Fund funded is now funding other founders at Founders Fund: Yep.
- Sticking to the venture theme, is it possible for AI models in venture to actually create a less biased landscape for entrepreneurs? Connetic Ventures thinks so!
- Two bits of good news: Tech layoffs have dramatically slowed, and slowing inflation could herald the end of interest rate hikes, which could bolster tech valuations. Or at least cut some of the pressure.
- Finally, as Twitter does what it usually does when a rival service takes off, we asked ourselves how other social media services are doing. We are more familiar with some than others.
As always, Equity will be back for you bright and early Monday morning. Talk soon!
For episode transcripts and more, head to Equity’s Simplecast website.
Equity drops at 7 a.m. PT every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders, and more!
This week we had a very special guest on the podcast: Matthew Lynley, one of the founding hosts of Equity and a former TechCruncher. Since his Equity days, Lynley went off and started his very own AI-focused publication called Supervised.
We brought him back on the show to ask him questions in a format where we can all learn together. Here’s what we got into:
- From Transformers to GPT4: How attention became so critical inside of neural networks, and how transformers set the path for modern AI services.
- Recent acquisitions in the AI space, and what it means for the “LLM stack:” With Databricks buying MosaicML and Snowflake already busy with its own checkbook, a lot of folks are working to build out a full-stack LLM data extravaganza. We talked about what that means.
- Where startups sit in the current AI race: While it’s great to think about the majors, we also need to know what the startup angle is. The answer? It’s a little early to say, but what is clear is that startups are taking some big swings at the industry and are hellbent to snag a piece of the pie.
Thanks to everyone for hanging out with us. Equity is back on Friday for our weekly news roundup!
For episode transcripts and more, head to Equity’s Simplecast website.
Equity drops at 7 a.m. PT every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, so subscribe to us onApple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders, one that details how our stories come together and more!
Here’s the rundown from this morning:
- The global stock market is looking mixed, with the leading piece of financial news dealing with inflation data in the Chinese market.
- On the crypto side of things, there are no massive price movements in key tokens to examine. That said, the NFT market has been turbulent in the last few days due to incentive changes as a key marketplace.
- An FYI: We are back in earnings season, but there’s little to report on the tech side of things this week. Expect the pace to pick up next week.
- Ant has a new valuation thanks to a choice to offer share buybacks to existing backers. It’s still worth nearly $80 billion, just a lot less than it might have been valued at back in its 2020 IPO that got scuttled.
- People like Threads: The new social service from Meta has reached the 100 million sign-up mark rapidly. More on threads here on the TC Podcast.
- In Startup-Land: FrontRow is shutting down in another blow to Indian edtech, while Propel raised $2.7 million to connect African tech talent to global employers.
And that is our show! We are back Wednesday, and Friday this week!
For episode transcripts and more, head to Equity’s Simplecast website.
Equity drops at 7 a.m. PT every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders, one that details how our stories come together and more!
We're switching things up and bringing you two interviews this week, so let's niche down to a single person, think about their work and unpack the rest.
Mary Ann took the lead this time, and she sat down (virtually) with Immad Akhund, the CEO and co-founder of Mercury. For those who are unfamiliar, the fintech made headlines earlier this year for how it stepped in to help fill the business banking void left in the wake of Silicon Valley Bank's collapse.
Here's what the pair caught up on:
- Mercury's impressive growth in the months since SVB crashed
- Lessons learned from Immad's angel investing experience
- What Immad calls the "Startup Death Spiral" and how to escape it
As always, Equity will be back for you bright an early Monday morning. Talk soon!
For episode transcripts and more, head to Equity’s Simplecast website.
Equity drops at 7 a.m. PT every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders, one that details how our stories come together and more!
Long-time Equity listeners and TechCrunch readers should be familiar with LAVCA, and association of capital managers in the Latin America region. We have reported on its data a number of times. Well, it turns out that LAVCA is part of the larger Global Private Capital Association, which keeps tabs on a host of markets that we're working to cover more carefully as startup activity becomes an increasingly global phenomenon.
So to cap off the second quarter, and to get our claws into what is going on around the world, we had Cate Ambrose, the CEO of the GPCA on the show to riff with us about Asia and Africa and Latin America and Central and Easter Europe. Here's what we wanted to find out:
- How wild was the 2021-era venture peak in less mature startup markets?
- How resilient are smaller startup ecosystems in a more conservative venture and macroeconomic environment?
- Are we seeing green shoots anywhere in the world? Or put another way, where is the rebound kicking off?
- We closed with a short discussion on the role of government in startup markets and squeezed in an AI question because how could we not!
We have another interview coming your way Friday, so stay tuned!
For episode transcripts and more, head to Equity’s Simplecast website.
Equity drops at 7 a.m. PT every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders, one that details how our stories come together and more!
Mary Ann and Alex are back for another busy news week chock full of deals to chew through.
Here's the rundown:
- Deals of the Week: We think that the idea behind the recently-funded Honey Homes is excellent, but we're split about the cost. We also went over Gusto's latest financial achievements and its plans to team up with Remote.
- Fintech M&A: The biggest deal of the week in fintech was Visa's purchase of Pismo. We haven't had unicorn-level acquisitions lately, so this one was welcome. Elsewhere in the space, Brex has brought on board a former SVB and a16z denizen, and Ramp bought Cohere.io (not this Cohere, the other one).
- Other M&A: But those weren't the only deals. Databricks bought MosaicML, IBM bought Apptio, and ThoughtSpot has acquired Mode Analytics.
- Help, my unicorn is starving: We closed with Alex's look at the declining funding to unicorn and web3 startups, as well as Rebecca Szkutak's latest on the secondary market in the process.
Equity will be back on Wednesday as we head off into yet another holiday weekend here in the U.S. when Alex will finally put his PTO to use. In the meantime, let's catch up on Twitter @EquityPod. Talk soon!
For episode transcripts and more, head to Equity’s Simplecast website.
Equity drops at 7:00 a.m. PT every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotifyand all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders, one that details how our stories come together and more!
This is our Wednesday show, where we niche down to a single person, think about their work and unpack the rest. Mary Ann is taking over today's interview with David Vélez, the co-founder and CEO of Nubank, the $35 billion Sao-Paulo, Brazil-based digital bank that offers credit cards, checking accounts and life insurance to consumers.
Equity listeners know that digital banking has been on our minds for some time now, so naturally we were excited to have David on the show. Here's what we got into:
- How Nubank has achieved -- and maintained profitability -- in this challenging macroeconomic environment
- How not only the LatAm fintech market differs from that of the U.S., but how founders in the region operate their businesses differently from their U.S. counterparts
- The state of digital banks in general and how David sees banking evolving in the next few years from the lens of both a founder and former investor (he once led Sequoia Capital's Latin American investments).
Mary Ann and Alex are back on Friday with more Equity, but as always, you can keep up with us on Twitter @EquityPod.
For episode transcripts and more, head to Equity’s Simplecast website.
Equity drops at 7:00 a.m. PT every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders, one that details how our stories come together and more!
Here's the rundown for the very last Equity Monday of Q2 2023:
- Crypto's mini-boom in the last week comes after a brutal few weeks of negative headlines; for the crypto-faithful, it must be a breath of fresh air.
- Startups: IRL was a digital fraud, Vanta is a unicorn to watch after quick ARR growth and a resulting valuation has grown into, and TreasurySpring is riding a changing macroeconomic climate to rapid fintech growth.
- As Amazon pledges more investment in India, we're seeing a lot of other big economic pieces move. Other American companies are pledging big dollars to the country as Japan looks to buy one of its domestic chip companies, and American investors are putting capital into their own domestic silicon players.
- Finally, Apptio is selling to IBM for $4.6 billion.
Whew! That's a lot, but we had a good time and will see you back here on Wednesday!
All the cool kids are filling out the Equity listener survey. We want to hear from you!
For episode transcripts and more, head to Equity’s Simplecast website.
Equity drops at 7 a.m. PT every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders, one that details how our stories come together and more!
Mary Ann and Alex are back, and once again this week they tapped the TechCrunch roster for expert input. This week were lucky enough to have Kirsten Korosec back on the podcast. She's TechCrunch's mobility lead, hosts a podcast of her own, and is one of our favorite humans.
Here's the rundown:
- Deals of the Week: Mary Ann wanted to talk about Robinhood buying X1, a deal that seemed inexpensive but we lack enough numbers for full confidence; Alex wanted to riff on Dropbox's new AI fund, even if it does feel a little small; and Kirsten had notes for the team on Cruise's latest app rollout. Even if Mary Ann and Alex cannot find a way to agree on self-driving cars, we all thought that the Cruise bus is cute.
- Twitch and Reddit try to balance corporate requirements with community power: Building off our recent show digging into the creator economy, the crew tackled the latest from Twitch (a new creator-corporate revenue split of sorts) and Reddit (where the battle between the company and its power-users continues to blaze). It's feeling more hot war than cold war lately on the Internet, with platforms struggling to find a way to keep revenue growth coming while not estranging the folks who make their services tick.
- The power of Not Boozing: How big is the market for non-alcoholic drinks? Smaller than the market for vodka, certainly, but we're curious. Also there's a new app in the market that is helping folks find non-booze bevies, which we dig.
Before we let you go, don't forget to fill out the Equity listener survey. We want to hear from you!
A big thanks to Kirsten for swinging by, and we'll chat with you Monday morning.
For episode transcripts and more, head to Equity’s Simplecast website.
Equity drops at 7 a.m. PT every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders, one that details how our stories come together and more!
Before we get started: all the cool kids are filling out the Equity listener survey. We want to hear from you!
On today's episode, Alex had Eric Silver, Head of Creative at the podcast collective Multitude on the show to help us sort through:
- What the hell happened with Spotify's big podcast push, and its resulting layoffs.
- Why tech platforms have not yet found a way to make creative work lucrative enough to engender a new 'creator middle class.'
- The state of the ad market, and its impacts on creative work more generally.
Towards the end we had a moment to comment on AI, but we kept that somewhat far from our central theme.
Long-time Equity listeners will recall that we've covered the creator economy a few times on the show and the blog, including:
- Yeah, funding for creator-focused startups is drying up [blog]
- F*ck creator funds, we need a creator index fund [Equity]
- Not every creator economy startup is built for creators [blog]
And if you need even more, this investor survey from 2021 on all things creator-economy is a great look-back in time!
For episode transcripts and more, head to Equity’s Simplecast website.
Equity drops at 7 a.m. PT every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders, one that details how our stories come together and more!
This time 'round we are here on a Tuesday due to an American holiday! Here's the rundown from Alex:
- Stocks are mixed the world around as central banks tinker with interest rates to try and tune their domestic economies. The crypto world remains muted.
- Alibaba's shakeup: The CEO of the Chinese tech conglomerate is leaving that role to run its cloud business, which is one of the pieces of the company that will be spun out.
- Intel managed to extract a handsome package from Germany in exchange for building a plant in the country.
- OpenAI is working to limit the impact of EU AI regulation on its products and services.
- No one wants to buy Tiger's startup stakes en masse, so it is reduced to selling loosies to anyone who wants them.
- Go-Ventures is now Argor Capital, and it has a new $240 million fund.
- And funding rounds from Yellow and ElevenLabs as Byju's cuts more staff.
Don't forget, all the cool kids are taking our listener survey. Head here to make your voice heard!
We are back bright and early tomorrow. Talk soon!
For episode transcripts and more, head to Equity’s Simplecast website.
Equity drops at 7 a.m. PT every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders, one that details how our stories come together and more!
All the cool kids are filling out the Equity listener survey. We want to hear from you!
It was a hectic week, with little in the way of the traditional Summer Slowdown making itself known. So, here's what Alex and Mary Ann covered with some help from our dear friend Jacquie Melinek:
- WWDC in a nutshell: In case you missed it, Apple had a big event this week. On tap were the usual run of software updates, and improved computers in both laptop and desktop format. And, you know, that other thing.
- Affirm partners with Amazon (again): This is not Affirm's first tie-up with Amazon, but investors are pretty excited that the pair of companies are once again linking arms. As we continue to wait for mega-unicorn Klarna's IPO — more notes here — we are keeping our ears close the BNPL ground.
- Cava's IPO continues to delight Alex: What has an IPO coming up and has this little podcast in a tizzy? Yep, it's Cava, the fast-casual chain that, thanks to a dollop or two of venture capital money, we get to cover!
- All things SEC and Crypto: The SEC broke into its hammer closet so that it could go play whack-a-mole this week with crypto exchanges both foreign and domestic.
- Sequoia does to itself what regulators want to do to Google: What has three parts and is now competing with itself? Sequoia. Think of it like an inverse Google, if you will.
- How real estate will affect the climate crisis: It turns out that construction is not so good for the planet. And with a commercial real estate crisis brewing, can we add one to one and get five?
Next week, Equity is on vacation! We're taking a breather before launching into another massive run of shows, but we'll be back before you know it.
For episode transcripts and more, head toEquity’s Simplecast website.
Equity drops at 7 a.m. PT every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, so subscribe to us onApple Podcasts,Overcast,Spotifyand all the casts. TechCrunch also has agreat show on crypto, ashow that interviews founders, one thatdetails how our stories come together and more!
This week, we had Carta CEO Henry Ward on to chat through the early-stage market with us.
Alex had a grip of data and a sheaf of questions, so here's what we got into:
- The current state of the early-stage venture capital market: From Ward's perspective, the early-stage market is in better shape than many folks think. It's the later-stages of venture capital that are the most moribund. We also riffed on the quality of startups that are raising today, and how much pain is coming for young tech companies that can't quite attract more capital.
- Carta's new Seed and Series A product: Carta is offering a mostly-automated method of closing early-stage rounds; we wanted to better understand the economics of the effort, and what the unicorn hopes to achieve from the work.
- We closed with a look ahead, and a series of fun closing questions with Ward.
That's just the high-level summary. We also discussed entrepreneurship more broadly, the importance of LLCs, and even how to construct a podcast interview.
Don't forget: our listener survey is back! Take a moment to let us know what you want more of, what you want less of, and how we can make this the kind of podcast you want to come back to every week. Chat soon!
For episode transcripts and more, head to Equity’s Simplecast website.
Equity drops at 7 a.m. PT every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders, one that details how our stories come together and more!
Here’s what Alex got into today:
- Stocks are mixed around the world this morning while crypto stays pretty flat. Earnings this week that we’re excited about include Gitlab, Couchbase, Yext, Smartsheet, and Hashicorp. (We’re also keeping an eye on the Atomic Wallet hack.)
- Reddit’s proposed API changes (charges, more like) are having a pretty big impact on the service’s userbase; there are calls for a blackout of certain forums in response to the proposed updates. Reddit, on the other hand, is a business and needs to make money.
- Sticking to social media, news broke this morning that Twitter’s revenues are down sharply compared to year-ago totals, at least when we consider its American advertising incomes. Twitter does more than just ads in North America, but given that it’s likely a pretty big chunk of its total top line, it’s not good news.
- Canva’s valuation was slashed by a mutual fund (something that we have seen a lot lately), the latest in a string of similar headlines for other unicorns.
- Closing, WWDC is today. Get. Hype.
Don't forget: our listener survey is back! If you can, please take a moment to let us know what you want more of, what you want less of, and how we can make this the kind of podcast you want to come back to every week.
Equity will be back on Thursday this week, but in the meantime, you can catch us on Twitter @EquityPod.
For episode transcripts and more, head to Equity’s Simplecast website.
Equity drops at 7:00 a.m. PT every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders, one that details how our stories come together and more!
Mary Ann and Alex were a busy pair this week, so much so that they tagged in Dominic-Madori Davis from the TechCrunch+ crew to help out.
Before we kick things off, our listener survey is back! If you can, please take a moment to let us know what you want more of, what you want less of, and how we can make this the kind of podcast you want to come back to every week.
Now, here's what we got into:
- Fraud is bad: Elizabeth Holmes is in jail, and the SEC wrapped insider trading charges against a former Coinbase staffer. Our take? Breaking business law is bad and perhaps people should not do it. Controversial, we know.
- Deals of the Week: Alex is enamored with Web Roulette, while Mary Ann wanted to talk about Stripe's deal to buy Okay.
- Klarna's Q1 2023 results led Alex to share some enthusiasm that the fintech market could be rebounding, a topic that he's been going on about for some time.
- QED's plans to invest its new funds carefully is a clear example of the new investing climate, Mary Ann argued. The show also touched on our latest check-in on the a16z early-stage strategy.
- And we closed, thanks to Dom, with a chat through the Atlanta startup scene in advance of our upcoming City Spotlight.
Equity will be back on Monday, but in the meantime, you can catch us on Twitter @EquityPod. And for the early-stage founders out there, don’t forget to apply for the Startup Battlefield 200 cohort at TechCrunch Disrupt 2023!
For episode transcripts and more, head to Equity’s Simplecast website.
Equity drops at 7:00 a.m. PT every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders, one that details how our stories come together and more!
This week, Mary Ann hopped on the mic with number one New York Times best selling author, producer, personal finance thought leader, and host of the Women & Money podcast, Suze Orman. We’re following up on Suze’s not-so-surprising-startup debut with SecureSave, what the company’s been up to and how Suze is thinking about protecting employees in today’s economy.
Here’s what we got into:
- How little money many Americans have saved for emergencies and how SecureSave wants to change that
- How inflation may be making it harder for people to save when they have less money to do so
- We ended, as always, with a “lightning” round Q&A in which Suze revealed her secret weapon for success
For the startup founders listening, today is your last chance to apply to the Startup Battlefield 200 at TechCrunch Disrupt 2023! Fill out those applications while you still can, and Mary Ann and Alex will be back Friday to close out your week with a special guest.
For episode transcripts and more, head to Equity’s Simplecast website.
Equity drops at 7:00 a.m. PT every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders, one that details how our stories come together and more!
This week, crypto prices are static, unlike a particular valuation and Alex is still mad about SPACs. Here's the rundown:
- Stocks around the world are happy that America is once again going to avoid a default; congrats, United States.
- At the same time, the crypto market is a bit boring right now, due in large part to muted trading volumes as the crypto winter tests new low temperatures.
- No one knows what Byju's is worth, but Blackrock is marking its price in one consistent direction.
- Serve Robotics is having a good run as a startup, partnering up with its prior parent company.
- The WSJ has some great data on SPACs that drove us nuts.
Whew. What a way to start the week! We are back tomorrow!
For episode transcripts and more, head to Equity’s Simplecast website.
Equity drops at 7 a.m. PT every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders, one that details how our stories come together and more!
Mary Ann and Alex were a dynamic duo this week, and here's what they got into:
- The fascinating backers of Checkmate, and the future of online shopping: Mary Ann covered a very interesting Series A for Checkmate, a startup that not only has shown real legs on the competitive App Store, but also on social media platforms far and wide.
- Cava's IPO won't save the IPO market, but it could help all the same: Alex is so IPO-deprived that he's drawing connections between anything that files and the startup market. This time it's not even that much of a stretch!
- Daylight calls it quits: From the 'not a huge surprise' category comes the end of Daylight, a neobank aimed at the LGBTQ+ market that has been struggling for a while yet. This begged the question are themed neobanks going to make it?
- Layoffs, Layoffs, Layoffs: Soundcloud is cutting staff to get to profitability, which we can understand. Meta is cutting staff because it, well, wants to conserve capital for more share buybacks?
- Anthropic's massive funding round and who is going to win the AI war? When is $450 million not that much money? When you are building foundational AI models that are taking on OpenAI and others. Also in this section: Cold War metaphors.
And with that, we're heading off into a holiday weekend here in the US, so Equity will be back next Tuesday.
For episode transcripts and more, head to Equity’s Simplecast website.
Equity drops at 7:00 a.m. PT every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders, one that details how our stories come together and more!
This week, Alex sat down with GGV Capital's Jeff Richards, an investor who has perspective on the last venture boom and the resulting dénouement of that particular saga that we've been covering since the end of 2021. Richards has been an investor since 2008, so he's seen a business cycle or two, which convinced us that he'd be the perfect person to discuss the diverging fates of late-stage startups.
Here's what we got into:
- The idea that all unicorns are in trouble is wrong; some late-stage startups got it right.
- What this means for some eventual IPOs, and for those that didn't, likely some liquidations as well (some examples here, but the list is longer than that post outlines).
- We also talked about the existence of unifying characteristics at late-stage startups that are doing well, and how to note early signals that the venture climate is about to molt.
As always, Equity will be back on Friday with your weekly news round up, but until then, you can catch us on Twitter @EquityPod
For episode transcripts and more, head to Equity’s Simplecast website.
Equity drops at 7:00 a.m. PT every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders, one that details how our stories come together and more!
Today, we are talking about Meta’s latest fines, what’s new in chips, and a few startup rounds that caught our eye!
- Stocks aren’t moving too much this morning, which could change if the American government voluntarily defaults over some bullshit. Crypto hasn’t moved too much lately, though we are keeping tabs on overall trading volume.
- Meta was hit with a record fine over how it handled EU user data. Data residency is a big deal and will likely crop up in future conversations concerning generative AI models and where they source their own data and from whom.
- China has banned some Micron products, irking the United States. The two economic powerhouses are working to distance themselves from one another in key technology areas. Elsewhere in chip-land, Applied Materials is investing in the United States and there are labor concerns regarding the sheer number of chips projects kicking off here at home.
- Patient21 raised a massive round for its software-and-services healthcare business, while Infinite Uptime raised more money for its “predictive maintenance solutions for machinery.”
Whew! And that’s just the start! See you back here Wednesday for more!
For episode transcripts and more, head to Equity’s Simplecast website. Equity drops at 7 a.m. PT every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders, one that details how our stories come together and more!
This week Mary Ann, Becca, and Alex gathered to chew through the biggest news of the week. Here’s what the gang got into today:
- Vice goes bankrupt: Now is not a great time for media companies. The advertising market is in the toilet, layoffs are rampant, and the end of Vice is like a cherry atop a trash sundae. Mary Ann points out during the show that some operational difficulties were at play at the company. Here’s a real unicorn death for us to stare at.
- Deal Dive: AI. AI coaching. AI human relationship coaching? It’s a thing, and whether or not it is the future, we have questions.
- Freshly-Nestle: How often do you see a venture firm sue an acquirer? Not very often. We dig into the what and why of the Freshly suit.
- Why is Musk buying other companies? What do you do if you buy a company and fire most of its staff? You buy a tech jobs platform, it turns out.
- NewLimit and the limits of life: NewLimit is a company that Alex likes. Why? Because he doesn’t want to die before he can go to space. Mary Ann and Becca noted that the company’s setup is more than non-traditional. For NewLimit, the proof will be in the pudding.
- What’s ahead for venture debt? Becca’s work on the venture debt landscape has been critical reading since the SVB crisis unfolded earlier this year. Her latest venture survey helped us understand where founders will be hunting up capital in the back half of 2023 and beyond.
This week, Alex spoke to two guests from the world of Microsoft for Startups - GM, Hans Yang, and Senior Director, Tom Davis. We're working to figure out how big tech corporations are playing in the startup sandbox, starting with the launch of Microsoft's Pegasus program.
Here's what we got into:
- Why programs like Pegasus are particularly helpful for startups in a conservative VC market
- The mutually beneficial relationship between the large tech players and startups
- The close relationship between Microsoft and OpenAI
As always, Equity will be back on Friday with your weekly news round up, but until then, you can catch us on Twitter @EquityPod
For episode transcripts and more, head to Equity’s Simplecast website.
Equity drops at 7:00 a.m. PT every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders, one that details how our stories come together and more!
This week we talked about media, startup rounds and some Big Money Moves:
- Stocks are mostly up to start the week while crypto remains within the bounds of its recent trading range. Again.
- Vice has filed for bankruptcy, again highlighting how hard the media game can be. The company's eventual selling price looks like it will be a fraction's fraction of its once great worth.
- Foxconn is investing more in India, underscoring how critical it is for major electronics supply chain companies to diversify out of China — and the immense costs involved.
- Brex took a shot at buying part of SVB's portfolio, TechCrunch reports.
- Startup rounds: Smart raised $95 million at a slight discount to its 2021-era valuation and M-KOPA secured a pile of equity and debt fundraising.
- And we closed with the interesting sale of Forbes.
Equity will be back on Wednesday and Friday! We'll see you then!
For episode transcripts and more, head to Equity’s Simplecast website.
Equity drops at 7 a.m. PT every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders, one that details how our stories come together and more!
This week Mary Ann, Natasha and Alex celebrated one final episode as a three, and here's what we got into:
- Deals of the Week: Alex wanted to talk about the slowing of growth amongst tech companies, Natasha had notes on a brace of new Mayfield funds, while Mary Ann brought Wellthy to the table.
- Next we discussed pessimism in fintech, if it is near its peak, and how companies like Petal are still forging ahead regardless of market chop.
- From there we dug into AI, how it will impact certain creative work, and what it could mean for tech workers who traditionally have not organized.
- And we closed with a very Natasha topic: Accelerators.
Natasha led us out of the show with a final Equity sign-off as she announced her time with the podcast, and TechCrunch, is coming to a close. We are going to miss her awfully, but are also her biggest fans and cheering her on!
Equity will be back before you know it, but in the meantime, you can catch us on Twitter @EquityPod. And for the early-stage founders out there, don’t forget to apply for the Startup Battlefield 200 cohort at TechCrunch Disrupt 2023!
For episode transcripts and more, head to Equity’s Simplecast website.
Equity drops at 7:00 a.m. PT every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders, one that details how our stories come together and more!
This week, Natasha spoke to Kristen Anderson, the co-founder and CEO of Catch, an app to provide payroll benefits for people who are self employed, that recently announced it would be shutting down. We're talking about vulnerability, shut downs, building in public and on ramps and off ramps that come with the wild choice to be an entrepreneur.
Here's what we got into:
- Venture capital's role in how a founder builds
- Making the difficult decision to shut down, and why Catch chose to do so publicly
- We end with Anderson's return to building, in fintech, despite what her Twitter followers wish. Seems like being close to peak pessimism in fintech is a good thing for forever builders.
As always, Equity will be back on Friday with your weekly news round up - and a big announcement - so don't miss it! Until then, you can catch us on Twitter @EquityPod
For episode transcripts and more, head to Equity’s Simplecast website.
Equity drops at 7:00 a.m. PT every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotifyand all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders, one that details how our stories come together and more!
Alex is back with the latest in tech news from the weekend and what’s making headlines early in the week. Today, we are talking about meme coins, unicorns and the latest from India!
- The global stock market started the week on pretty good footing. Also, the crypto world is suffering modest indigestion thanks to a new meme coin.
- On the regulatory front, it appears Coinbase is going to stick with the U.S. Elsewhere in Industry Land, Qualcomm is going shopping, Alibaba's logistics IPO is targeting the Hong Kong market, and the UK is digesting the fact that a local legend is going to list in the United States.
- From there, it was time to check in on some news, bad and good, from India.
We are going to see some interesting earnings results this week, so stay tuned! Equity will be back Wednesday morning!
For episode transcripts and more, head to Equity’s Simplecast website.
Equity drops at 7 a.m. PT every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders, one that details how our stories come together and more!
This week Mary Ann, Natasha and Alex got right into it with:
- An update on a startup banking partner collapse that wasn't the First, and probably won't be the Last
- A section dedicated to sunsetting Poparazzi and a Databricks acquisition (points to whoever can guess how we transitioned from one deal to the next)
- Next up, we spoke about Finix's latest announcement to go head to head with Stripe, before talking more about the rise of down rounds
- We ended with BlueSky. Although some of us feel grey about it. And regardless, this piece by Morgan Sung will have you thinking smartly about the new Twitter competitor started by the ol' Twitter boss.
We'll be back before you know it, but in the meantime, you can catch us on Twitter @EquityPod. And for the early stage founders out there, don't forget to apply for the Startup Battlefield 200 cohort at TechCrunch Disrupt 2023!
For episode transcripts and more, head to Equity’s Simplecast website.
Equity drops at 7:00 a.m. PT every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders, one that details how our stories come together and more!
This week, Natasha Mascarenhas interviewed Sam Chaudhary, the founder of ClassDojo, and Chris Farmer, the founder and CEO of SignalFire, a venture firm that recently announced a $900 million fund to back tech startups. This interview is structured a bit differently as it was actually recorded as a TechCrunch Live session, our weekly show that focuses on helping people start better venture backed businesses.
We'll hear from the trio about:
- What an outsider advantage looks like in startups, per a top investor
- Why ClassDojo doesn’t see itself as an edtech company
- How Sam landed early traction with a difficult-to-capture consumer
- How both Sam and Chris are thinking through the AI question brewing in every office
If you want to check out the full video of today's conversation, including a round of Pitch Practice hosted by Matt Burns, head to our YouTube channel and stay tuned for more TechCrunch Live!
As always, the full Equity crew will be back on Friday, but you can keep up with us in the meantime @EquityPod.
For episode transcripts and more, head to Equity’s Simplecast website.
Equity drops at 7:00 a.m. PT every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotifyand all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders, one that details how our stories come together and more!
Alex is back on the mic for your Monday rundown and digging into OpenAI, earnings, First Republic Bank, and ARM. Oh, and startups as well!
- It's another big earnings week, and we're excited to see how Uber, Coinbase, Apple and Hubspot have performed!
- First Republic Bank is no more. It wasn't shocking to see JPMorgan swooping it up, but we are once again seeing a small bank shutting shop and a big bank getting bigger. Not good!
- OpenAI is now even richer thanks to a $300 million investment from venture capitalists. It's amazing that the company sold just 1.1% of its equity for nine figures.
- And Alison raised capital just as AMD filed privately to go public. It's a busy start to the week!
Hugs, and we'll be back Wednesday and Friday.
For episode transcripts and more, head to Equity’s Simplecast website.
Equity drops at 7 a.m. PT every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders, one that details how our stories come together and more!
This week Mary Ann, Natasha and Alex were especially chattery as they waded through a busy week in tech and startups. We're talking AI. We're talking layoffs. And we're talking coffee.
Here's what we got into:
- Three deals of the week from copyright requests around "-GPT" to Ansa, a wallet ready to make you even more loyal to your local cafes to First Republic Bank's tanking share price and all the thoughts that feel all too reminiscent of our reporting just six weeks ago.
- Fintech venture layoffs, and the state of startup hiring more generally. Based off of Mary Ann's scoop, we got into the nitty-gritty of just how much staff a venture firm needs, and why.
- Earnings! Alex has spent more time than is healthy reading through recent financial disclosures from tech companies big and small. The result? Decent news for startups.
- We end with notes on coffee. How does coffee fit into Equity? Well, when it's venture backed and growing, we don't care if it powered by beans or AI.
We'll be back in your ears again on Monday to catch up on the weekend's headlines. If you miss us in the meantime, follow us @EquityPod and check out Alex and Natasha's cameos on TechCrunch Live!
For episode transcripts and more, head to Equity’s Simplecast website.
Equity drops at 7:00 a.m. PT every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotifyand all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders, one that details how our stories come together and more!
This week, Natasha interviewed Ankur Nagpal, the entrepreneur behind Teachable, Ocho, and Vibe Capital - Ankur's $70 million venture fund, raised last year from over 200 investors.
Today, we're talking about:
- The future of Solo GPs and Ankur's choice to shrink Vibe Capital's fund size
- How Ankur built, sold, pivoted and launched in public
- The upside of building in public vs building in private
- The importance of brand and succession
Of course, we ended with a lightning round of questions - including the meaning behind Ankur's tattoo.
As always, Alex, Natasha and Mary Ann will be back for our weekly news roundup on Friday, but you can follow us on Twitter @EquityPod for live updates and more.
For episode transcripts and more, head to Equity’s Simplecast website.
Equity drops at 7:00 a.m. PT every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotifyand all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders, one that details how our stories come together and more!
Today Alex Wilhelm is talking about Twitter Blue, Lyft, a few startup rounds, and what could kick off the next crypto supercycle.
- Several major tech companies are reporting earnings this week, strap in for some big news and perhaps even bigger share price movements.
- The Twitter Blue saga took new turns this weekend, with Musk's personal social network staying in the news once again. If the overall result of said news for the company is good or not remains to be seen.
- Alex had a few thoughts on what has happened to a number of tech-enabled companies that went public, and have since seen their value evaporate. More here.
- And then it was time to check in on Super.com's big new round, and the latest from Span!
Equity is back Wednesday and Friday! Chat soon!
For episode transcripts and more, head to Equity’s Simplecast website.
Equity drops at 7 a.m. PT every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotifyand all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders, one that details how our stories come together and more!
This week we recorded at Early Stage, TechCrunch's event for founders who are building startups from the ground up.
Sadly, our dear friend Natasha Mascarenhas took ill, and we had to lean on Alex for the episode. Happily, though, Darrell from the TechCrunch team was sitting next to us on the show floor so we tagged him in for some rocket knowledge.
Anyhoo, here's the run of show!
- All things Early Stage: Notes from the show floor, what we can infer about attendance and a vibe check.
- Elon's new, larger rocket went up (very good) and then went "boom" (not as good). Happily for the space race, the overall result of the launch was good. Rockets have a tendency to go boom when they are new, and it's a bit of the, well, testing process to have them do so. Sure, a non-boom result would have been better, but SpaceX wasn't planning on trying to reuse the parts anyway.
- Tesla's earnings came out and investors are not that pleased. While there was some good stuff in the numerical set, price cuts at the company and moderating cash flow indicate that profitability gains could be harder to reach in the future.
- And layoffs. Meta is cutting staff. Insider is cutting staff. BuzzFeed is cutting staff. It's a mess out there.
We are back at full strength next week — and no longer on the road — so expect regular service to resume. Hugs!
For episode transcripts and more, head to Equity’s Simplecast website.
Equity drops at 7:00 a.m. PT every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotifyand all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders, one that details how our stories come together and more!
Alex invited Janelle Teng from Bessemer Venture Partners on the program to riff with us on the state of the cloud.
That's also the title of Bessemer's latest data dump concerning cloud stocks, startups, AI, and more. Teng, a co-author on the report, walked through some of key bits with us to better explain her firm's perspective, and to answer our critical commentary regarding Figma and why startups should always kill Goliath, instead of joining him for a round of grapes and lounging.
You can find the report that we chatted about here, and our early notes thereof here. Finally, a rundown of topics:
- Is the valuation massacre that startups have survived since late 2021 finally over?
- Why is investor preference swinging back towards growth from profitability?
- What is the state of runway at late-stage startups?
- Is the M&A pause nearly over?
- And, naturally, AI and SaaS and where VCs see the pair heading!
See you at Early Stage tomorrow!
For episode transcripts and more, head to Equity’s Simplecast website.
Equity drops at 7 a.m. PT every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, so subscribe to us onApple Podcasts,Overcast, Spotifyand all the casts. TechCrunch also has agreat show on crypto, ashow that interviews founders, one thatdetails how our stories come together and more!
Today we are talking about space, birds and startups! Here’s what Alex got into:
- Earnings season is coming back! That means Netflix and Tesla this week, and a huge number of big tech companies next week. Data cometh.
- We were very excited about the launch of SpaceX's massive rocket. It got scrubbed after we recorded, but you can still enjoy our hype about the potential event. We'll have more on the matter when the rocket actually does go up.
- Rovio is selling to Sega. Yeah, we had to digest that one as well. The sale price shows just how tough it is to be a games company.
- There's a lot of regulation going on out there in the world.
- And we wrapped with notes on Loopin and Fleet!
See you at Early Stage later this week!
For episode transcripts and more, head to Equity’s Simplecast website.
Equity drops at 7 a.m. PT every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotifyand all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders, one that details how our stories come together and more!
This week Mary Ann, Natasha and Alex enjoyed the warming climate and the fact that there are some positive vibes in the venture market as well. Hell, we even had a nine-figure round to chew on!
Here's the show rundown:
- Alex wanted to discuss the latest FTX docs and the recent X.com (formally known as Twitter) news.
- Natasha brought a new edtech venture fund to the table.
- Mary Ann wanted to talk about Clear Street's impressive fundraise.
- From there, we discussed that while the pace at which unicorns are being funded is in freefall, there are still some mega-IPOs coming from select late-stage startups. We will relish the return of S-1 season when it comes.
- From there it was time to chat AI. Natasha recently went to an AI event in San Francisco, helping us grok the on-the-ground dynamics at play. That, when crossed with different regulatory postures around the world made for a pretty darn interesting segment.
- And we closed with the opportunity that opportunity funds may afford venture firms. While Lux is still pursing a multi-stage approach, other firms are taking a more focused tack.
Lastly, there are just a couple days left to place your Webby Awards votes for our friends at Found and Chain Reaction.
We are back Monday morning, see you all at Early Stage!
For episode transcripts and more, head to Equity’s Simplecast website.
Equity drops at 7:00 a.m. PT every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotifyand all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders, one that details how our stories come together and more!
This week, Natasha spoke with a founder, a psychiatrist and a venture capitalist about founder mental health, a topic that has been a conversation in Silicon Valley for as long as we can remember. The theme has gained renewed momentum due to the startup and venture downturn in general, and exacerbated by a bank failure that still has some folks reeling.
It's time for a check-in. Here's who we spoke with for today's show:
- Pioneer Mind's Naveed Lalani gave us the founder perspective on how to "hustle responsibly" with The Founder Mental Health Pledge, a call to action for investors to support founders in looking at their mental health as a business priority
- Psychiatrist Dr. Saumya Dave reminded us of the differences between - but also overlap of - therapy, executive coaching and group sessions
- Graham & Walker's Leslie Feinzaig helped us close out the show with the VC perspective and her own tools for wellness
This is, of course, a conversation we want to continue. If you have a story you want to share, or if there's an angle that you think we missed when it comes to talking about mental health in the entrepreneurial world, you can email us at equitypod@techcrunch.com.
As always, Alex, Natasha and Mary Ann will be back for our weekly news roundup on Friday, but follow us on Twitter @EquityPod for live updates and more!
For episode transcripts and more, head to Equity’s Simplecast website.
Equity drops at 7:00 a.m. PT every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotifyand all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders, one that details how our stories come together and more!
Today, we are talking about crypto, Uber, and how to be petty at scale. Here's what Alex got into:
- Around the world of capital, we're most confused at certain bits of price stability in the cryptocurrency markets. It feels a bit faux, if that makes sense.
- Where prices are less steady is the world of YC startups, where, once again, there's complaints amongst venture investors about the valuations that some of the earliest-stage tech companies out there are commanding. Perhaps a greater discount given the state of the world was anticipated.
- Uber is selling part of Careem in a deal worth $400 million. Uber wants to do things on wheels. A super app company, at least in the Middle East, it is not. But it is about to have a huge new bankroll.
- The Musk v. Substack battle took up much weekend oxygen, showing that it is often hard to retain one's free speech bonafides when you just don't want to anymore.
All that and there are new FTX docs! Huzzah! Let's have a good week, y'all.
For episode transcripts and more, head to Equity’s Simplecast website.
Equity drops at 7 a.m. PT every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotifyand all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders, one that details how our stories come together and more!
This was Y Combinator week in a sense, with the well-known accelerator showing off hundreds of startups over a two-day period. We had some thoughts about that. But! There was a lot more for Mary Ann, Natasha and Alex to dig into, so we have a little something for everyone today.
Here's the show notes, enjoy:
- First, support our sibling podcasts Found and Chain Reaction in the Webbys! They deserve it, and we're voting for them too.
- For our Deals of the Week, we had: Monument and Tempest shared patients’ private data with advertisers, Acorns buys GoHenry, and Alex has notes on how the Q1 venture capital market is shaping up.
- Looking for all the Y Combinator notes your heart could desire? You can find our favorites from days one and two at those links, and read this Natasha piece on why the Bay is Back.
- We also took the time to discuss the term 'demo day' for an event where there are no, you know, demos.
- Latin America was back on the show thanks to Mary Ann, giving us a good reminder that we have not spent enough time lately looking at the region.
- We closed with Frank, a frank chat that frankly had us shaking our heads. Fraud is bad, and nearly doubly so when it comes to startups, where trust plays such a critical role.
Equity will return to your ears Monday morning, cheers until then!
For episode transcripts and more, head to Equity’s Simplecast website.
Equity drops at 7:00 a.m. PT every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders, one that details how our stories come together and more!
Alex filled in for Natasha as host this week, and to celebrate the end of Q1 2023 and the start of another earnings cycle, we invited PitchBook Senior Analyst Kyle Stanford onto the show. Stanford and his company are key providers of data concerning the domestic and global venture capital markets making him a perfect guest to help kickstart our look at recent venture results, and trends.
We had a lot to talk about:
- Where early-2023 venture aggregates are trending, including a chat about different stages of startup size and how investors are approaching those groups.
- Sectors that are hot and sectors that are, well, not.
- When we might get an exit market that actually exists, again. And why Stanford popped our fading optimism that we could get more IPOs later this year.
And we had a good time. We hope that this episode helps you form an informed posture towards fundraising for, and operating your company.
For episode transcripts and more, head to Equity’s Simplecast website.
Equity drops at 7:00 a.m. PT every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotifyand all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders, one that details how our stories come together and more!
Alex is back with the first episode of our Q2 run. Welcome to the new tranch of 2023!
- On the show today we riffed through the stock market and crypto sector. The gist? Shares are mixed here in the United States while major crypto tokens are not doing too much.
- In startup news, Paris is cracking down on e-scooters after a vote, Zamp Finance raised nearly $22 million for a neat way to keep startup cash safe and yield-friendly, and Fourthline reminded us that applied AI is a sentence that we are going to say again and again this year.
- Tesla's Q1 delivery and production numbers are out, and while the beat certain expectations the results come after price cuts. It will be curious to see what the new figures translate to in financial terms when we get the company's financial results.
- And then this a16z-Saudi Arabia thing that was a bit weird to chat about, but we took a stab at regardless.
The show is back Wednesday and Friday, we'll see you then!
For episode transcripts and more, head to Equity’s Simplecast website.
Equity drops at 7 a.m. PT every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders, one that details how our stories come together and more!
AI? Crypto? Equity crowdfunding and former startup founders trying to bribe China? We had it all this week, friends, so please strap in and get ready for another catchup with your besties Mary Ann, Natasha and Alex. Here's the show rundown in case you want to play along as you listen:
- Deals of the Week: How Seed Checks could disrupt early-stage fundraising, notes on StellarFi's latest capital raise, and the end of the Lyft founders' operational saga.
- All about Substack and its equity crowdfunding round, an event that we have lots of good things to say about, and one complaint.
- Then there was crypto. Let's see: We WTF'd about the latest from FTX's SBF, CZ is in trouble, and more.
- And we closed with notes on an open letter asking for AI development work to pause — ha -— and had some fun with ChatGPT!
It was a hell of a week. We do it again starting Monday!
For episode transcripts and more, head to Equity’s Simplecast website.
Equity drops at 7:00 a.m. PT every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders, one that details how our stories come together and more!
This week, Natasha interviewed a Jack of all trades in the AI world with a focus on governance: Navrina Singh. Navrina is the founder and CEO of CredoAI, a governance platform helping organizations monitor, measure and manage AI-introduced risks.
We're talking about:
- Navrina's wedge into the world of AI, and when governance went from a lonely conversation to a global focus.
- Her experience with Microsoft, observing how the EU AI Act's legislation is coming together, and her work as a member of the U.S. Department of Commerce National Artificial Intelligence Advisory Committee (NAIAC) - which advises President Biden and the National AI Initiative Office
- Regulation, responsible AI and getting over "AI hypocrisy"
- Casting fear aside as a motivator for change
- Navrina's thoughts on recent news in AI, including GPT-4's launch and Microsoft's ethical AI team layoffs.
As always, Alex, Natasha and Mary Ann will be back for our weekly news roundup on Friday, but you can follow us on Twitter @EquityPod for live updates and more.
For episode transcripts and more, head to Equity’s Simplecast website.
Equity drops at 7:00 a.m. PT every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotifyand all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders, one that details how our stories come together and more!
Alex had a lot of ground to cover from the weekend, so let's get started. Here's the rundown:
- The global stock market is mixed today, if leaning positive. Some concerns about global banks appear to be settling. In contrast, things are quiet on the crypto front.
- Salesforce is getting a reprieve from certain activist pressure after it took a cleaver to its staffing.
- The Silicon Valley Bank crisis is slowly coming to a close. TechCrunch has the latest on the sale of the former startup-friendly bank's commercial banking operations.
- In other tech news: France is cracking down on TikTok and other social apps, and some of Twitter's source code made its way onto GitHub.
- Finally, Turo is doing fine and could, ahem, drive us toward a reopening of the IPO market. Maybe more unicorns than we thought are going to be ok?
How about we have a relaxed week? That would be nice. Something slow and calm to end the quarter? We deserve it, after all!
For episode transcripts and more, head to Equity’s Simplecast website.
Equity drops at 7 a.m. PT every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotifyand all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders, one that details how our stories come together and more!
What did Mary Ann and Natasha and Alex dive into? Here's the rundown:
- A quick update on TikTok: The CEO of the popular social media service went before Congress today. It was a pretty darn hostile meeting. Alex caught a chunk of it live, and also has a few thoughts on the matter.
- From there it was time for our 'deals of the week' section, which today included Duolingo's new music product, a new DAO fund, and the latest eToro investment.
- Then it was time to talk payroll. We started with the Rippling deal to raise $500 million during the SVB crisis, and then discussed the larger HR tech space, which is both bigger and valuable than we realized.
- We closed with AI. So, so much AI. Everyone and their least favored parental unit is building a large language model, and TechCrunch is busy covering in all their glory, or lack thereof.
Whew! What a week. The show is back Monday morning. We'll see you there.
For episode transcripts and more, head to Equity’s Simplecast website.
Equity drops at 7:00 a.m. PT every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders, one that details how our stories come together and more!
Natasha interviewed one of venture's most iconic duos: Mitch Kapor and Freada Kapor Klein of Kapor Capital. The investors recently published a book, "Closing the Equity Gap: Creating Wealth and Fostering Justice in Startup Investing," connecting scrappy stories of entrepreneurs to their investment thesis to the returns that other venture capitalists are clamoring to land.
In today's episode, we're talking about:
- Their book and why the pair chose to do it now
- Mitch and Freada's broader thoughts on impact investing
- criteria for success and investor due diligence.
For episode transcripts and more, head to Equity’s Simplecast website.
Equity drops at 7:00 a.m. PT every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotifyand all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders, one that details how our stories come together and more!
Alex is here to do our Monday show, a kickoff for the week that covers startup news, tech news and a little bit of the money that powers both. After a hectic few weeks, are we done with banking news? No, but there's some good news in the offing, at least.
- Banking stocks are whipsawing this morning, in the wake of the UBS-Credit Suisse deal, and First Republic's continued woes.
- The crypto markets have had a good few weeks, leading to asset price appreciation that has reignited crypto-Twitter.
- News that TikTok is now more popular than ever is compounded by massive gains in the popularity of other Bytedance apps in the United States. The CEO of TikTok goes before Congress this week.
- Parker is taking on the corporate card market with a focus on ecommerce, and neat repayment periods, while PitchBook wants to predict which startups are going to exit.
- And, interest rate hikes could cool in the coming quarters, which could help tech companies recover some value.
We're off! Another week stretches before us. Get your dancing shoes on, surely the surprises are still coming.
For episode transcripts and more, head to Equity’s Simplecast website.
Equity drops at 7 a.m. PT every Monday and Wednesday, and at 6 a.m. PT on Fridays, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotifyand all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders, one that details how our stories come together and more!
This week, Alex and Natasha took the mic to talk about the slowest news cycle we've had since the beginning of the grocery delivery wars and WeWork. Just kidding.
Here's what we got into:
- The M&A spree that includes updates from Qualtrics, Cvent, and Mint Mobile. We're happy to see some M&A, even if we'd rather see more startup deals and IPOs.
- GPT-4. GPT-4. GPT-4. What's in a name and more from the world of AI, including where we're seeing companies race to build the new tech into their products.
- SVB collapse update, including what we are looking for next.
- And what Y Combinator's round of layoffs tells us about the accelerator scaling back from late stage. (More on the trend here.)
Busy few weeks, yeah? Don't forget to follow us on Twitter @EquityPod for live updates, and Alex will be back bright and early Monday morning with the latest.
For episode transcripts and more, head to Equity’s Simplecast website.
Equity drops at 7:00 a.m. PT every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders, one that details how our stories come together and more!
This week, Natasha interviewed Series CEO Brexton Pham, who has been building a full-stack enterprise platform for institutions and enterprises since March 2021. Brexton was pushed out of stealth this week in the wake of Silicon Valley Bank's crash, which of course was the main topic of our conversation. What else did you expect?
Here's what we got into:
- How much trust do our banks deserve today, and how much has reasonable trust fallen in recent weeks?
- How startups can (and should) start diversifying their banks
- What questions Series and its competitors are getting from investors today
- The long-term impacts beyond SVB
Brexton also did a fantastic job of helping us zoom out and take a look at the past week from a refreshingly non-tech angle.
Follow us on Twitter @EquityPod for live updates, and as always, the Equity crew will be back to unpack the week's headlines on Friday.
For episode transcripts and more, head to Equity’s Simplecast website.
Equity drops at 7:00 a.m. PT every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotifyand all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders, one that details how our stories come together and more!
This is Alex and we are here to do our Monday show, a kickoff for the week that covers startup news, tech news and a little bit of the money that powers both. Given how bonkers the last few days have been, this is not a normal show. Sure, we're talking money up top, but I also dragooned Natasha into running us through her amazing reporting from over the weekend on all things SVB. (Please excuse the Friends joke in the headline, we are very tired!)
Here's what we got into:
- The stock market is suffering around the world, kinda. In the United States things when we recorded were somewhat positive. Since, shares have sank some. Put simply, the equity markets don't know how to trade the news. And it shows.
- Cryptos, in contrast, have had a great last day.
- From the news docket, Qualtrics' deal to sell for $12.5 billion is a go, and Rivian might get a little bit of breathing room from Amazon.
- And then Natasha and I dug into SVB. The first warning signs, the fear, the takeover, and the resolution. And then there's this. The story continues, expect a busy week and perhaps a few more to boot.
Equity will be back shortly, but in the meantime check out our upcoming TechCrunch Live that just got a bit more spicy.
For episode transcripts and more, head to Equity’s Simplecast website.
Equity drops at 7 a.m. PT every Monday and Wednesday, and at 6 a.m. PT on Fridays, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotifyand all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders, one that details how our stories come together and more!
This week Mary Ann Azevedo, Natasha Mascarenhas and Alex Wilhelm gathered to riff through the week’s biggest startup and venture news:
At the top of the show, we riffed about the situation at Silicon Valley Bank - which, of course, kicked off a little more after we wrapped our recording. So, more to come there. But we had other stories to get into:
- Deals of the Week: Roami (taking on Airbnb), Qualtrics (will it finally find its forever home?), the latest on the VC-AI affair (Upfront Summit recap).
- ADHD startups are a big thing now: From a browser to gamified help with to-dos, there's a host of startups in the market today looking to help folks get their work done, and life organized. We're big accessibility tech fans here at Equity, so this was right up our alley.
- How fintech investors are coping in the new venture climate: Mary Ann spoke to seven different fintech investors about the coming year, and where they are putting capital to work. The answer from many of them? B2B payments. It does look rough out there for fintech companies generally, but some VCs are still bullish.
- Bias, women, and how to brand in venture: We then discussed Natasha and Becca's excellently reported piece tracking how women VCs navigate bias through branding.
That's it for this week! Thanks, as always, for listening in. Until next time, you can catch us on Twitter @EquityPod.
For episode transcripts and more, head to Equity’s Simplecast website.
Equity drops at 7:00 a.m. PT every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotifyand all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders, one that details how our stories come together and more!
This week, Natasha interviewed Lizzie Matusov, the co-founder and CEO of Quotient, which wants to fix the "leaky pipeline problem" in tech onboarding that doesn't set up engineers for success. Yes, that's right, this week we're talking about the work needs, habits and aspirations of developers.
Here's a few topics we get into:
- The stereotype of a coder, and where collectivism contrasts with those characteristics.
- How Quotient is using research, not just aspiration, to fuel its onboarding process
- The status quo of tech jobs and if we're seeing employers question some of their pre-conceived notions
- Developer resistance to change and if engineers really do want to work together more
For episode transcripts and more, head to Equity’s Simplecast website.
As always, the full Equity crew will be back on Friday, but you can keep up with us in the meantime on Twitter @EquityPod.
Equity drops every Monday, Wednesday and Friday at 7:00 a.m. PT, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders, one that details how our stories come together and more!
Alex is here to do our Monday show, a kickoff for the week that covers startup news, tech news, and a little bit of the money that powers both. Sound good? Here's what we have for you this morning:
- Money: Stocks are mixed around the world, and the crypto world is muted after some price swings last week.
- IPO news: ARM, the chip design concern, may go public in the United States this year, raising $8 billion in the process. Given the importance of chips these days -- you may have heard! -- the company's debut could be a very big deal indeed.
- Startup news: Abound raised a simply massive fintech round that had our head snapping around in surprise, Wunderkind put together a big Series C for its marketing tech, and several African fintech companies have had better weeks.
- Finally, Tesla: More price cuts. It will be fascinating to see what impact recent price reductions at Tesla have on the company's gross margins in the first quarter. More when we get those numbers.
And that is our show! Hugs, and talk to you soon!
For episode transcripts and more, head to Equity’s Simplecast website.
Equity drops at 7 a.m. PT every Monday and Wednesday, and at 6 a.m. PT on Fridays, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotifyand all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders, one that details how our stories come together, and more!
It’s the moment we’ve all been waiting for—the winner is announced! In this episode, we get to know the winner of the 2022 Startup Battlefield competition. We’ll hear what’s next for their company and get insight from TechCrunch staff, VCs, and audience members on why they were the right choice.
Be sure to check out all of the other podcasts in the TechCrunch Podcast Network: Found, Equity, The TechCrunch Podcast, Chain Reaction and The TechCrunch Live Podcast.
Mary Ann, Becca, and Alex gathered to riff through the week's biggest startup and venture news. A big thank you to Becca for stepping in while Alex was on leave, and a note before we dive into topics that Natasha Mascarenhas will be back on the podcast next week!
Now, here's what we got into:
- Deals of the Week: Divert's $100 million round to tackle food waste, Trust & Will's $15 million round, and what's happening in the land of NFT sales.
- Boston: TechCrunch held a Boston City Spotlight this week, so we took a look at a few pieces that we wrote about the lovely city to our North. Boston for example has a pretty good list of reasons why it's worth considering as a place to build a startup, and investors in the area are pretty hyped about its resilience.
- AI, crypto, and venture hype cycles: The crypto venture capital boom has collapsed; but is there a new AI bubble forming? Not in the way that we expected, it turns out.
- Amazon and Better.com: Of all the things that we didn't expect to see this year, the latest Amazon-Better tie-up is up high on our list. We had more than a few thoughts.
And that is all we had time to chew on, friends. We will talk to you soon!
For episode transcripts and more, head to Equity’s Simplecast website.
Equity drops at 7:00 a.m. PT every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotifyand all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders, one that details how our stories come together and more!
Mary Ann is taking over while Natasha attends a summit in LA, and this week, she interviewed Mark Goldberg, partner and fintech lead at Index Ventures. Since 2015, Mark has spent his time investing in - and sitting on the boards of - financial services companies including Plaid, Persona, Lithic, Cocoon, and Pilot.
The duo talked about:
- The party that was 2021 and the hangover that was 2022
- Mark's Twitter prediction that raised some eyebrows on Twitter
- Why 2023 will be a survival of the fittest
Alex, Mary Ann, and Becca are back Friday with more Equity, but as always, you can keep up with us in the meantime on Twitter @EquityPod.
For episode transcripts and more, head to Equity's Simplecast website.
Equity drops at 7:00 a.m. PT every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotifyand all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders, one that details how our stories come together and more!
Alex and is back! Yep, after taking some time to learn how to care for tiny humans, He's returned and is more than fired up to get back to podcasting. That means early mornings to get the Monday show off the page, and into your ears, made worth it thanks to the startup economy proving incredibly interesting thus far in 2023.
Now, what did we get into? The following:
- Stocks are largely up today, but only after a terrible week last week. So, a little plus/minus there. Cryptos are not too changed in the last day, but NFT trading results are rising again which is good news for folks into the tokens.
- News broke recently that the United States is also taking a hard look at the Adobe-Figma deal, more evidence that the mega-transaction could fail to consummate. This is notable as we have some historical notes regarding what happens when a huge deal falls apart before it can get done. Hello, Plaid.
- In more business-friendly news, the fintech market is not dead and two venture firms are taking pole position.
- Moving along to startup rounds, we took a look at ProsperOps and Flock.
- And to close, more layoffs at Twitter.
More soon, as we are back Wednesday and Friday!
For episode transcripts and more, head to Equity's Simplecast website.
Equity drops at 7 a.m. PT every Monday and Wednesday, and at 6 a.m. PT on Fridays, so subscribe to us onApple Podcasts,Overcast, Spotifyand all the casts. TechCrunch also has agreat show on crypto, ashow that interviews founders, one thatdetails how our stories come together, and more!
Inside Startup Battlefield is back in our feed with episode three. There are 180 companies solving crucial problems that didn’t make it to the Disrupt stage, but that doesn’t mean they’re making any less of an impact. TechCrunch writers Devin Coldewey and Harri Weber take us on a walk through the Expo Hall and let us listen into their conversations with a handful of the most interesting companies in the Battlefield 200.
New episodes of Inside Startup Battlefield drop every Monday. Be sure to check out all of the other podcasts in the TechCrunch Podcast Network: Found, Equity, The TechCrunch Podcast, Chain Reaction and The TechCrunch Live Podcast.
This week Natasha, Mary Ann, and Becca Szkutak were joined by the returning Alex Wilhelm, back from paternity leave. Yes, we had the whole gang back together today to dig through the week's pile of news -- and you can definitely tell how exciting it was by how fast we all talked through news (sorry to our dear producers!)
Now, the news. Here's what we got into:
- Amazon has invested heavily in an Indian meat delivery company. No, not lab grown meat or plant-based meat. Just meat, delivered. Also in our Deals of the Week category was news form a former WeWork denizen that wants to help you plan a tiny home, and notes on how Klarna has wound up finding a huge market in the United States.
- Then it was time to talk money. Reddit could go public later this year though we have heard that story before, Lime is apparently standing on its own two wheels and could pursue an IPO at some point, while Coinbase is at once doing poorly and better than expected.
- Then we chatted how layoffs could lead to a founder boom, and the results of one venture group's effort to fund recently separated tech denizens.
- And to close, we took a look at Rebecca's piece on the importance of early founder and venture accountability.
A big thanks to Rebecca for spending so much time with the Equity crew over the last few months while also hosting Found. We are back Monday with Alex! Chat soon!
For episode transcripts and more, head to Equity's Simplecast website.
Equity drops at 7:00 a.m. PT every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders, one that details how our stories come together and more!
Hello, and welcome back to Equity, a podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines.
This is our Wednesday show, where we niche down to a single person, think about their work and unpack the rest. This week, Natasha interviewed Kaisa Snellman, an economic sociologist and an associate Professor of Organizational Behavior and Academic Director of the INSEAD Gender Initiative. We know, we know, it's a flex.
We’re going to talk about: Kaisa’s recent Harvard Business Review piece with Isabelle Solal: For Female Founders, Fundraising Only from Female VCs Comes at a Cost. The duo's research asserts that women-led startups whose first round was raised exclusively from female VCs were 2x less likely to raise a second round regardless of initial funding round size, industry, geographic location, or prestige of the investor.
Listen to the whole conversation before you jump to conclusions, but let's just say that this conversation really got into the numbers and nuance behind the headlines.
The data is both revolutionary, and provocative.
Here's what we got into:
- How people see female founders who just raise from female investors, and the pitching bias that continues to exist in the world
- Why the answer to imbalances is more complicated than getting female check-writers to the table
- And finally, we talk about how diversity quotas and funds may have unintended consequences that are worth thinking a bit more about.
Equity will be back on Friday with a familiar voice you may be missing, but you can keep up with us in the meantime on Twitter @EquityPod.
For episode transcripts and more, head to Equity's Simplecast website.
Equity drops at 10:00 a.m. PT every Monday and at 7:00 a.m. PT on Wednesdays and Fridays, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotifyand all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders, one that details how our stories come together and more!
Inside Startup Battlefield is back in our feed with episode two. In the second episode of Inside Startup Battlefield, we take a trip to TechCrunch Disrupt 2022 to hear pitches from the top five companies: Aaron Hall from Intropic materials, Elizabeth Lawler from App Map, Chad Smithson from Intropic Materials, Sheeba Dawood from Minerva, Tim Lichti from Swap Robotics. We get to know the companies and the unique problems they’re solving through their pitches and the judges’ follow-up questions. Plus we hear from our host and Battlefield Editor, Neesha Tambe, about what working with each company was like.
New episodes of Inside Startup Battlefield drop every Monday. Be sure to check out all of the other podcasts in the TechCrunch Podcast Network: Found, Equity, The TechCrunch Podcast, Chain Reaction and The TechCrunch Live Podcast.
Natasha, Mary Ann and Becca got on the mic to talk startups, pet peeves and focaccia. What else did you expect?
Here's what we got into:
- Descope landed a $53 million (!) seed round, a Phenomenal new venture fund and a neobank out to make credit more accessible to young people in Mexico.
- Then we pivoted to talk about buy now, pay later (BNPL), which included some chatter about Affirm's recent woes and which areas of BNPL that do seem to be growing despite questions around whether this is the end of the BNPL boom as we know it.
- Tech layoffs are as widespread as ever so we talked about what advice some VCs have for those laid off workers considering launching their own startups, and what we thought of that advice.
- Finally, we ended with a jump over the pond to talk about EU's tech scene. Mostly about the fact that it is far more put together than the U.S., and all that jazz.
With that, we'll be skipping the upcoming week's Equity Monday due to the holiday and back with more on Wednesday, led by Becca!
Equity drops at 10:00 a.m. PT every Monday and at 7:00 a.m. PT on Wednesdays and Fridays, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders, one that details how our stories come together and more!
This week, Natasha interviewed Elana Berkowitz, founding partner at Springbank Collective and an early-stage investor working to close the gender gap.
Following with our theme of covering the silent changemakers in tech, Berkowitz has done much more than invest: she’s an advisor at Eric Shmidt’s office, a social entrepreneur who was a former innovator in residence at CARE, former Obama Administration technology policy official across the Obama-Biden Transition Team.
We spoke about:
- Building a venture firm that wants to disrupt the way the world thinks about care
- What people are missing when they talk about women's health
- The big opportunities out there to keep women in the workforce (and the low hanging fruit that we should all be thinking about)
As always, the full Equity crew will be back on Friday, but you can keep up with us in the meantime on Twitter @EquityPod.
Equity drops at 10:00 a.m. PT every Monday and at 7:00 a.m. PT on Wednesdays and Fridays, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders, one that details how our stories come together and more!
Check out the newest podcast from the TechCrunch Podcast Network: Inside Startup Battlefield, the four-part series that takes you behind TechCrunch’s Startup Battlefield competition. In this episode, our host and Startup Battlefield Editor Neesha Tambe breaks down how the Battlefield companies are selected for the TechCrunch Disrupt stage. Then we take a deep dive into what makes a pitch perfect with pitch coach and TechCrunch writer Haje Jan Kamps and Startup Battlefield judge and VC Nisha Dua. You’ll also hear from: Julia Somerdin from Labby, Young-Jae Kim and Tara Peters from Anthill, Quddus Pativada from Digest AI, Blessing Adesiyan from Mother honestly, Hikari Senju from Omneky, Mitch Tolson from Ally robotics, Elizabeth Lawler from App map, Aaron Hall from Intropic materials. Sheeba Dawood from Minerva.
New episodes of Inside Startup Battlefield drop every Monday. Be sure to check out all of the other podcasts in the TechCrunch Podcast Network: Found, Equity, The TechCrunch Podcast, Chain Reaction, and The TechCrunch Live Podcast.
This week, Natasha, Mary Ann, and Becca got on the mic about:
- Our deals of the week included a look at a large new fund focused on Africa, a startup raising big bucks to address the nursing shortage and Rebellyous raising in a crowded and struggling space toward its effort to 'rethink the nugget.'
- We took a few to chat through the latest around FTX, which is attempting to take back its political donations at the same time Robinhood is trying to buy back the 7.6% stake that an SBF entity acquired last year. We also marveled at how low Twitter Blue numbers really are.
- To throw it back for a second, Mary Ann walks us through the latest with Stripe AND all of our questions around its financial backing at the current moment. Becca reminds us that secondaries, dear friends, may be quiet but are livelier than ever.
- We end with notes on AI and inclusion, based on Dom's recent piece looking at the data behind the disparities. Reminder to use code EQUITY for 50% off annual TC+ memberships!
Equity drops at 10:00 a.m. PT every Monday and at 7:00 a.m. PT on Wednesdays and Fridays, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders, one that details how our stories come together and more!
This week, Natasha interviewed Cleo’s former CEO and current chief business officer, SJ Sacchetti. We spoke about nearly every theme most founders and chief executives are too scared to talk about: ego, setting boundaries, stepping down and becoming a "statistic" and why a company needs to succeed without you.
We talk about failure - or the fear of it, at least - and really, where things go wrong when we talk about how success is celebrated in tech.
As always, the full Equity crew will be back on Friday, but you can keep up with us in the meantime on Twitter @EquityPod!
Equity drops at 10:00 a.m. PT every Monday and at 7:00 a.m. PT on Wednesdays and Fridays, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders, one that details how our stories come together and more!
Here's what Natasha got into:
- Big tech: SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son will be skipping the Japanese conglomerates' earnings call, reports the Economic Times. We knew the flashy presentations were going away, but the silence may signal just how seriously SoftBank wants to shift its external perception. Speaking of perception, there's nothing quite like a delisting warning to get people talking about you. I talk about Getaround's less than $1 trend, and why it may be off the public markets if it doesn't get its act together in the next six months.
- Big idea: It's time to gamify benefits, and then think about wellness in more than just silo'd ways. At least that's how I imagine Minu's founding story to have played out - the startup is an HR tech meets edtech meets fintech meets health tech tool. Interesting stuff.
- Big innovation: The serial entrepreneur spree, in which notorious founders return to the early stage stomping grounds with fresher ideas, is a tried and true part of the tech world. Still, it surprises me to see just how many recent examples we have. Natasha talks about Instacart CEO Apoorva Mehta's new health tech company, Spotify CEO Daniel Ek's new health tech company, as well, and the return of co-founders from Instagram and Zenly making their way back into the social consumer space. We end with a nod at Natasha's latest Startups Weekly column, which looks at the data behind startup offices.
Ok, that's all. Let's have a good time this week. And by that we mean, tell us all your secrets!
Equity drops at 11:00 a.m. PT every Monday and at 7:00 a.m. PT on Wednesdays and Fridays, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotifyand all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders, one that details how our stories come together and more!
This week Natasha Mascarenhas and Becca Szkutak took to their mics to sing a duet about this week's startup news. Just kidding! But we did highlight some fun companies raising capital and talked through some VC themes that look likely to be relevant throughout 2023.
Here's what we got into:
- For our deals of the week we talked about Artifact, the new startup from the previous co-founders of Instagram, Spill, a new Twitter alternative that raised pre-seed funding, and Disclo, a startup looking to make it easier for individuals to seek accommodations for their disabilities at work.
- Then we chatted about the recent flurry of new venture funds and what the timing of these announcements says about where the VC market is at right now.
- Last, we talked climate tech and how the recent wave of startups in the sector is a promising sign.
Equity drops at 10:00 a.m. PT every Monday and at 7:00 a.m. PT on Wednesdays and Fridays, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders, one that details how our stories come together and more!
Hello and welcome back to Equity, a podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines.
This is our Wednesday show, where we niche down to a single person, think about their work and unpack the rest. This week, Mary Ann interviewed Hans Tung, prolific investor and managing partner of GGV, a venture firm with more than $9 billion in assets under management.
The pair had a great conversation on:
- How Hans is advising portfolio companies to weather this downturn
- What he’s looking for in new investments
- How startups can stay relevant no matter the economic environment
- What he’d be if he weren’t a VC (hint: Mark Cuban follows a similar playbook)
- His new initiative around embedded fintech
With two decades of experience in investing in companies such as Affirm and Airbnb, Hans has been through more than one cycle and his calm, steady approach to handling challenging macro environments comes through. We had lots of fun learning more about what Hans thinks about investing and what he views as the best advice he’s ever received; I hope you will, too!
As always, the full crew will be back on Friday, but keep up with Equity in the meantime @EquityPod on Twitter.
Equity drops at 10:00 a.m. PT every Monday and at 7:00 a.m. PT on Wednesdays and Fridays, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders, one that details how our stories come together and more!
Here's what Natasha got into on today's Equity Monday:
- Big tech: Marqeta's nine-figure acquisition of a two-year-old fintech, and which bucket of deals I think it falls into. Plus, Stripe's whole 12-month timeline thing and my edit for your incoming thought pieces.
- Big idea: Natasha's latest Startups Weekly column is all about the latecomer advantage. She talks about the idea, and its nuance, in the context of building startup rivals.
- Big innovation: We end with a look at Atomos, which landed $16 million to tug vehicles through space, and a bright spot of an analysis, coming from the TC+ world, on Black Web3 founders.
As always, follow us on Twitter for more @equitypod!
Equity drops at 10:00 a.m. PT every Monday and at 7:00 a.m. PT on Wednesdays and Fridays, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotifyand all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders, one that details how our stories come together, and more!
This week, Natasha, Mary and Becca got into:
- For our deals of the week, we talked about why tracking app Strava's purchase of Fatboy, a high-resolution 3D global map platform for the great outdoors, seems like a smart move, how Wasted wants to make port-a-potties less gross and more useful and All Raise CEO's decision to step down after less than one year in the role.
- Then we got into how the feds are scrutinizing Google's alleged ad tech monopoly and the implications for startups, before moving into different ways the downturn is impacting the way companies are hiring.
- And lastly, we discussed femtech's very good 2022 (even though we all agreed we don't love the term 'femtech').
Equity drops at 10:00 a.m. PT every Monday and at 7:00 a.m. PT on Wednesdays and Fridays, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders, one that details how our stories come together, and more!
This week, Natasha interviewed Sarah Oh, the co-founder of T2, a Twitter rival, and Twitter's former Human Rights advisor.
We get into a lot, not limited to but including:
- What her job title really encompasses
- The danger of going viral
- Re-building a clone
- Generative AI
- We also talk about what moderation 3.0 looks like and T2 daring to dream when building a Twitter-like company with safety at its core. Oh is clearly is a change maker, considering that the 30 minutes Natasha spent with her already expanded our understanding of how platforms think about - and invest in - trust at scale.
Equity drops at 10:00 a.m. PT every Monday and at 7:00 a.m. PT on Wednesdays and Fridays, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders, one that details how our stories come together and more!
Here's what Natasha got into now that she's back in The Bay:
- Big tech: Real quick, you should know that Elliott Management took a multi-billion stake in Salesforce, while Thoma Bravo scooped up a digital forensics company for $1.34 billion. Beyond that, the big tech news this week is Microsoft's multi-billion dollar, multi-year investment in Open AI. The extended partnership comes with lots of resources, quirks and legal headaches.
- Big idea: we're still thinking about this Anna Heim analysis, "The mirage of dry powder." Natasha talks about wet capital and failed capital calls, as to contextualize (not shut down!) some of the optimism in the market right now. (Use code "EQUITY" for 50% an annual TC+ membership).
- Big innovation (or in this case, reductions): Google's in-house incubator, Area 120, was severely impacted by Alphabet layoffs and Spotify cut 6% of staff, two layoff stories that had us thinking all about the fact that tech seems to have forgotten its umbrella. We end with tongue-twister note on Quordle, which just got scooped up by Merriam-Webster.
As always, you can support Natasha by following her on Twitter and Instagram. The show also tweets from @equitypod, so follow us there!
Equity drops at 10:00 a.m. PT every Monday and at 7:00 a.m. PT on Wednesdays and Fridays, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders, one that details how our stories come together, and more!
Natasha Mascarenhas,Mary Ann Azevedo and Rebecca Szkutak had fun on this week's recording:
- Deals of the week included a new Trust Fund, a $29M raise from a proptech started by the co-founders of cloud computing company DigitalOcean and a $27M bet by some U.S.-based VCs on an African gaming startup, Carry1st.
- Then we got into the state of fintech funding in 2022. Spoiler alert: It wasn't pretty. We compared fintech's year to that of global startups as a whole, and Becca gave us a lesson on the difference between structured rounds and down rounds.
- We had a blast discussing a new trend of compliment-based teen social media apps, including Gas, which recently got acquired by Discord, and Slay, a German startup that just raised $2.63 million.
- And finally, we discussed Microsoft's latest round of layoffs, which we found both unfortunate and a bit perplexing.
On that note, we appreciate you all and thank you for the refreshing flood of feedback and compliments to start off the year. It always makes our days, and we hope we can lighten up and inform yours.
Equity drops at 10:00 a.m. PT every Monday and at 7:00 a.m. PT on Wednesdays and Fridays, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders, one that details how our stories come together, and more!
This week, Natasha interviewed Roger Lee, an entrepreneur who's spent the better part of a decade building tools for employees and employers alike. Lee is the creator of Layoffs.FYI and co-founder of Comprehensive and Human Interest.
Here's what we got into:
- Roger's introduction to entrepreneurship during the dot-com bubble
- How the pandemic de-stigmatized layoffs
- How Comprehensive - described as the inverse of Layoffs.FYI - is helping employees level-up
- The importance of crowdsourcing and to monetize, or not to monetize...transparency
- We ended, as usual, with a lightning round and learned where Lee's career could have gone if he didn't take the founder path (hint: it's not VC).
Equity drops at 10:00 a.m. PT every Monday and at 7:00 a.m. PT on Wednesdays and Fridays, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders, one that details how our stories come together, and more!
Here's what Natasha chatted about today:
- Big tech: Good news for Bitcoin and Ethereum, even as late-stage companies in the space cut to stay afloat.
- Big idea: I had two ones to get through. First, Africa had no new unicorns last year, despite record fundraising raising. What's that all about? Second, I want to talk about Stripe's internal valuation cut, yet again, and what that news means on the outside.
- Big innovation: I talk about yet another Clearco executive shake up and yet another Clearco round of layoffs, as well as the energy for the fintech moving forward. We end with a look at freshly-backed T2, which is opening up its game plan in a spreadsheet format. We love to see a Twitter rival, love even more to see one utilize the beauty of read-only spreadsheet features
As always, you can support me by following me on Twitter and Instagram. The show also tweets from @equitypod, so follow us there and turn on notifications to never miss a new update from your favorite podcast team in tech (ugh, you shouldn't have).
Equity drops at 10:00 a.m. PT every Monday and at 7:00 a.m. PT on Wednesdays and Fridays, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotifyand all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders, one that details how our stories come together, and more!
This week, Natasha was joined by Mary Ann Azevedo and Rebecca Szkutak to talk about the latest and greatest in tech:
- Deals of the week include Inflow, which has developed a self-help app designed to help people manage their ADHD, Cartograph Ventures, a new venture fund run by an ex-Juul operator, and the latest lawsuit and layoffs happening over at Carta
- The plethora of fintech M&A that took place this week, including Fidelity's acquisition of a startup called Shoobx (we couldn't pronounce its name either) and Deel's buyout of Capbase.
- Microsoft's deal with ChatGPT OpenAI which, we'll admit, has a structure that stumps even us. Plus, we talk about how Pittsburgh's expertise in AI may help give its startup scene a boost.
There's Sam Altman, and then there's Sam Bankman-Fried, which brings us to our last theme. We talk about SBF's new Substack, the Kardashian method of distraction and why the legal world isn't a fan of levity. As Becca said so aptly, maybe billionaires (or former billionaires) should stop trying to be cute.
We'll end with a reminder that the TechCrunch podcast network is now a machine that produces content, daily, from the most diverse slate of hosts in the tech pod world. Proud of our fellow co-hosts, and for those of you who may be starting a resolution or habit-stacking to start 2023, consider giving our other shows a try.
Equity drops at 10:00 a.m. PT every Monday and at 7:00 a.m. PT on Wednesdays and Fridays, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotifyand all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders, one that details how our stories come together, and more!
This week, Natasha chatted with Haje Kamps and Brian Heater about CES which took place last week over in the ever-exciting Las Vegas area. All of our fantastic CES coverage can be found on the site, but for the purposes of today's show, we tried to keep it analytical, chatty and, at times, even a bit robotic. (You'll see what we mean).
Here's what we got into:
- Post-CES feelings and why the show has stayed relevant after all these years
- How expectations of the show compared to the reality, robot pillows and all
- Who did and didn't show up
- Brian's new suggestion for what the conference should be called
- The energy of innovation on the showroom floor, from sustainability to big swings to over-engineered blenders
- Batteries!
- And finally, how the downturn and COVID-19 may have impacted the way startups are pitching themselves to the public. Selection bias, it's a thing!
You can follow Haje through his work on the Daily Crunch, Brian through his work on Actuator and as always, catch up with us on Twitter @EquityPod.
Equity drops every Monday at 7 a.m. PT and Wednesday and Friday at 6 a.m. PT, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders, a show that details how our stories come together and more!
Here's what we got into for this week's Monday episode:
- Big Tech: Vista Equity Partners scooped up Duck Creek for $2.6 billion, and that's not the only billion-dollar figure we've seen from them over the past twelve months. Enterprise deals to start off the year? Take notes, startups.
- Big Idea: I'm thinking all about generative AI, especially thanks to Rebecca Szkutak's latest piece: "Whoops! Is generative AI already becoming a bubble?" I talk through the thesis of the piece, why venture always needs a buzzword, and why that's not necessarily a bad thing.
- And Big Innovation: We end with our roots in the world of startups. I'm talking Magic Leap's comeback story and a can't miss Dominic-Madori Davis piece tracking Black founder funding trends.
And with that, goodbye until Wednesday! You can follow me on Twitter @nmasc_ or on Instagram @natashathereporter. And, as always, follow Equity on Twitter @equitypod.
Equity drops at 10:00 a.m. PT every Monday and at 7:00 a.m. PT on Wednesdays and Fridays, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotifyand all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders, one that details how our stories come together, and more!
To start off the year, we are welcoming Rebecca Szkutak as a returning host who will be joining us while Alex is out on paternity leave. We're lucky to have her for a few months, so give her a warm welcome!
With that, Natasha, Mary Ann and Becca returned to the mic to unpack the latest and greatest on this first week back. 2022 was a dreary, relentless storm at times, but it also surprised us with how much innovation continues to brighten up this downturn. The start of 2023 has been no different.
Here's what we got into:
- Some early standouts from CES, the annual consumer electronics show that is taking over Las Vegas right now. Yep, we're talking comfort pillows that are even more comfortable than you think, a smarter smart laundry machine and a security dash-cam for ride-sharing drivers.
- Then we jumped into deals of the week, which included Doorstead and USV's $200 million climate fund.
- Our first theme got into the latest development in the FTX and SBF saga. If you're like us, there's been so much happening that it's hard to keep track of all the twists and turns. But it's also evermore important to, as Becca gives us a Real Housewives angle to consider.
- We end with a conversation about layoffs, which rolled in this week to impact employees at Stitch Fix, Amazon, Salesforce and others. We dug into Natasha's latest feature story, in which she explores how laid off talent is rethinking risk for their next jobs.
Equity drops at 10:00 a.m. PT every Monday and at 7:00 a.m. PT on Wednesdays and Fridays, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders, one that details how our stories come together, and more!
Happy New Year and welcome to 2023! As promised, Natasha is taking over Equity Monday for the beginning of this year as Alex is out on paternity leave. Big hugs to his growing family!
We're starting the year with big post-PTO energy, because there's no other way we know how to do it. Here's what we chatted:
- Tesla missing expectations, Meta doing its let's-just-acquire-smart-talent thing, and a debut in the S&P 500 that caught our attention.
- A big idea that is running around over at Matrix. TC's Paul Sawers looks into how messaging apps may become more interoperable thanks to a fascinating new protocol. To us, this screams the ideas of decentralization from crypto last year, but with a more understandable pitch. Catch me Slacking you on WhatsApp!
- Finally, we end with a look ahead at CES this week. We have reporters on the ground catching the moonshots, and we'll have updates for you with the full crew on Friday!
As always, there's more to come, so follow us on Twitter @EquityPod
Equity drops at 10 a.m. PT every Monday and at 7 a.m. PT on Wednesdays and Fridays, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotifyand all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders, one that details how our stories come together, and more!
In honor of 2022 finally coming to a close, the Equity crew is getting reflective. We dug through the archives, and this week, we're listening back to Alex, Natasha and Mary Ann's coverage of the biggest stories of the year as they unfolded.
Here's what the trio got into with help from guest hosts, Becca Szkutak and Anita Ramaswamy:
- How Alex jinxed us from the start when he asked for more tech drama (TC+) back in January
- Early signs of the downturn to come with Better.com and the human cost of layoffs
- The will-they-won't-they courtship of Elon Musk and Twitter
- The downfall of FTX (TC+) and why you should never let FOMO guide your investments (TC+)
Some of these stories are still evolving as we type, but don't fret - we'll catch you up in the new year.
Of course, we can't sign off without saying thank you to all of you for sticking by us during this rollercoaster of a year, and we can't wait to see you in 2023!
Equity drops at 7 a.m. PT every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders, one that details how our stories come together, and more!
Following a parade of headlines and news that Fast shut down back in April, Natasha and Alex asked: What are we missing when we talk about startup failure?
The question comes after one of Natasha’s Startups Weekly columns, where she looked into the complexity of startup failure, fallacy of takedown stories, and importance of diversity in newsrooms. Here's an excerpt:
"There’s the argument that startup tensions are inevitable and common, so should we spotlight every time something bubbles to the surface, especially at the cost of an underrepresented founder who may just be doing their best? There’s also an argument that the business is messy, so we should report on the issues as we hear about them; and there’s the narrative of the female takedown story, in which people believe that women are targeted by the press more than men due to unreasonably high standards."
We discussed our own definitions of failure past Theranos and WeWork, examples of rising tensions, and what this means for early-stage startups and historically overlooked founders. We took a closer look at another wave of layoffs, some notable valuation cuts, and the implosion of Fast to weigh against 2021's strident startup optimism.
don't forget to take our listener survey and enter for a chance to win a free year of TC+!
Equity drops every Monday, Wednesday and Friday at 7 a.m. PT, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders, a show that details how our stories come together and more!
The Equity crew is kicking off your week with a special episode from our sister podcast, Found, the stories behind the startups. Co-hosts Darrell Etherington and Becca Szkutak spoke with Alice Albrecht from Re:collect, a software tool that augments creativity by helping people focus, recall, and connect their ideas. The conversation covered a lot of ground from how to hone your pitch when your product is so cerebral, how technology can help creativity but Alice argues will never replace it, and how developing AI requires building safeguards from the jump.
If you want to hear more from Equity and Found, don't forget to take our listener survey and enter for a chance to win a free year of TC+!
For more from Found, connect with us:
- On Twitter
- On Instagram
- Via email: found@techcrunch.com
Equity drops every Monday, Wednesday and Friday at 7 a.m. PT, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that details how our stories come together and more!
This week, the Equity team is spotlighting one of our sister podcasts: TechCrunch Live. Matt Burns hopped on the mic with Jenny Lefcourt from Freestyle Partners and Guillaume de Zwirek, CEO and co-founder of WELL Health, to talk all about raising a Series A and specific steps for founders to follow.
As you’ll hear from Lefourt and de Zwirek, there are notable differences between raising a seed round and a Series A round. Investors look at different aspects of the company, and the founder must prepare for the fundraising differently. Rather than selling a story, they’re selling a company. To help even more founders, Lefcourt prepared a blog post to go along with her TechCrunch Live appearance that goes even deeper into raising a Series A.
If you want to hear more shows like this, don't forget to take our listener survey and enter for a chance to win a free year of TC+!
Equity drops every Monday, Wednesday and Friday at 7 a.m. PT, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. TechCrunch also has agreat show on crypto, ashow that interviews founders, ashow that details how our stories come togetherand more!
This week, Mary Ann is taking the reins with another favorite from the TechCrunch Disrupt stage. She sat down with Brex CEO and co-founder, Henrique Dubugras, and Anu Hariharan, YC’s managing director for continuity and an early Brex investor, to expose the context around this whirlwind of a year.
The conversation candidly uncovers details behind the fintech's pandemic pivot, layoffs, and going remote. If you love the conversation, share it with a friend. And if you want more on Brex, Mary Ann dove deeper into the conversation last month.
Equity drops every Monday, Wednesday and Friday at 7 a.m. PT, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders, a show that details how our stories come together and more!
Darrell talked with Tim De Chant about his coverage of fusion energy and what feels like a rare hopeful story in renewable energy tech. And Jacquelyn Melinek walks us through Sam Bankman-Fried’s alleged crimes and confirmed arrest. Plus he goes over the top stories in tech from the week. And as always, Darrell breaks down the biggest stories in tech.
Articles from the episode:
- World-record fusion experiment produced even more energy than expected
- FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried has been arrested in the Bahamas
- US attorney says ‘we are not done’ charging individuals for FTX collapse
Other news from the week:
- Instagram adds text updates with new Notes feature
- OpenAI’s attempts to watermark AI text hit limits
- Elon Jet, the Twitter account tracking Elon Musk’s flights, was permanently suspended
Don't forget to take our listener survey for a chance to win a free year of TC+ at bit.ly/tcpodsurvey.
To end the year, we are bringing back our predictions episode with the entire Equity crew: Alex, Natasha, Mary Ann, Theresa, Maggie, and Becca. Grace couldn't make the mic but we have a feeling she'd agree with at least 2% of our predictions, anyways.
Let's not ruin the episode, but to give you a taste, here's what topics we based our predictions on:
- Startup building and culture trends
- M&A and the return of secondaries
- The future of media and how social will shift
- Deep tech and generative AI
- And, of course, crypto
We end on an earnest note. Good luck to Alex as he embarks on parenthood, welcome to Becca, who will be joining Equity in the new year, and, of course, thank you to all of you for sticking by us during this rollercoaster of a year.
And with that, chat in 2023!
Equity drops at 7 a.m. PT every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders, one that details how our stories come together, and more!
This week, Natasha is bringing one of her favorite panels from Disrupt to your ears. She sat down with Clubhouse co-founder and CEO, Paul Davison, to talk about the core of Clubhouse, competition, and the impact of hype.
The conversation touches on the company's hyper growth, celebrity power, and navigating social platforms and social patterns, with a round of questions from the audience at the end. If you love the conversation, share it with a friend. And if you want more on Clubhouse, Natasha dove deeper into the conversation here.
Equity drops every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday at 7 a.m. PT, so subscribe to us onApple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. TechCrunch also has agreat show on crypto, ashow that interviews founders, ashow that details how our stories come togetherand more!
Hey, Equity family! While we're off preparing more end-of-year special episodes for you, we wanted to share an episode from our sister pod: The TechCrunch Podcast.
This week Darrell Etherington talks with Taylor Hatmaker on to talk about Lensa AI and the possible ramifications for artists. Then we’ll hear from some attendees at the TC sessions: Space event And as always, Darrell breaks down the biggest stories in tech.
Articles from the episode:
- Lensa AI, the app making ‘magic avatars,’ raises red flags for artists
- UPDATED: It’s way too easy to trick Lensa AI into making NSFW images
- Read all of the stories from TC Sessions: Space
Other news from the week:
- Meta won’t let staff discuss topics like abortion, gun control and vaccines at work
- Amazon will give your overworked delivery driver $5 if you ask Alexa to say thank you
- Confirmed: Slack CEO Stewart Butterfield stepping down in January
- The FTC is suing to block Microsoft from buying Activision
We are nearly at the end of the year, so your friendly, local podcast crew is trying to make sense of just what happened in 2022.
We started the year on a venture capital high which quickly turned into a downturn. Startups kicked off the year hiring and wrapped the year shedding staff. The stock market kept going down. A crypto winter kicked off. We saw some PE deals but very few IPOs. And the world saw a bit more geopolitical upheaval than we might have anticipated.
There were elections and shutdowns and frauds and mistakes and big wins. It was, well, a lot.
Thankfully Mary Ann, Natasha, and Alex were able to collate the news into a few distinct categories, so that we can all look back at 2022 with a bit more clarity. And we even got to hear from a bunch of you, thanks to your dozens and dozens of great taglines you sent in concerning the year and how it felt from your chair.
We have even more good stuff coming, including our yearly predictions episode. Get hype, and we'll talk to you soon!
Equity drops at 7 a.m. PT every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders, one that details how our stories come together, and more!
This week, Natasha chatted with Alex about ego, how recent news from Sam Bankman-Fried and Elizabeth Holmes gives us a window into how it works, and impacts on the tech and venture landscape.
We talked about:
- What Holmes and Bankman-Fried have in common, from centralized ownership to a cult of personality
- The differences between the two entrepreneurs, and why their stories tend to blur together
- How Adam Neumann, Elon Musk and others fit into the conversation
- Learning lessons from startups from a chaotic, and main-character-driven year
We have a lot of really fun stuff coming up in the next week or two. Thanks for sticking with Equity in 2022, and we cannot wait for 2023.
Equity drops every Monday at 7 a.m. PT and Wednesday and Friday at 6 a.m. PT, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders, a show that details how our stories come together and more!
- Stocks in China are ripping higher on news that its drastic COVID-related policies could be starting to ease. It's a long way from a reopening, but after years of hard-edged lockdowns, Chinese tech companies are breathing a sigh of relief — at least in valuation terms. Shares are down in Europe and the United States.
- How much are Chinese equities rallying? Bilibili is in the lead, up around 16% in pre-market trading. The day's gains won't cover all prior losses, but for the nation's beleaguered tech industry, the valuation gains are beyond welcome news.
- And sticking to the good news vibe, the fact that the U.S. central bank may slow the pace at which it raises interest rates could provide some useful tailwinds to tech companies.
- The Circle SPAC deal is off.
- Giraffe360 raised new capital, which surprised us, given our perspective on the housing market.
- And we closed with notes on ChatGPT, the thing that everyone on Twitter cannot stop playing with.
Equity drops at 7 a.m. PT every Monday and Wednesday, and at 6 a.m. PT on Fridays, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotifyand all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders, one that details how our stories come together, and more!
For the last time in 2022, the whole Friday gang got together to chat through the latest and greatest in the world of technology and startup news:
- ResortPass raises money. Mary Ann explains the business model.
- Post.News raises money. Alex digs into what he likes and doesn't like about the new Twitter competitor.
- SBF wants you to know he had no idea what was going on. We are not so sure.
- Venture red flags are great in hindsight, but would have been more useful last year.
- Layoffs at DoorDash and Kraken are a reminder that we're still in a risk-off environment when it comes to tech spending today.
- Plus, the latest regarding Pipe, and Alex's notes on Series A and C rounds.
Equity is not done for the year, but we are settling into our final 2022 holiday groove. This is Alex writing this, and I wanted to take the moment to thank you for sticking around with us this year. Really. I think we broke a bunch of records in terms of downloads and the like. Wild that the show just keeps getting bigger. Hugs.
Equity drops at 7 a.m. PT every Monday and Wednesday, and at 6 a.m. PT on Fridays, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotifyand all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders, one that details how our stories come together, and more!
Hello and welcome back to Equity, a podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines.
This is our Wednesday show, where we niche down to a single person, think about their work and unpack the rest. This week, Natasha interviewed Vijay Chattha, a startup comms leader who has spent over 20 years in the storytelling world. Chattha is the CEO and founder of VSC and founding partner of VSC Ventures, a $21 million investment vehicle to back startups.
Here's what we spoke about:
- How his clients are reacting to the downturn in terms of their openness, vulnerability, and general hunger to tell their story
- The difference between pitching a VC and pitching a journalist (lol)
- How startup's goal with media coverage can sometimes inherently clash with the media's goal to cover a startup (and why we disagree on the importance of disclosing valuations)
- The best framework for the different types of media form out there, from Twitter to billboards to earned media.
- How the #MeToo movement impacted leadership styles and changed accountability for the better
- If we're getting closer to a more transparent ecosystem, or more opaque one
- And of course, we end with a lightning round - including but not limited to Chattha's biggest pet peeve with journalists.
Equity drops every Monday at 7 a.m. PT and Wednesday and Friday at 6 a.m. PT, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders, a show that details how our stories come together and more!
It's me! Hi! (I'm not the problem, just the podcast's host, here to bring you the latest greatest in startup and tech news this fine Monday morning). Welcome back to Equity, the podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines. And for those of you who hummed the first sentence of this post, extra points to you.
I'm starting things off this week as a test run before Alex heads on paternity leave. We have lots to get to, so shake off the holiday feels and let's remember how this ecosystem works?
Here's what we got to:
- The markets are broadly down, due to COVID-19 protests breaking out in China.
- Blockfi filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Our crypto reporter Jacquelyn Melinek has more on what happened - and she explains just how intertwined this universe is. I'll also get to notes I took from our recent crypto conference and how the reality may be looking like Web 2.5 before it looks like Web 3.0.
- We also talk about Amazon's three-pronged retreat, and the common thread of India between them all.
- After that, some good news from all-women led venture firm Pact and its debut fund. More funding for climate startups, please. Tim keeps writing about really cool ones.
- We end with a note on Pipe, a $2 billion fintech that announced all of its co-founders are stepping down from their roles last week. Soon after that decision was announced, rumors and allegations began flying about tensions under the hood at the fintech. Mary Ann Azevedo has the story and keep reading the site today for the follow up. As I said on Twitter, on one end, when three founders step down in a single moment, people are undoubtedly going to talk and worry (out loud) about the stability of the company.
That was fun. Thanks for letting me spend a bit of your Monday with you. More to come! You can follow me on Twitter @nmasc_ or on Instagram @natashathereporter.
Equity drops at 7 a.m. PT every Monday and Wednesday, and at 6 a.m. PT on Fridays, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotifyand all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders, one that details how our stories come together, and more!
Hello and welcome back to Equity, a podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines.
While the Equity crew unwinds from Thanksgiving here in the U.S., we're bringing you one of our favorite conversations from this year:
Natasha, along with Alex's help, asked: Who should be raising Party Rounds?
The episode was inspired by Natasha’s recent Startups Weekly column, “When the party has confetti but no allergen-friendly appetizers" and the companion TechCrunch+ piece with Anita, “Investment clubs are cool again, and maybe community is, too.”
Here's what we got into:
- The definition of party rounds, boundaries and the fact that we don't entirely agree on if there needs to be a lead or nah
- How has party round funding changed? What place do they hold in the ecosystem?
- Is this vehicle better for experienced founders versus first-time founders?
- The pros and cons of each side
Equity drops at 7 a.m. PT every Monday and Wednesday, and at 6 a.m. PT on Fridays, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders, one that details how our stories come together, and more!
Hello and welcome back to Equity, a podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines.
This is our Wednesday show, where we niche down to a single person, think about their work and unpack the rest. This week, Natasha interviewed Karla Monterroso, a long time leadership coach, racial equity advocate and the founder of Brava Leaders. We talked about her route into the leadership coaching space, but mainly sought to answer questions about the challenges facing executives today. Here are some of the topics we touch on
- Diverse leadership and the unique semblance of power on a person of color
- How she's thinking through the second-order impacts of Elon Musk's Twitter takeover and what signal it sends to the industry.
- Tech's homogeneity problem and if it's getting better or worse
- How leaders can cultivate a workforce that leans into conflict
- And of course, we end with a lightning round - including but not limited to how Monterroso would define 2022 in a headline.
We'll be back Friday with a festive rerun of an old episode. For those celebrating, happy Thanksgiving and, needless to say, we're very thankful to have you here.
Equity drops every Monday at 7 a.m. PT and Wednesday and Friday at 6 a.m. PT, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders, a show that details how our stories come together and more!
Hello, and welcome back to Equity, the podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines.
Note: Equity will be back on Wednesday, and Friday in some capacity. But keep in mind that this is a holiday week in the United States, so things are going to be a little bit slower than usual.
Here’s what we got into on our Monday episode, a weekly kickstart to your week!
- Stocks are largely down around the world, and crypto prices continue to deflate. Watching both these asset classes lose value in tandem feels like the worst horse-race in history. No matter what you hold, it's a bad Monday.
- Twitter CEO Elon Musk decided to bring former American president Donald Trump back to Twitter. Ironically, the former president is so far declining the option and wants to stick to his own social network, Truth Social.
- FTX owes $3.1 billion to its 50 largest creditors.
- In more positive news, Wove just raised a nearly $3.85 million Seed round, and SponsorUnited's big Series A proves that nine-figure early-stage valuations are not dead!
In closing, Natasha will host the Monday show next week as we get ready for my parental leave!
Equity drops at 7 a.m. PT every Monday and Wednesday, and at 6 a.m. PT on Fridays, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders, one that details how our stories come together, and more!
Hello and welcome back to Equity, a podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines.
This week, Alex and Natasha discussed the latest and greatest of this consuming news cycle. Our goal with the episode, as always, is to go beyond what you may see in a 140 character-take on [insert big story here]. And in today's recording? That wasn't hard at all.
- We started with our good news segment: 1) Maven, now valued at $1.35 billion, is answering a countrywide demand: More fertility benefits and 2) Alibaba eyes logistics growth in LatAm as China commerce slows. We love a chance to talk about growth, despite all odds and even trends!
- Then, right off the heels of our amazing debut crypto conference, we take a minute to talk about the FTX Fall out. Yep, we're talking about how one African Web3 startup got screwed over and why SoftBank joined Sequoia in marking down its investment in the crypto exchange.
- We then turn to the latest in layoffs: Amazon's 3% cut, cuts at Morning Brew and Protocol, and Musk's latest attempt to recruit (or retain?) Twitter employees. We still don't know what's happening there, don't ask us. Ok fine, you can.
- And we'll end by throwing this gem here, with little to know context: I volunteer as tribute.
And that's wrap. As always you can follow the show on Twitter, leave us a rating on Apple Podcasts and, most importantly, be kind to your people. Talk soon!
Equity drops at 7 a.m. PT every Monday and Wednesday, and at 6 a.m. PT on Fridays, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders, one that details how our stories come together, and more!
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch's venture capital focused podcast where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines.
Today we have something a bit different for you. In light of the never-ending Musk-Twitter saga, and news that the new social media CEO had cut its corporate communications staff to the bone -- and then some. So to get more perspective on the role that a corporate comms team plays in both startups and public companies alike, we wrangled two folks who have just that experience set:
- Kelly Boynton, senior director of communications at Gusto
- Keyana Corliss, until recently the head of global communications and PR at Databricks
The pair discussed the role that comms plays in companies both internally and externally, and why it deserves a seat at the decision-making table. Given the media furor surrounding Musk himself, you can imagine that we had a lot to talk about.
Oh, and Keyana has a podcast that Alex was a guest on, in case you want to hear more from her! Regular service returns tomorrow!
Equity drops at 7 a.m. PT every Monday and Wednesday, and at 6 a.m. PT on Fridays, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders, one that details how our stories come together, and more!
Hello, and welcome back to Equity, the podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines.
Here's what we got into on our Monday episode, a weekly kick-off of sorts:
- Stocks are mixed around the world, up in parts of Asia and Europe, but down sharply in the United States to start the week.
- Crypto prices have recovered modestly, but remain sharply depressed from the last week. The FTX damage continues to reverberate.
- Speaking of crypto, the FTX saga continues. The latest includes a hack on Friday, and a massive emission of new FTT tokens that was so poorly received that major exchanges pulled deposits of the now-radioactive security.
- All the exchange drama has led to other exchanges taking fire, and Coinbase looking great in contrast.
- Elsewhere in tech-land: Fake meat raises a bunch more money, Klarna is doing some neat product work, India has unbanned VLC, which was a head-scratcher to begin with, and e-commerce infra startups are still raising capital!
And that’s all the time we had this morning! More Wednesday!
Equity drops at 7 a.m. PT every Monday and Wednesday, and at 6 a.m. PT on Fridays, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders, one that details how our stories come together, and more!
Hello and welcome back to Equity, a podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines.
We thought that last week was a lot. It was, but this week was somehow more. More chaotic, rapid-fire change at a number of massive tech companies kept us on our toes. So, while our beloved co-host Natasha was out, we couldn't do the recording down a set of hands, so we brought Becca aboard with Mary Ann and Alex.
The list of news was so long that we were cutting entire sections up until we hit record, and even still we went over time. If you like longer episodes, this one is for you.
- Deals of the Week: What's going on with the former Peloton CEO's new rug startup? And how is Tellus going to offer much better consumer savings rates? And, finally, how wrong can Alex get the Harmonic business model until he figures it out live on the show?
- Mega-layoffs: From there, we had to sit down and discuss the massive Meta layoffs. Our read is that the company is doing right by the folks it is cutting, which is not as much as we can say about some other companies in the world also undergoing massive staffing cuts. Naturally, this brought up Twitter to a degree, the smaller social network being the Main Character in tech news up until, well:
- WTF FTX? Ah, FTX. Last week it was worth $32 billion and its founder was arguably the face of crypto around the world. And now Sequoia has pulled its on-site hagiography, SBF is a pariah, and FTX may be going to zero. There's going to be a mini-series about this, isn't there?
We are back Monday! Have a lovely weekend!
Equity drops at 7 a.m. PT every Monday and Wednesday, and at 6 a.m. PT on Fridays, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotifyand all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders, one that details how our stories come together, and more!
Hello and welcome back to Equity, a podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines.
This is our Wednesday show, where we niche down to a single person, think about their work, and unpack the rest. This week, Natasha interviewed Nolan Church, the CEO and co-founder of Continuum, about his perspective on the tech layoff wave. While we do indeed get into how his vision of fractional work fits into this conversation, we start with the fact that Church helped conduct Carta's layoffs in 2020 (a low of his entire career, he says) and what that experience taught him about the importance of being direct.
Here are a few of the topics we get into:
- Twitter's recent layoffs, Jack's silence and who should take ownership for what
- The generic CEO statement on macroeconomic challenges
- Stripe's recent layoffs
- What is the best way to conduct a layoff, and how should you communicate with staff? How does that change based on stage?
- Is the rumor that all startups should just cut 20% of staff to extend runway accurate at all?
- If Church could go back in time, would he change anything about the way that Carta conducted its layoffs?
- What executive role is most likely to be disrupted and why Q1 may bring more doom and gloom into the tech sphere
- And finally, Church's attempt to summarize all of 2022 in a headline (I don't disagree with his final answer, by the way).
From Natasha: I'll fully take ownership for the fact that my column from just two weeks ago (!) has poorly aged. If you or someone you know is whipping up a cool program - like this - to support those laid off, hit me up on Twitter and I may just create a good news show.
Equity drops every Monday at 7 a.m. PT and Wednesday and Friday at 6 a.m. PT, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders, a show that details how our stories come together and more!
Hello and welcome back to Equity, a podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines.
- Stocks are up around the world, which is a nice thing to wake up to. Crypto prices are down a smidgen, but nothing major
- There's FTX-Binance drama afoot, in case that's your jam.
- On the Twitter beat, in the wake of rehires Musk is tweaking his work on moderation policies regarding impersonation, verification appears to be on hold, and more.
- PhotoRoom raised $19 million, the Unity megadeal is complete, no matter what we thought about it, and Yassir just raised $150 million from Bond. Has Bond been quiet lately? Not sure but dang, this round was a big one.
- There's an election tomorrow in America.
And that’s our show! More Wednesday!
Equity drops at 7 a.m. PT every Monday and Wednesday, and at 6 a.m. PT on Fridays, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders, one that details how our stories come together, and more!
Hello and welcome back to Equity, a podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines.
Oh what a week. What a week. Things are busier than ever at TechCrunch, where we're coming out of our post-conference stupor and charing straight back into a packed news cycle. Sure, Musk is still making waves, but there are startup rounds to cover, layoffs to chew on, earnings coverage, unicorn reports, new data, and more.
After cutting back sharply on material and still going long, here's what Mary Ann, Natasha, and Alex got into this week:
- Rewind wants to help people with their memory. We talk about how the startup, which launched this week, uses recording technology to help you get what you see, hear and say at your finger tips.
- We talked about Onward, a startup that wants to help divorced or separated parents fight less about money and how it just raised nearly $10 million despite being pre-revenue.
- The somewhat odd, possible Byju's IPO-spinoff of Aakash, a tutoring company that it bought the other year. Our views can be summarized in meme format: An edtech IPO? In this economy?
- Unicorns face an incredibly uphill journey to get public, which may explain in part why Byju's is not itself going public (recall that it had had plans, but like with so many other companies those are on hold).
- And then there was Brex, which announced a new partnership with Techstars despite a big push into the enterprise space.
- Stripe revealed that it has cut 14% of its staff, or over 1,100 people, and its CEO and co-founder Patrick Collison admitting that the payments giant had "overhired for the world we're in."
- And finally, there's a new VC ratings company in the neighborhood. How do we feel? Better than some VCs, at least.
Got all that? Good. More Monday morning.
Equity drops at 7 a.m. PT every Monday and Wednesday, and at 6 a.m. PT on Fridays, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders, one that details how our stories come together, and more!
Hello and welcome back to Equity, a podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines.
This is our Wednesday show, where we niche down to a single topic, think about a question and unpack the rest. This week, Natasha and Alex interviewed one of their favorite reporters, Business Insider's Melia Russell! The trio chatted through how the role of a venture capitalist is changing. That means we spoke about emerging fund managers, seasoned operators, and, of course, Russell's latest story about how some investors are re-writing the playbooks when it comes to maternity leave policies at their firms.
I don't want to tease out all the hot takes, but let's just say that this dispatch is a tad blunt. For one, apparently, no one thinks that venture firm M&A is a thing other than us. Anyways, we think you'll love the episode, learn something new about how venture is changing, and probably have a take on whether this is natural job cycle stuff or true structural changes.
We're back Friday with our weekly roundup, which, as you can imagine, is going to be packed. Chat soon!
Equity drops every Monday at 7 a.m. PT and Wednesday and Friday at 6 a.m. PT, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders, a show that details how our stories come together and more!
It's official - Elon Musk has sealed the deal on Twitter, and we're bringing you a bonus episode to talk through it all. In case you missed it, Alex took to Twitter Spaces on Friday with Darrell Etherington, Amanda Silberling, Anita Ramaswamy, and Taylor Hatmaker to process some of what’s gone down, and what comes next on a special joint Equity/TechCrunch Podcast episode, so have a listen and be sure to read all about the Elon era at Twitter on TechCrunch.
We'll talk to you again on Wednesday!
Equity drops at 7 a.m. PT every Monday and Wednesday, and at 6 a.m. PT on Fridays, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders, one that details how our stories come together, and more!
Hello and welcome back to Equity, a podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines.
- Stocks are mixed around the world, notably lower in China on the back of some negative economic data, and down in the United States ahead of what is expected to be another rise in interest rates thanks to the Federal Reserve. Crypto prices have held onto recent gains.
- A busy weekend of Twitter leaks lead the news cycle. Precisely if, and if yes, how much, Twitter can charge for verified accounts to keep their badge is now a point of conversation. Other reports of development deadlines with termination held as a threat if they are not met are likely doing great things for staffer morale.
- It turns out that self-driving cars are still far away. I am crying.
- Startups Zebra Labs and Invygo raised money, showing that the global startup investment market has not frozen, and that there is still funding for more future-facing efforts like Zebra in the metaverse.
- Finally, we're keeping close tabs on the Q4 venture capital cycle. If we don't see a rebound soon, how many unicorns die?
And that's our show! More Wednesday!
Equity drops at 7 a.m. PT every Monday and Wednesday, and at 6 a.m. PT on Fridays, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders, one that details how our stories come together, and more!
Hello and welcome back to Equity, a podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines.
We hope that you are in good form this Friday, alive, well and ready to rock. We certainly were. And in a change of pace, as our dear Mary Ann was off this week, the excellent Anita Ramaswamy joined Natasha Mascarenhas and Alex Wilhelm on the mics. (Theresa, as per usual, held down the production front!)
What did we merry three get into? The following:
- Quick Hits: Launch House is shaking up its legal team as it sifts through what is left of its reputation; Sequoia India is still making big edtech bets; and BeReal is wealthy and, in our view, pretty cool. But does it have the staying power it will need?
- Twitter layoffs: When we prepped for the show, it seemed that massive Twitter layoffs could impact up to 75% of the company's staff. Since then, the figure has come down some. How much? That's not clear, but what is is the fact that Twitter's new chapter is supposed to begin, and soon.
- King Apple: The multifront war attacking Apple's massive and pervasive demand that it gets 30% of all transaction value on the App Store continues to rack up detractors. This time? NFT and other crypto fans.
- China: We closed on a brief riff on Chinese startups!
We are back Monday for a spooky episode!
Equity drops at 7 a.m. PT every Monday and Wednesday, and at 6 a.m. PT on Fridays, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders, one that details how our stories come together, and more!
Hello and welcome back to Equity, a podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines.
This is our Wednesday show, where we niche down to a single topic, think about a question and unpack the rest. This week, Natasha is bringing one of her favorite Disrupt panels to your ears. She sat down with Chief co-founders Lindsay Kaplan and Carolyn Childers to talk about the future of their private membership club for women in leadership positions. (Shout out Bryce for this amazing live illustration he did while we were all on stage!).
The conversation touches on outlasting competitors, pandemic-defined community, the duality unicorn valuations and the word girlboss. If you love the conversation, share it with a friend. And if you want more on Chief, read a recap post that my colleague Ron Miller wrote about all things membership community and waitlists.
Equity drops every Monday at 7 a.m. PT and Wednesday and Friday at 6 a.m. PT, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders, a show that details how our stories come together and more!
Hello and welcome back to Equity, a podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines.
We are back from Disrupt, which means we're picking up the pieces of our work lives, getting back on track. Equity is now on its regular schedule, which is good. A big thanks to the entire podcast production crew for making last week happen.
Now! What did we get into this morning? The following:
- Stocks rallied around the world, but fell in China. Chinese equities suffered under investor pessimism at the cementing of Xi Jinping's authority over the country's economy. Elsewhere, hope that central bank policies would not carry as much teeth in the future as we have seen in recent months sent stocks higher.
- The finalists from the recent Startup Battlefield competition were all pretty freaking great, especially the focus that several had on making our home planet a bit cleaner, or better. Commercial solutions will be required for us to do any damn thing about the planet, so, here's to the companies working on it.
- Minerva Lithium wound up winning, which seemed legit given the sheer need we have as a people for lithium these days (it figures in battery production).
- Other points of conversation: No Instacart IPO coming, Yat Siu is still bullish on crypto games, and it is earnings season!
Ok, chat soon!
Equity drops at 7 a.m. PT every Monday and Wednesday, and at 6 a.m. PT on Fridays, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotifyand all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders, one that details how our stories come together, and more!
Hello and welcome back to Equity, a podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines.
While the crew recovers from an incredible week in SF for TechCrunch Disrupt, we dug through the archives for a conversation you may have missed. Natasha was joined by TC+ reporter Rebecca Szkutak to wade through the news of the week. It was frantic, it was full, and forgettable it was not!
Here's what we got into:
- Quick note from Becca on Neumann's return and if follow-on funding will be a possibility for Flow -- given some investors reactions.
- Our two deals of the week include an innovative step for hearing aid startups and a new take on international money transfer.
- For hearing loss tech, a new FDA ruling allows hearing aids to be sold over the counter. We dove in to how this regulatory change helps open the door for startups to innovate in the category.
- Speaking of regulatory pains, we spoke about how employee-benefits startups might escape cost cuts as companies seek to retain talent. Don't know about you but I'd prefer to lose free food over mental health support.
- We ended with notes on two geographies.
- Looking at the Midwest, we talked about how LPs aren't backing funds in the region this year despite many VCs considering it to be one of the safer areas to invest right now.
- Comparing the Southeast and Midwest, we spoke about how lower valuations are helping fuel both regions to have a good year.
And that's all for now. We'll catch you next week, and in the meantime if you're feeling up to it, consider leaving us a great rating on Apple Podcasts. It goes a long way.
Equity drops every Monday at 7 a.m. PDT and Wednesday and Friday at 6 a.m. PDT, so subscribe to us onApple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify a_nd all the casts._
Hello and welcome back to Equity, a podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines. And for the first time in the history of the show, the TechCrunch pod that opened up Disrupt on the big stage. Alex, Natasha and Mary Ann got to be together to record in person for the first-time ever, and it went exactly as wild as you thought it would (we forgot this is what make up feels like!).
We started with a deal of the week, which, in typical Equity style, had to be about a snarky comeback story and inequity. Then we spoke about our three themes of the year, ranging from reputation checks to scrappy requests to, of course, grace as a leadership style.
- Natasha wanted to talk about, in her own words, the nuance of reputation but more importantly when it matters versus when it’s ignored.
- Alex wanted to riff on starting being forced to learn how to be scrappy, after a long period of being perhaps over-stuffed.
- And, finally, Mary Ann wanted to discuss the importance of humility. Which, frankly, is not something that we talk about enough.
Thank you to everyone who came out to our live show, and for those who didn't, hope you enjoy and meet us next year. Onward!
Equity drops every Monday at 7 a.m. PT and Wednesday and Friday at 6 a.m. PT, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders, a show that details how our stories come together and more!
Hello and welcome back to Equity, a podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines.
Don’t forget that the code “EQUITY” can save you money on Disrupt tickets and TechCrunch+ access. And it makes us here on the show look good!
Hell yeah, this is our Monday show. And heck yes, we are recording Equity live tomorrow morning at Disrupt. Get super stoked, because we are hype. That said, we did have a lot to get news done for you this morning. Here's what Theresa and Alex went through this morning:
- Stocks are up in many parts of the world, including the United States, where software shares are ripping north as the week begins. Very kind of the market to kick off Disrupt with some good news.
- Crypto is quieter, with prices not changing much and the general vibe of the market not evolving a whit.
- Kanye West, also known as Ye, is buying niche social network Parler in a deal that will see the musician, fashion mogul, and controversy generator buy the service — but not the infrastructure that powers it. Parler is not very popular at the moment and has stiff competition from other various celebrity-owned (or soon-to-be celebrity-owned) social networks Truth Social and Twitter.
- It is worth noting that West bought Parler after running into trouble with mainstream social services over his antisemitic posts.
- Ambi Robotics raised new capital, as did Byju's, and the Chinese chip industry is in turmoil after the United States kicked it in the shins.
Woo! That's our show. We will see you tomorrow morning at Disrupt! Come and get an Equity pin and be The Coolest.
Equity drops at 7 a.m. PT every Monday and Wednesday, and at 6 a.m. PT on Fridays, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders, one that details how our stories come together, and more!
AUDIO
Hello and welcome back to Equity, a podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines. Before we get into this week’s show notes, some programming items:
- First up, use code “EQUITY” for a special listener discount for Disrupt tickets. We’re mere days away, and you should come hang out with us when we record on opening day!
- We also have a special for those impacted by layoffs. If you were laid off, go here to get a free ticket to TechCrunch Disrupt’s Expo!
That behind us, what did Mary Ann, Natasha and Alex get into today? A whole host of things. Here's the rundown:
- Getaway and Pacaso: What happens if you mix Airbnb, vacation homes, timeshares, and REITs? A very interesting startup cluster, it turns out. These two companies brought Mary Ann and Natasha into the same reporting space and gave us a good chance to discuss the luxury market.
- The Muse gets acquisitive: One of the most interesting deals we saw in the last week was The Muse buying Fairygodboss, a recruiting platform aimed at working mothers. The deal got us thinking about roll-ups in various sectors of the startup market, and where we might first see more activity. As Natasha recently put it in Startups Weekly, here's three words to consider about the market right now: Toil, Trouble, Startup Acquisitions.
- Party/Hangover: Mary Ann's weekly column, The Interchange, is a brill focused look at the latest (and sometimes the not-so-greatest) in fintech. We talk about her recent interview with Index's Mark Goldberg, and why he's talking about the party being over and crypto a side character.
- Q3 VC: Alex is digging through Q3 venture capital data as quickly as possible, working to get an understanding of where things are. It appears that United States-based venture activity is hanging in there, while the picture is a bit more dire globally. Elsewhere, fintech investment is falling, as is dealmaking in crypto-land.
- Ownership for all: We end with a look at some recent efforts to challenge venture's traditional structure. Shout out to Chattanooga's Brickyard, which recently raised a $17 million fund, on giving founders 10% of the GP's carried interest in the new fund. Sharing is caring. And really, it's just fair.
OK! That's it! It's time to pack up and make the trip to San Francisco, where we cannot wait to see your pretty faces. Chat soon!
Equity drops every Monday at 7 a.m. PT and Wednesday and Friday at 6 a.m. PT, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders, a show that details how our stories come together and more!
Sarah Guo isn't late to the AI party, but she did just raise a $101 million fund to bet on the appetizers.
Hello and welcome back to Equity, a podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines. This is our Wednesday show, where we niche down to a single person, think about their work, and unpack the rest. This week, Natasha and Alex interviewed Guo, who worked at Greylock for nearly a decade, and her launch of Conviction.
We spoke about the self-correcting venture market, what made her leave Greylock, and even rewound to her last episode with us (recorded almost exactly three years ago).
There was also an especially fruitful conversation about the opportunity in artificial intelligence right now, and how she's defining Software 3.0. (Warning: We talk about SaaS!) We also dug into why she started a fund, the LP market, and more. The conversation ran a bit long, but it felt reasonable to keep going given the sheer breadth of stuff that we wanted to get through.
Don't forget that Equity is going to be live at Disrupt next week, on Tuesday morning. It's going to be a blast. And before we go, two programming notes (that help your wallet, too):
- First up, use code “EQUITY” for a special listener discount for Disrupt tickets. We’re less than one month away!
- We also have a special for those impacted by layoffs. If you were laid off, go here to get a free ticket to TechCrunch Disrupt’s Expo.
Equity drops every Monday at 7 a.m. PT and Wednesday and Friday at 6 a.m. PT, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders, a show that details how our stories come together and more!
Hello and welcome back to Equity, a podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines.
Don’t forget that the code “EQUITY” can save you money on Disrupt tickets and TechCrunch+ access. And it makes us here on the show look good!
We're gearing up to take the show on the road in short order, but don't worry about that this week. Service will continue as usual until we kick off Disrupt next Tuesday!
Today, we got into the weeds about:
- Markets: Stocks are down in most of the world, albeit somewhat mixed in Europe. Crypto is mostly flat, with the XRP breaking the trend by being interesting. The Block reports that crypto volumes ticked higher in September, which could bode well.
- Startups: Clerkenwell Health just raised a couple million pounds for testing alternative medications for mental health conditions. We're excited about that. And Trendsi raised a $25 million Series A, which is no small deal, as we had expected to see smaller early-stage rounds this year. Good on Trendsi!
- Quick Hits: Kanye West and Elon Musk once again took over the news cycle, this time after the former got into trouble for anti-Semitic posts on Instagram and Twitter. In between, Musk welcomed Ye back to Twitter. Also Tizen is not dead, and PayPal is having a hellish start to the week.
- Don't forget: We are live next week on the first day of Disrupt! Come hang!
More to come Wednesday, and Friday. I can't wait!
Equity drops at 7 a.m. PT every Monday and Wednesday, and at 6 a.m. PT on Fridays, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotifyand all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders, one that details how our stories come together, and more!
Hello and welcome back to Equity, a podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines. Before we get into this week’s show notes, some programming notes:
- First up, use code “EQUITY” for a special listener discount for Disrupt tickets. We’re mere weeks away, and you should come hang out with us when we record on opening day!
- We also have a special for those impacted by layoffs. If you were laid off, go here to get a free ticket to TechCrunch Disrupt’s Expo!
Alright, throat clearing aside, here's what we got into this week:
- $700M water? Yeah, the Liquid Death round was a big deal in the news this week because everyone had an opinion on the matter. Us included. While there's good reason to doubt the DTC model today -- cough cough, public markets -- Alex was on hand to stand up for the, er, near unicorn.
- How much should you pay your staff? From there it was time to chat about fair compensation, and how a startup called Comprehensive wants to take a crack at the question. It just raised $6 million.
- Duolingo goes shopping! Yes, we've covered this company before. And, yes, it is now public. But Duolingo snapping up another company gave us the chance to yammer a bit about edtech more generally, and we're always going to take that chance.
- Naver, Poshmark, and Depop: Naver's move to swoop up Poshmark is the story of two major companies finding union. But since the Poshmark deal was similar to the 2021-era Depop deal, it fit into our remit. After all, Poshmark and Depop were both venture darlings once upon a time.
- Twitter, Elon, round 472: Since we recorded this podcast, there's been even more Elon-Twitter news. God we're tired of it.
- Kim Kardashian's crypto issue: Far be it from us to give advice, but if you are going to take $250,000 to shill a shitcoin, do disclose the payment!
And that is our show. We're on a regular schedule next week, and then live the week after!
Equity drops every Monday at 7 a.m. PT and Wednesday and Friday at 6 a.m. PT, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders, a show that details how our stories come together and more!
Hello and welcome back to Equity, a podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines.
This is our Wednesday show, where we niche down to a single topic, think about a question and unpack the rest. This week, Alex asked: How are platforms responding to the new creator landscape? (Don't worry, the Wednesday show is still Natasha's to lead, she was just a little under the weather this week!)
Happily, Alex was not running solo, as TechCrunch's own Amanda Silberling was with the show this week -- not for the first time! -- to chat through the key questions we wanted to parse our way through:
- What is the new creator landscape?
- How did we get to today from the go-go 2020/2021 period of creator-focused venture deals?
- What are creator-focused platforms focused on today?
- And, finally, what options do creators have today, based on our understanding of the market?
The idea for the episode stems in part from our reporting, including this recent look at the amount of money that creator-targeting startups have raised in recent quarters. (Also in the news? Substack, Patreon, and others!)
Before we say goodbye and come back on Friday, two quick notes from the team:
- You can use the code “EQUITY” for a special listener discount for Disrupt tickets. We’re just weeks away!
- And we also have a special for those impacted by layoffs. If you were laid off, go here to get a free ticket to TechCrunch Disrupt’s Expo.
See you there, and chat you Friday!
Equity drops every Monday at 7 a.m. PT and Wednesday and Friday at 6 a.m. PT, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotifyand all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders, a show that details how our stories come together and more!
Hello and welcome back to Equity, a podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines.
Don’t forget that the code “EQUITY” can save you money on Disrupt tickets and TechCrunch+ access. And it makes us here on the show look good!
- Markets: Stocks are largely down around the world, yet set to rise here on American exchanges. Perhaps the domestic selloff is pausing? Elsewhere in the world of money, cryptocurrencies are boring in the last week.
- Startups: Big news from TikTok, including notes on how quickly it has been adding revenue in Europe and the fact that the social network is forging ahead with a new social shopping effort in the United States. And, Talk360 added even more dosh to its recent funding round, which TechCrunch dug into here.
- Quick Hits: Kim Kardashian is in trouble for crypto promotions past, to the tune of a seven-figure settlement. That's a lot of capital, frankly, and we're curious who will be next under the SEC's hammer. Oh, and Tesla delivery numbers are in, and the markets are not happy.
- Don't Forget: Equity is kicking off Disrupt in just a few weeks. Come hang out!
Woot! We are out of here for now. Catch you soon!
Equity drops every Monday at 7 a.m. PT and Wednesday and Friday at 6 a.m. PT, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotifyand all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders, a show that details how our stories come together and more!
Hello and welcome back to Equity, a podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines. Before we get into this week's show notes, some programming notes:
- First up, use code “EQUITY” for a special listener discount for Disrupt tickets. We’re less than one month away!
- We also have a special for those impacted by layoffs. If you were laid off, go here to get a free ticket to TechCrunch Disrupt’s Expo.
Ok, now to the show. This week, Natasha, Mary Ann and Rebecca took the mic, with Theresa on production duty, to talk through quite a diverse news cycle.
- Our deals of the week were Scout, HopSkipDrive and Hustle Fund's new fund (so I think you finally get the headline of this show).
- Then we jumped into the human side of the layoff story, as Mary Ann and Christine dug into four stories of those impacted by the Better.com layoff spree.
https://techcrunch.com/2022/09/28/better-com-employees-detail-their-experiences/
- After that, we debated whether or not the Adobe/Figma deal will spur more M&A considering the lack of companies going public and the state of the venture market.
- Speaking of the venture market, we ended with a discussion about how VCs are funding again, but focusing on certain stages, and then looked ahead at what Q4 might look like.
Equity drops every Monday at 7 a.m. PT and Wednesday and Friday at 6 a.m. PT, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders, a show that details how our stories come together and more!
Hello and welcome back to Equity, a podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines.
This is our Wednesday show, where we niche down to a single topic, think about a question and unpack the rest. This week, Natasha asked: How does the "build in public" mindset impact the way that startups are built? Alex and Natasha chatted through the difference between building in public, going direct, startup PR, and just straight-up hype.
We spoke about the challenges in community and recent examples that show the difficulty of building in public (and then clamming up).
The conversation included Launch House, Copy.ai, On Deck, Egnyte, and even Databricks. While we have very biased reasons for more companies to build in public -- we love to learn things! -- we tried to expand the conversation to include more perspectives.
We'll be back on Friday with our regular news roundup, an episode that may include a voice that you'll hear more frequently in the coming months!
Before we go, two programming notes (that help your wallet, too):
- First up, use code "EQUITY" for a special listener discount for Disrupt tickets. We're less than one month away!
- We also have a special for those impacted by layoffs. If you were laid off, go here to get a free ticket to TechCrunch Disrupt's Expo.
Equity drops every Monday at 7 a.m. PT and Wednesday and Friday at 6 a.m. PT, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast,Spotifyand all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders, a show that details how our stories come together and more!
Hello and welcome back to Equity, a podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines.
Don’t forget that the code “EQUITY” can save you money on Disrupt tickets and TechCrunch+ access. And it makes us here on the show look good!
- Markets: Stocks are mostly down around the world today, taking especially large hits in Asia. U.S. shares are set to fall as well when they begin to trade. Major cryptos are also off in the last 24 hours, but not enough to make a fuss about.
- Startups: Today we took a look at new fundraises at Vendease, an African logistics company in the food space, and Disperse, a U.K-based construction tech company that wants to map building sites. That market, it turns out, is huge.
- Quick Hits: Do Kwon has been hit with a red notice, which means that he will likely soon be in custody. However, some are irked that he's in trouble for causing a financial meltdown and losing a lot of folks' money. What's the argument there? That he wasn't being malicious, and instead was merely, we presume, stupid. Not a great argument in terms of making Do Kwon look good, but that's where we are. Also in the mix: The new iPhone is being built in India and TikTok may find regulatory reprieve.
- Closing Riff: Goodbye Q3 2022, hello Q4 2022. This is the last Equity Monday of the third quarter, a period that few of us are going to look back on and miss.
That's our show! We are back Wednesday and Friday!
Equity drops every Monday at 7 a.m. PT and Wednesday and Friday at 6 a.m. PT, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotifyand all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders, a show that details how our stories come together and more!
Hello and welcome back to Equity, a podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines.
Coming to hang with us at Disrupt, where Equity is kicking off the entire event? Use code 'EQUITY' to save 15% on your tickets. Hell yeah, and see you there!
Alex, Natasha and Mary Ann jumped on the mic, with Theresa running production, to talk through the biggest headlines from the week!
- Deals of the Week! This time 'round we had Polywork raising $28 million, Block Party raising $4.8 million, and Remofirst and its own recent fundraise. Naturally we had to leave 234 deals on the cutting room floor, but these were the ones we could not wait to chat more about. Also, don't Polywork, Block Party and Remofirst sound like fun people to get dinner with? Just us?
- Insurtech goes Niche: From there it was time to riff on a series of stories from Mary Ann, focused on specialized insurtech companies, and the fact that Pie just proved that it is still possible to raise nine-figures as an insurance-focused startup.
- The Great Delivery Wars: Next up was News From Instacart, including the fact that its IPO is still underway, and that it is busy launching products as it meanders towards the public markets. It turns out as well that a bunch of companies would love more than a slice of its business. Doordash, for one.
- Layoffs and more: And then layoffs. Layoffs at Metafy, layoffs at Sundae, and layoffs at Ola. We, however, found a silver lining and ran with that.
Equity drops every Monday at 7 a.m. PDT and Wednesday and Friday at 6 a.m. PDT, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders, a show that details how our stories come together, and more!
Hello and welcome back to Equity, a podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines.
This is our Wednesday show, where we niche down to a single topic, think about a question and unpack the rest. This week, Natasha asked: What does breaking into venture capital look like today, and how is it changing? Alex and Becca jumped on the mic to discuss this and start with a refresh on our latest op-ed: "4 views on unpaid venture internships."
- We talked through three buckets of venture onramps: the traditional route, the new wave and the tourist strategy. Each has their own pros and cons, and includes everything from rolling funds to the real definition of partner.
- We also covered more on the value of certain on ramps, and if network is the right thing to disrupt (or if its more track record based)
- We tried not to gang up on Dorm Room Fund too much, but did chat about why their $12.5 million fund that's run by unpaid students irked us and other initiatives we thought were better for those trying to break into VC.
- For more stories on this topic, read our bevy of coverage:
- 7 first-time fund managers detail how they’re preparing to thrive during the downturn
- Emerging managers should take advantage of the slower fundraising market by courting LPs
- VC fundraising gets weird as autumn nears
- Some institutional LPs have started pulling back from VC, but most won’t
Equity drops every Monday at 7 a.m. PDT and Wednesday and Friday at 6 a.m. PDT, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotifyand all the casts.
Hello and welcome back to Equity, a podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines.
Don’t forget that the code “EQUITY” can save you money on Disrupt tickets and TechCrunch+ access. And it makes us here on the show look good!
Here's what we got into this Fine Monday Morning:
- Stocks are down around the world, while crypto-assets are down even more; post-Merge you might have anticipated better performance from tokens, but it has not yet come to be.
- The WSJ has some juicy notes on the upcoming Instacart IPO, namely that it is not expecting to sell a lot of its own stock in the transaction. Why does that matter? It tells us that the company is not burning that much cash -- a useful thing to know ahead of an anticipated IPO filing coming this year.
- From startup-land: Ola is cutting jobs, two delivery logistics startups are merging in Sweden, and Byld Ventures is putting together a venture capital fund to watch.
- Finally, Do Kown is a wanted man, shares of TakeTwo are down quite a bit following a massive leak.
And that is our Monday show! Chat you on Wednesday and Friday!
Equity drops every Monday at 7 a.m. PDT and Wednesday and Friday at 6 a.m. PDT, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts.
If you are into web3, the biggest news of the week in tech was not the massive Figma-Adobe deal. No, the leading story of the last few days -- arguably even the last few weeks -- has been the Ethereum Merge.
The Merge, an upgrade to the Ethereum blockchain that moved it from a proof of work (PoW) to a proof of stake (PoS) system of consensus was a long-awaited shift that finally took place this week. And as the change in technology is expected to reduce the carbon footprint of the popular blockchain by ~99%, we had lots to get into.
https://techcrunch.com/2022/09/15/now-that-the-ethereum-merge-is-behind-us-whats-next/
But we didn't just want to riff on the startup angle, or the web3 perspective, because the Merge had huge implications for crypto as an industry and its place in the world of emerging tech. That's why we got together our startup and blockchain podcast teams for a collab episode to hit both angles: Anita and Jacquie from Chain Reaction, and Natasha and Alex from Equity. This also gave us a 50-50 TechCrunch-TechCrunch+ split, which was good fun.
We started by setting the scene with how the anticipation around this monumental event in web3 has affected token prices and dug into what factors had been fueling optimism. Then we broke down the mechanics behind why proof-of-stake is greener, but may be less decentralized than proof-of-work (though each us had different takes on whether that's a fair assessment).
Pulling off the Merge was an event requiring such technical coordination and rigor that it's been compared to the moon landing. Now that it's happened, what will be the impacts on web3 startups? What about the rest of the tech industry, or large financial institutions, or Chinese crypto miners? We walked through all these questions and more, trying to address both what the Merge is and why it matters through as holistic a lens as possible.
Just as there are tons of different stakeholders affected by the Merge, who all think differently, so do we. This episode had lots of back-and-forth as the team unpacked some quirky pieces of crypto jargon like the term "baker" and what it means in a proof-of-stake ecosystem as well as the timeline of what comes after the Merge, which includes the Surge, Verge, Purge and Splurge. No joke -- we explain what those mean in this episode.
We'll do more of this sort of thing as time goes along, thanks to some welcome resource bumps to our production crew (huge shoutout to Grace, Theresa and Maggie).
For more on the Merge, required reading can be found here, here, and here. Onward!
Equity drops every Monday at 7 a.m. PDT and Wednesday and Friday at 6 a.m. PDT, so subscribe to us on *Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts.*
Chain Reaction comes out every Tuesday and Thursday at 12:00 p.m. PDT, so be sure to subscribe to us on *Apple Podcasts, Overcast and Spotify to keep up with the action.*
Hello and welcome back to Equity, a podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines.
Alex, Natasha and Mary Ann jumped on the mic, with Theresa on backup, to talk through the biggest headlines.
- We started with a look at the Figma-Adobe deal, worth some $20 billion. TechCrunch's news coverage is here, and Alex has more notes here.
- Deals of the Week: Maven, Patreon, and Modulous.
- We also spoke about the Launch House issue, and what to make of the model, and management of the company. The conversation naturally landed us on just what community is.
- From there, Europe! Which is seeing a wave a new venture funds, leading to some notable intra-continent competition.
- And then we wrapped with a short note on the latest on the Twitter-Musk deal.
If you are coming to Disrupt, use the code “EQUITY” to save 15%. It makes us look good internally, and gets you a cheaper discount to our first Disrupt live show in the history of the podcast.
Equity drops every Monday at 7 a.m. PDT and Wednesday and Friday at 6 a.m. PDT, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts.
Hello and welcome back to Equity, a podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines.
This is our Wednesday show, where we niche down to a single topic, think about a question and unpack the rest. This week, Natasha and Alex asked: How is YC evolving to meet a changed market? The question is fresh off of Demo Day last week, where Team TC and TC+ banded forces to cover the twice-a-year event that sees hundreds of startups launch to the public.
These days, Seibel doesn't often do press -- and neither does YC -- so the interview was used to connect the dots on recent news from the accelerator, cross check top trends from this past batch and ask about some of the biggest critiques people have about the institution today.
We went a bit long, but figured it was worth it given the way the conversation was going. Equity has a live show on Thursday, and lots more to come. Chat soon!
Equity drops every Monday at 7 a.m. PDT and Wednesday and Friday at 6 a.m. PDT, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast,Spotifyand all the casts.
Hello and welcome back to Equity, a podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines.
Don't forget that the code "EQUITY" can save you money on Disrupt ticketsand TechCrunch+ access. And it makes us here on the show look good!
Now, what did we get into today?
- Stocks are higher around the world, while major cryptos have risen sharply in the last week.
- The Ethereum update known as the 'Merge' is just around the corner. The change in consensus model at ETH is a big darn deal. How the tech change goes, and what the market reaction is to it, will be key events this week.
- And speaking of crypto, the SEC is getting even busier in its efforts to have more oversight of the space.
- From the startup front, Gotham Greens and Diveplane both raised money, $310 million and $25 million respectively. Each are a part of neat, growing sectors in startup-land, making their fundraising a bit more impactful than individual rounds tend to be.
- And then quick takes: Everyone's worried about TikTok, Amazon's content budget is bonkers, and EQT has a huge new fund.
We are back Wednesday, and our Friday show will be taped live on Thursday!
Equity drops every Monday at 7 a.m. PDT and Wednesday and Friday at 6 a.m. PDT, so subscribe to us onApple Podcasts,Overcast,Spotifyand all the casts.
Hello and welcome back to Equity, a podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines. As you can tell by the headline of this episode, this is a bonus episode all about Y Combinator Demo Day (and the terms we heard most often during the two-day affair).
Natasha and Alex jumped on Twitter Spaces to talk through our favorites of the batch, geography changes, and diversity shake-up that included less women getting funded batch over batch. Below are some of the posts we pulled from:
- The biggest moonshots in YC’s S22 batch
- Our 11 favorite companies from YC’s S22 Demo Day: Part 1
- Our 10 favorite startups from YC’s S22 Demo Day: Part 2
- Delving into YC’s diversity data following a category shakeup
- Where is Y Combinator startup-hunting in 2022?
Y Combinator week is busy, but we made it through! Talk Monday!
Equity drops every Monday at 7 a.m. PDT and Wednesday and Friday at 6 a.m. PDT, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts.
Hello and welcome back to Equity, a podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines.
What.
A.
Week.
Alex, Natasha and Mary Ann jumped on the mic, with Theresa on backup, to talk through the biggest headlines. For our Apple coverage, click here. For our YC coverage, click here.
All that aside, here's what we got into on today's episode:
- Kim Kardashian surprised us all -- yet again -- with the news that she is co-founding a private equity firm. We also talked about how Userpilot raised $4.6 million to help SaaS companies offer a more personalized user experience and Varjo - an early mover in building XR headsets and software for enterprises - landing $40 million in new funding.
- We pivoted to riff on a couple of acquisitions in the grocery delivery space, both of which thought were pretty cool and made sense. Instacart acquired Rosie (gotta love the name) in an example of not putting all its eggs in one basket, and Misfit Markets announced it is buying Imperfect Foods.
- Next, we talked about a couple of venture firms -- Kapor Capital and Countdown Capital -- raising new, second funds. Notably, both firms are looking to back historically overlooked founders and industries, which we -- and their LPs -- are 100% here for.
- And lastly, we had a lively debate on AI and its impact on the creator economy -- discussing topics such as AI-generated porn and whether AI-driven art is truly art.
If you are coming to Disrupt, use the code "EQUITY" to save 15%. It makes us look good internally, and gets you a cheaper discount to our first Disrupt live show in the history of the podcast.
Equity drops every Monday at 7 a.m. PDT and Wednesday and Friday at 6 a.m. PDT, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts.
Hello and welcome back to Equity, a podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines.
This is our Wednesday show, where we niche down to a single topic and unpack the rest. Today we asked: How is the economic downturn and startup slowdown impacting VCs, and the folks who finance venture capital funds?
Unlike our usual mid-week episodes, Natasha was not at the helm. Instead, Alex stood in for her and brought along TechCrunch+ venture capital reporter Rebecca Szkutak in the co-hosting slot. Rebecca is an ace when it comes to the mechanics of venture capital, making her the perfect voice for the day.
To start, Alex and Rebecca riffed on the state of startups in today's market -- and if things are as bad as some make them out to be. From there, the Equity crew talked through the venture capital response to changing market conditions. And the conversation wrapped with notes on what LPs are doing, whether they should be or not.
While we largely focus on startups and founders on the pod, it's also good to step back once in a while and talk about the money behind the money. That's what we did today. Enjoy!
Equity drops every Monday at 7 a.m. PDT and Wednesday and Friday at 6 a.m. PDT, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast,Spotify and all the casts.
Hello and welcome back to Equity, a podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines.
We are back on a Tuesday instead of a Monday thanks to an American holiday, which means we are looking at a compressed week. But don't let the shorter window for news fool you -- it's going to be busy.
- Stocks are largely higher today, but off the back of some rough trading weeks so don't read too much into the bounce. The world of crypto appears pretty quiet, as it has for some time now.
- Y Combinator Demo Day is this week, which means a flood of startups and other news is in the offing. TechCrunch will be all over the news, naturally. Strap in.
- And there's an Apple event this week as well, possibly bringing new iPhones and other related consumer gear. How excited you are about that will depend on how old your current phone is.
- From there, it was time for economic concerns and worries about how a worse, or lesser macroeconomic picture could impact startups. We talk a lot about market size, and venture investment. But what about the macro-climate itself?
- And to close out, what is Binance doing?
No live show this week, but we are back tomorrow and Friday! Hugs and talk soon.
Equity drops every Monday at 7 a.m. PDT and Wednesday and Friday at 6 a.m. PDT, so subscribe to us onApple Podcasts,Overcast,Spotify and all the casts.
Hello and welcome back to Equity, a podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines.
This was a Live Week, meaning that Alex, Natasha and Mary Ann recorded the show on Twitter Spaces, hanging out with a bunch of the Equity family. Good times were had! We also disclosed that we are recording live at Disrupt this year! Yes, so come hang out as we tape the show on opening day, full of coffee and enthusiasm.
Now, to the show notes. Here's what we have in store for you:
- Deals of the Week: Stacked, which is taking on Twitch with a web3 twist; Astro, which wants to help connect Latin American developers to American companies; Anchor, which is building a BaaS platform in Africa.
- From there we riffed on the big changes at Y Combinator, and what it means for an early-stage venture firm managing over $3.2 billion in assets. The executive shift touched down just in advance of next week's demo day. Next week is going to be busy.
- Then Mary Ann walked us through issues at real-estate focused fintech startups, namely that they are burning too much money. Naturally this meant that we had to mention Better.com, again.
- And we closed with layoff news from Snap, and Clearco. Both stories are vastly different but compare in the layoffs, retraction in international presence, and promise for more focus in the future.
If you are coming to Disrupt, use the code 'EQUITY' to save 15%. It makes us look good internally, and gets you a cheaper discount to our first Disrupt live show in the history of the podcast. And, speaking of the pod, Equity is back next Tuesday, not Monday, due to the American holiday. Ok! Bye!
Equity drops every Monday at 7 a.m. PDT and Wednesday and Friday at 6 a.m. PDT, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts.
Hello and welcome back to Equity, a podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines.
This is our Wednesday show, where we niche down to a single topic, think about a question and unpack the rest. This week, along with Alex's help, Natasha asked: Who should be raising Party Rounds?
The episode was inspired by Natasha’s recent Startups Weekly column, “When the party has confetti but no allergen-friendly appetizers" and the companion TechCrunch+ piece with Anita, “Investment clubs are cool again, and maybe community is, too.”
Here's what we got into:
- The definition of party rounds, boundaries and the fact that we don't entirely agree on if there needs to be a lead or nah
- How has party round funding changed? What place do they hold in the ecosystem?
- Is this vehicle better for experienced founders versus first-time founders?
- The pros and cons of each side
Equity drops every Monday at 7 a.m. PDT and Wednesday and Friday at 6 a.m. PDT, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts.
Hello and welcome back to Equity, a podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines.
This week Alex was back with Grace and our new producer Theresa Loconsolo to kick off the week. This Monday morning we recorded right before Garry Tan announced that he was heading back to Y Combinator as its President. Dang.
But we still had a good sheaf of things to talk about!
- Stocks are not having a good day around the world, after having a pretty tough last Friday. It's hardly bullish for the IPO market.
- Things weren't much better in crypto-land, where bitcoin and ether are off from their week-ago prices, and NFT volumes remain muted.
- And speaking of quiet, startup news -- Y Combinator apart! -- was modest over the weekend. It appears that the August slowdown is both real, and here. Frankly startups could use a shot in the arm to get venture back closer to 2021's level of insanity. Can the Instacart IPO that we expect be the needed catalyst?
- Another potential catalyst of Good Vibes that we are tracking is whether, and when Tether's audit finally does happen.
- Also in the news: Honda is going to spend big to build batteries in the United States; Indian mobile connectivity is set to improve in the next year; and Meta and Indian conglomerate Reliance are teaming up for ecommerce.
Equity is back Wednesday Thursday for a live show! Chat soon!
Equity drops every Monday at 7 a.m. PDT and Wednesday and Friday at 6 a.m. PDT, so subscribe to us onApple Podcasts,Overcast,Spotify and all the casts.
Hello and welcome back to Equity, a podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines.
Want to save some dosh on TechCrunch+? Use the code 'EQUITY' at checkout for a big discount on annual subscriptions!
Alex, Natasha and Mary Ann are back and as a three were in good spirits with more than a bit of news to parse. Grace, Theresa, and Kell made the magic happen, for which we're thankful. Here's what we got into:
- Just what OrangeDAO is, and why it matters. Our deals of the week this time 'round had a particular flavor. See if you can spot it!
- Next up was Spectral's $23 million raise (web3 credit scores), and Mural's latest, a $6.5 million round for DAO treasury management.
- Scooting along, we looked into Alex's reporting on shrinking late-stage rounds, a surprisingly strong seed market, and what's good with the unicorn crew.
- Then it was time to talk Stripe layoffs before pivoting over to the latest issues stemming from Adam Neumann's latest startup, and the Musk-Twitter dustup.
- To close, we noted the latest from Instacart and the fact that Zoom is not having the best of times lately.
That's our show! We are back Monday!
Equity drops every Monday at 7 a.m. PDT and Wednesday and Friday at 6 a.m. PDT, so subscribe to us onApple Podcasts,Overcast,Spotify and all the casts.
Hello and welcome back to Equity, a podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines.
This is our Wednesday show, where we niche down to a single topic, think about a question and unpack the rest. This week, Natasha asked: What happens when a Black founder was ousted? Alex was back on the mic after a week away, and we brought on Dominic-Madori Davis (follow her on Twitter and Instagram) to talk us through the topic. After all, the core question was inspired by her latest TC+ column.
Here's what we got into:
- The growing tensions at Black Girls Code, which began last December with Bryant's "indefinite suspension."
- Bryant's eventual ouster, which happened earlier this month, and the outpouring of public support for the leader. That conversation brought us into the reality of who gets to speak up publicly, and who can only do so off the record and without attribution.
- Davis piece about the symbolism of a Black founder being removed from a position of leadership
- Inherent bias and how to navigate that in the stories we hear and tips we receive.
Equity drops every Monday at 7 a.m. PDT and Wednesday and Friday at 6 a.m. PDT, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts.
Hello and welcome back to Equity, a podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines.
This week Alex was back with Grace and our new producer to kick off the week. Now that we are through earnings season, things are a little quieter on the forecast front, but that didn't mean that we were short on material:
- Stocks are down around the world, while crypto prices remain depressed in the last week; NFT volume continues its negative drift.
- CNBC got FTX revenue numbers! Only through the first quarter of 2022, sadly, meaning that we have a good idea of what the company did through March of this year. That is good, but not great. Why not? Q2 is really the turning point for crypto exchanges, Coinbase data indicates. So we got the stuff that makes FTX look good. We need more.
- The Socar IPO was kinda meh, in the end. While we welcome any and all IPOs at this point, hopes may have been for a stronger welcome on the South Korean stock market for the SoftBank-backed company. TechCrunch has more.
- And from the Quick Hit folder, Tesla is raising the price of its driver-assist system, Amazon is looking to buy more healthcare assets, NSO may reform, and SPACs are kaput.
Equity is back Wednesday and Friday this week, as we do not have a live show. Chat soon!
Equity drops every Monday at 7 a.m. PDT and Wednesday and Friday at 6 a.m. PDT, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts,Overcast,Spotify and all the casts.
Hello and welcome back to Equity, a podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines.
This week, Natasha was joined by TC+ reporter Rebecca Szkutak to wade through the news of the week. It was frantic, it was full, and forgettable it was not!
Here's what we got into:
- Quick note from Becca on Neumann's return and if follow-on funding will be a possibility for Flow -- given some investors reactions.
- Our two deals of the week include an innovative step for hearing aid startups and a new take on international money transfer.
- For hearing loss tech, a new FDA ruling allows hearing aids to be sold over the counter. We dove in to how this regulatory change helps open the door for startups to innovate in the category.
- Speaking of regulatory pains, we spoke about how employee-benefits startups might escape cost cuts as companies seek to retain talent. Don't know about you but I'd prefer to lose free food over mental health support.
- We ended with notes on two geographies.
- Looking at the Midwest, we talked about how LPs aren't backing funds in the region this year despite many VCs considering it to be one of the safer areas to invest right now.
- Comparing the Southeast and Midwest, we spoke about how lower valuations are helping fuel both regions to have a good year.
And that's all for now. We'll catch you next week, and in the meantime if you're feeling up to it, consider leaving us a great rating on Apple Podcasts. It goes a long way.
Equity drops every Monday at 7 a.m. PDT and Wednesday and Friday at 6 a.m. PDT, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts.
Hello and welcome back to Equity, a podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines.
This is our Wednesday show, where we niche down to a single topic, think about a question and unpack the rest. And, I mean, are you surprised what we're working with this week? Of course we're talking about Flow, Adam Neumann's a16z-fueled return to real estate that is already reportedly valued above $1 billion.
This week, Natasha asked: Is the return is a result of vision, track record, or Adam Neumann-privilege? She's joined by Anita Ramaswamy, the co-host of TechCrunch's crypto-focused podcast Chain Reaction. The duo wrote a piece about the tech community's reaction to Neumann's new startup, so consider this episode a mic'd up follow-up:
- The news, what we know, and what we still don't - including how much of that $350 million check is cash
- The reporter's notebook take on how to cover news that is sensationalist in nature. Do we give oxygen to something that is meant for a reaction? And when is something worth capturing versus worth waiting to see materialize?
- Why folks get checks, and Neumann's background in vision, track record and ability to raise money. After all, to succeed in becoming a venture-backed founder, all you need to be able to do is be good at getting venture backed.
- How this fits into the female founder takedown story - and why people need to stop comparing Neumann to Elizabeth Holmes. Fraud, my friend, is complicated.
https://techcrunch.com/2022/08/15/tech-industry-reacts-to-adam-neumanns-a16z-backed-return-to-real-estate/
Equity drops every Monday at 7 a.m. PDT and Wednesday and Friday at 6 a.m. PDT, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts.
Hello and welcome back to Equity, a podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines.
Natasha took over Equity Monday this week alongside Grace, as Alex enjoys some always-deserved vacation. Thankfully, there was way too much to get into. So much so that I recommend you listening to this podcast immediately before a whole news cycle breaks.
Here's what we got into:
- Morning markets update, which is somewhat a story about reaction to China's slowing economy
- For our big tech news item to start the week, Amanda Silberling dropped in to talk to us about Unity saying 'thank you, next' to a $20B merger offer from Applovin. I'll add in that it's not the only billion-dollar+ merger that fell through recently. How's that for Unity?
- I talked about Adam Neumann's new startup, which just landed Andreessen Horowitz's largest check to date at a billion dollar valuation. Deep breaths, friends, the reaction is part of the point.
https://techcrunch.com/2022/08/15/a16z-andreessen-horowitz-backs-adam-neumann-wework-new-venture-flow-real-estate/
- Then I got into a WebMD alternate with quality as its differentiator.
- I end with bad news for Peloton employees, and good news for Atlanta's early stage entrepreneurs.
https://techcrunch.com/2022/08/12/the-silicon-peach-is-still-ripe-atlantas-venture-ecosystem-stands-strong/
As always, you can follow Equity on Twitter @equitypod, and me at @nmasc_. We are back Wednesday! Chat soon!
Equity drops every Monday at 7 a.m. PDT and Wednesday and Friday at 6 a.m. PDT, so subscribe to us onApple Podcasts,Overcast,Spotify and all the casts.
Hello and welcome back to Equity, a podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines.
Alex, Natasha and Mary Ann worked with Grace to record yet another weekly round up on all the tech news that may have flown past your radar. Or bumped into it so hard that you're still dizzy and looking for more information. Regardless of where you're at, here's what we got into:
- For our deals of the week, we spoke about QED making its first African investment, backing Nigerian fintech TeamApt in $50M+ deal and why Muon Space's custom Earth observation satellites remind us of Build-a-Bear. Plus, Founderpath secured $145M in debt and equity to help B2B SaaS startup founders avoid dilution - a reminder that non-dilutive capital is always in vogue.
- Then we got to a big theme all about bets. Yep, we're talking Axios gets scooped, Haus gets put up for sale and ByteDance gets... hospitals?
- We end with chatter about SoftBank's losses and redemption arc, as well as Coinbase's earnings.
You're all the best, and if you're thinking, 'you know what, right back at you!' why not leave us a great rating on Apple Podcasts. If you disagree, erm, let's try again next week?
Equity drops every Monday at 7 a.m. PDT and Wednesday and Friday at 6 a.m. PDT, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts.
Hello and welcome back to Equity, a podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines.
This is our Wednesday show, where we niche down to a single topic, think about a question and unpack the rest. This week, Natasha and Alex asked: Despite all the dollars and deals out there, does a drop in activation energy change how many entrepreneurs we'll see in the early-stage market?
But, we're not alone! Found co-hosts Jordan Crook and Darrell Etherington hopped on the mics to do a rare cross-over episode with us. They spend every week on Found talking to early-stage founders about everything from origin stories, to pivots, to some of the hardest decisions that leaders need to make these days. Big thanks to the duo for joining us, and without further ado, here's what us four got to:
- Who is succeeding right now, and what are the types of founders that we're seeing more often?
- Is there anything that can be done differently when it comes to activating unlikely founders?
- How do you square up a need for more business fundamentals, with an asset class designed for rocketships?
- Risk, luck and what the heck whales and fizzy water have to do with this
Equity drops every Monday at 7 a.m. PDT and Wednesday and Friday at 6 a.m. PDT, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts.
Alex and Grace are back to cover the biggest and most interesting technology, startup and markets news. This morning was a fun mix of stuff that we don't always get to, so strap in for the following:
- Stocks and cryptos are mostly higher today, meaning that most listeners of the show are now richer than they were Friday. Congratulations!
- Coinbase earnings on the horizon, but we got word today from Palantir and SoftBank. Palantir's stock is off due to a guidance miss, while SoftBank reported massive losses from its Vision Fund efforts.
- Also, it turns out that SoftBank is of the perspective that startup founders are not yet willing to accept valuation cuts to bring the value of their startups in line with market conditions. That's not good.
- And there was a huge PE deal today, Avalara being taken over by Vista Equity Partners in a $8.4 billion deal.
- What else? Self-driving cars from Baidu are now taking passengers in China, Lyft is building a media business, and India is cutting back on buying Chinese smartphones.
We are back Wednesday! Chat soon!
Equity drops every Monday at 7 a.m. PDT and Wednesday and Friday at 6 a.m. PDT, so subscribe to us onApple Podcasts,Overcast,Spotify and all the casts.
Hello and welcome back to Equity, a podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines.
Alex, Natasha and Mary Ann got together with Maggie and Grace this week for our weekly roundup show, and per usual, there was a lot to talk about, including the fact that there were even more topics than usual to pick from as the summer slowdown seems to be fading away.
What else did we get into? The following:
- To kick off our Deals of the Week, we discussed the fact that a startup which focuses on depression, suicidality and related mental health conditions is buying a company called KetaMD in an effort to extend its telehealth prowess and, in particular, to expand its tech-facilitated ketamine-based treatments. Don’t know what ketamine is? You’re not alone.
- From there, it was time to talk about a new $100 million fund, which boasts some high-profile LPs and partners, that is out to invest exclusively in Latino(a) startup founders. We then dug into the hows and whys of a fintech company that aims to get consumers to deduct everyday expenses directly from their paycheck – a concept that took us a bit to wrap our heads around.
- We then moved on to Robinhood and the news that the retail investment behemoth had laid off 23% of its staff – just 3 months after letting go of 9% of its workforce. The three of us had thoughts on CEO Vlad Tenev’s acceptance of responsibility for the layoffs, and of course, on just how much dang news has surrounded the company in the past 18 months or so.
https://twitter.com/bayareawriter/status/1554598033756667905
- Next up? We chatted about Y Combinator’s somewhat surprising decision to shrink its cohort by 40% – what that could mean for the early-stage venture scene. We also get into its increased check size and in-person return. So many variables! Only one experiment!
- Lastly, we riffed about Uber and how the company both reported positive free cash flow and yet was deeply unprofitable in the second quarter (thanks to Alex breaking that down for us).
And we had a blast to boot! See you next time!
Equity drops every Monday at 7 a.m. PDT and Wednesday and Friday at 6 a.m. PDT, so subscribe to us onApple Podcasts,Overcast,Spotify and all the casts.
Hello and welcome back to Equity, a podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines.
This is our Wednesday show, where we niche down to a single topic, think about a question and unpack the rest. This week, Natasha and Alex asked: Is it the bootstrapper’s time to jump on the venture treadmill?
The episode was inspired by Natasha's recent Startups Weekly column, "The bootstrapped are coming, the bootstrapped are coming" and the companion TechCrunch+ piece, "Will once-bootstrapped startups turn to venture during a watershed moment?" But, of course in classic Equity style, we continued the conversation with nuance and numbers as a focus.
Here's what we got into:
- The definition of bootstrapping, and our own additions and subtractions
- The trend of more bootstrapped companies taking on venture, or at least more venture capitalists being interested in bootstrapped companies
- What the heck is a venture treadmill, and what to drugs have to do with it?
- We ended by both agreeing that we are, indeed, the best.
There's ample history when it comes to bootstrapping companies eventually raising money. We just want to know if it is going to happen more often today, and earlier. Let's chat!
Equity drops every Monday at 7 a.m. PDT and Wednesday and Friday at 6 a.m. PDT, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts.
Hello and welcome back to Equity, a podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines.
Last week we said that you needed to pay attention to the public markets, and we weren't kidding. It was a huge week for earnings -- with notes from all over including the ad market and cloud spend. But this week's Monday show was more than just another entry in the series, it was an experimental live show! Natasha joined Alex for the fun, and this is what they got into:
- Stocks up, crypto mostly flat after a solid week of gains.
- Will Alibaba delist, or not? That question matters more than just what happens to the singular Chinese tech giant. The question really belies a larger query regarding the ability of Chinese tech companies to access foreign markets more generally, places where the capital can flow at a high clip. Given China's economic woes, cutting off that particular liquidity pipe might be risky.
- From there we went to Clearco layoffs, UiPath buying Refiner, and Oui's first close of its new fund.
- And then we wrapped with a dive into Big Tech earnings. The key gist? These companies are too big to summarize, and without the cloud they would be struggling.
- Amazon’s shares rise on earnings beat, despite $2B loss
- Apple’s services revenue growth slows to $19.6B in Q3, reaches 860M paid subscriptions
- Microsoft misses expectations, points to foreign exchange rates and weakened PC market
- Meta posts its first ever quarterly revenue decline
- And via CNBC, Alphabet misses on earnings and revenue for second quarter
So, what'd you think? Should we go live again? Next time with Equity-themed espresso cups that no one can enjoy other than us? Let us know, and don't worry, the Equity team is back on Wednesday with a smashing bootstrapping show.
Equity drops every Monday at 7 a.m. PDT and Wednesday and Friday at 6 a.m. PDT, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts.
Hello and welcome back to Equity, a podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines.
Alex, Natasha and Mary Ann got together with Grace once again this week for our weekly roundup show, and hot dang was there a lot to talk about. So much so that we actually had to cut one topic from our notes, any guesses what that may have been?
Regardless, here's the rundown:
- We had a big fintech theme this week, kicking off with the huge news that Jack Ma is giving up control of Ant Financial. Two specific tidbits stood out around Ant's origin story and Ma's flex of an ownership hold.
- From there, it was time to talk Guava, Pogo, and TomoCredit, our Deals of the Week. The focus here was around just how inclusive certain fintechs can be, so thank you to founders who remind us to raise the bar constantly.
- Next up? A new solo fund that broke out of a16z. Why leave to do a scary thing when risk is high? We talk about that, fintech innovation, and Rex Salisbury's LP base. (Plus, more on solo founders coming soon on TechCrunch+).
- Then we dug into Mary Ann's behemoth investor survey, and closed with a look at the Coinbase-SEC situation.
And we had a great time to boot! Chat soon!
Equity drops every Monday at 7 a.m. PDT and Wednesday and Friday at 6 a.m. PDT, so subscribe to us onApple Podcasts,Overcast,Spotify and all the casts.
Hello and welcome back to Equity, a podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines.
This is our Wednesday show, where we niche down to a single topic, think about a question and unpack the rest. This week, Natasha and Anita asked:
When is a company taking internal valuation cut a good thing?
Normally, when we hear about valuations going down, that's a red flag that things aren't going well at a given company or in the market at large. We wrote about Stripe's 28% internal valuation cut earlier this month and as we listened to different reactions to the news, we noticed some people had an unexpected take -- that this downward revision was actually a positive for the company's employees.
That's because the cut came from an internal 409A valuation appraisal, which is totally different from the investor-led valuations we normally hear reported on in the news. So we brought on two experts -- Phil Haslett of EquityZen and Sumukh Sridhara of AngelList -- to help us unpack what this valuation cut actually means for startup employees and what else they need to know about their equity compensation heading into a market downturn. For more information, you can also check out our TechCrunch+ piece about the matter, "Stripe’s new and lower internal valuation, explained."
Let us know if you want more Chain Reaction x Equity crossover episodes by tweeting at either of us or just sharing this episode with a friend. Numbers speak for themselves :)
Equity drops every Monday at 7 a.m. PDT and Wednesday and Friday at 6 a.m. PDT, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts.
Hello and welcome back to Equity, a podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines.
Alex and Grace are back to cover the biggest and most interesting technology, startup and markets news. Sitting as we are on the precipice of a huge data dump, we had lots to chat through!
- Stocks are mixed around the world, while crypto selloff modestly after some recovery gains. In general, the value of securities are down in recent weeks and months, and now, frankly, quarters.
- This is Earnings Week: Yes, friends, get ready to hear from Alphabet and Amazon and Meta and Microsoft and Apple. The Big Five are reporting this week, providing us a glimpse into the health of a host of businesses. Recall that we have seen the major slow hiring lately, perhaps a harbinger of the (meager) feast to come?
- Cartona is building something neat in Egypt, TechCrunch reports. And there is still venture capital money flowing in China, despite, you know, all the stuff going on there.
- Zomato is sinking, Voyager is biting the hand that wants to feed it at least a little, and it turns out that the grocery delivery war is only heating up.
No live show this week, just three episodes! Hang in there we got you!
Equity drops every Monday at 7 a.m. PDT and Wednesday and Friday at 6 a.m. PDT, so subscribe to us onApple Podcasts,Overcast,Spotify and all the casts.
Hello and welcome back to Equity, a podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines.
Alex, Natasha and Mary Ann got together with Grace once again this week for our weekly roundup show, and as often happens, news broke as we were gearing up to record. So we had to touch on the huge Amazon-One Medical deal to get started. Naturally we all had thoughts.
What else did we get into? The following:
- Crunchbase raised $50 million! Yes, our former employer has raised a new, large round that had us all thinking about its health, our history thereof, and our love for its news team and other parts of the company we remember fondly.
- Just what is Arkive building, and are we in favor of its work to build a sort of NFT-powered, decentralized IRL library. There is a DAO involved as well.
- ForSight is building eye-surgery robots, just raised a stack itself, and we are hype about it. It reinforces a key learning from Natasha's recent robotics panel, which was part bullish, part bearish.
- From there, it was time to talk the bevy of new venture funds that came out, the end of Modsy -- or is it? -- and a few stories that touch on the Ukraine situation, including a huge Russian fine of Google, Preply's latest funding round, and how solar power can combat fascism.
Equity drops every Monday at 7 a.m. PDT and Wednesday and Friday at 6 a.m. PDT, so subscribe to us onApple Podcasts,Overcast,Spotify and all the casts.
Hello and welcome back to Equity, a podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines.
This is our Wednesday show, where we niche down to a single topic, think about a question and unpack the rest. This week, Natasha and Alex asked: How do founders hold two ideas in their heads: both that there is an economic downturn, but also that things are looking up for many industries?
After a series of episodes about the tensions within the downturn, this is a "good news, despite" episode.
- We started with a vibe check based on recent interviews with recently venture-backed founders, before getting into the bright spots from Q2 2022 data.
- Then we spent some time talking about specific sectors enjoying fresh cash right now, including climate and European edtech.
- Geographically, Africa continues to be one to watch. The continent is set to have its best year yet.
- In the second half of the show, lean back and enjoy the riffing: we talk VC vacation homes, good news, and somehow end with tater tots.
We had a great time, and hope you like this show. We’re back Friday with our regular news roundup!
Equity drops every Monday at 7 a.m. PDT and Wednesday and Friday at 6 a.m. PDT, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts,Overcast, Spotify and all the casts.
Hello and welcome back to Equity, a podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines.
Alex and Grace are back to cover the biggest, and most interesting technology, startup, and markets news. Today was a fun day in that we didn't start off with just bad news -- what a change!
- Stocks are up around the world, and cryptos have rallied in the last week. The positive price movement in crypto-land, however, doesn't appear to be lighting a fire underneath the NFT market, for example.
- Robots! Yes, our robotics-themed event -- Free! And online! -- is this week, which means that I have robots on the brain. That made the Syrius round all the more interesting. It appears that ecommerce will remain a key driver of robotic innovation for some time to come.
- Podcast deals are still happening, kinda. Acast is buying Podchaser, which may or may not mean a lot to you. What does matter in this deal is that Spotify wasn't involved. That's a change!
- Quick Hits: India may ban crypto, at least if its leading bankers get there way, Missfresh's implosion got a small lifeline, and Modsy is no more -- and the way that it is going out leaves quite a lot to be desired.
Equity drops every Monday at 7 a.m. PDT and Wednesday and Friday at 6 a.m. PDT, so subscribe to us onApple Podcasts,Overcast,Spotify and all the casts.
Hello and welcome to a special edition of Equity!
Today, Alex sat down Brian Heater, a long-tenured TechCrunch denizen, our hardware editor, podcast extraordinaire, and genial chap. He also put together a really neat robotics-focused event that we're hosting next week. The event is online, and free, which means that everyone can come and hang (that means you!)
The confab was also a good excuse to snag time with Heater, and have a bit of a natter about robotics, how the self-driving hardware stack has an impact on more than just automobiles, and why we are going to need AGI for robotics to, you know, become the thing we know from the Jetsons.
In short, robotics is improving rapidly, but we might continue to see more industrial applications than personal for some time. Still, there's still a lot of activity in the market, including labor policy, e-commerce applications, and a host of other topics.
Enjoy! Equity is back Monday morning, and if you want to come hang at the TC Sessions: Robotics 2022, you can sign up here for free. See you there!
Equity drops every Monday at 7 a.m. PDT and Wednesday and Friday at 6 a.m. PDT, so subscribe to us onApple Podcasts,Overcast,Spotify and all the casts.
Hello and welcome back to Equity, a podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines.
Alex, Natasha and Mary Ann enjoyed yet another edition of Equity Live this week, hopping on Twitter Spaces to chat everything from Musk’s meme suit to a new take on Wordle that landed Spotify’s attention. When we stopped recording the episode, news broke that Stripe is cutting its internal valuation by 28%. Luckily, we do this three times a week to stay tuned for our take soon.
In the mean time, here’s what we got to in today’s episode:
- Spotify acquired Heardle, which felt like a throwback to trivia and of course a nod at its famous predecessor, NY Times-owned Wordle. Only one of us has played the music guessing game so far, so tweet @equitypod your thoughts on if it’s actually fun.
- We also spoke about a startup that is trying to address male infertility in a personalized, engaging way. It caught investors attention, and ours too.
- Our last deal of the week, Continuum, gave us a chance to talk about productizing one of the worst jobs in startups: laying folks off. The fractional work play feels even more important given the volatility of startups across all stages right now. Hopin, for example, conducted its second layoff within four months this week and parted ways with its COO, CFO and other executives. Medium had an executive shake up, with Ev Williams stepping down.
- The last two themes of the episode were built around Instacart and the future of grocery delivery, as well as the latest of the Twitter and Elon Musk saga.
Equity drops every Monday at 7 a.m. PDT and Wednesday and Friday at 6 a.m. PDT, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast,Spotify and all the casts.
Hello and welcome back to Equity, a podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines.
This is our Wednesday show, where we niche down to a single topic, think about a question and unpack the rest. This week, Natasha asked: How does Roe’s reversal impact the ways that companies are built?
The question was inspired by a recent TechCrunch+ column, "Roe reversal weighs heavily on emerging tech cities in red states." The reporters behind the piece, Dominic-Madori Davis and Becca Szkutak, joined Equity to talk about the story and help us get more of the nuance behind this huge setback.
We chatted about the reappearance of geographic boundaries, selective silence from the money behind the money, and how founders need to rethink their growth strategy if they're coming from red states. We also chatted about how some founders have already started to react to the overturn of Roe vs. Wade and their sentiments revolving the legality of what happens next.
Equity drops every Monday at 7 a.m. PDT and Wednesday and Friday at 6 a.m. PDT, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts,Overcast, Spotify and all the casts.
Hello and welcome back to Equity, a podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines.
Alex and Grace are back to cover the biggest, boldest and baddest technology news. After some holiday weeks, we are back on an actual Monday! What a treat. Here's what we got into:
- Stocks are off around the world, partially due to government action, partially due to the complex web of negative factors that we've discussed for months now.
- Cryptos are more staid; if you like bitcoin at $20,000 this is your moment.
- Tiger's slowdown is no mere blip, TechCrunch reports. The investing powerhouse is going to slow its roll for the rest of 2022, and is looking to raise a new fund.
- Unacademy is looking to cut costs, go public in two years per TechCrunch. And Kadamos raised more capital, marking a pretty quick reload after raising a few months ago.
- Quick Hits: The Uber Files are a mess, layoffs aren't solving a talent crunch in Southeast Asia, and fintech staffing cuts are starting to pile up.
Equity drops every Monday at 7 a.m. PDT and Wednesday and Friday at 6 a.m. PDT, so subscribe to us onApple Podcasts,Overcast,Spotify and all the casts.
Hello and welcome back to Equity, a podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines.
It doesn't feel like a short week, does it? Alex, Natasha and Mary Ann got on the mic to bring an especially packed episode full of big news, fire transitions and even a pun or three.
- Deals of the week: Maolac raises $3.2 million to bring breast milk nutrition to adults, Peakflo raises a few million to scale its billpay tech in South East Asia, and Cauldron raises $6.6 million for its web3-themed gaming push.
- Declining drama at Bolt? A major lawsuit involving Bolt, the online checkout service, has been settled. We chatted through the company's numbers, and noted one more challenge ahead of the company.
- The unicorns aren't alright: Layoffs at Outschool and Loft are cutting staff, just as some venture capitalists reload. It's going to be a fascinating year.
- And we closed with some notes on the Q2 venture capital cycle!
Equity drops every Monday at 7 a.m. PDT and Wednesday and Friday at 6 a.m. PDT, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts.
Hello and welcome back to Equity, a podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines.
This is our Wednesday show, where we niche down to a single topic, think about a question and unpack the rest. This week, Natasha and Alex asked: Why is tech full of copycats, and what’s the next full circle moment we can expect?
The question was inspired by Natasha's recent Startups Weekly column: "YC makes a Product Hunt, Product Hunt makes an a16z, a16z makes a YC." As you can tell by that headline and this week's episode title, we're talking about how tech is full of copycats and what that means for the bar of innovation.
Expect to learn about the overlap in mission between three of tech's most well-known institutions, what Prologue means for Future (literally and figuratively), and how a rising tide can both confuse and complement the founder fundraising journey.
Also it was a good excuse to chat through some of the competitive dynamics that we see play out across the startup landscape. We had a great time, and hope you like the show. We're back Friday with our regular news roundup!
Equity drops every Monday at 7 a.m. PDT and Wednesday and Friday at 6 a.m. PDT, so subscribe to us onApple Podcasts,Overcast,Spotify and all the casts.
Hello and welcome back to Equity, a podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines.
Alex and Grace are back to cover the biggest, boldest and baddest technology news. We are back on Tuesday, as the United States was off yesterday. So a day late, but hopefully not a dollar short, here's what we got into today:
- Stocks are mixed around the world, and set to fall in the United States at the open. At the same time, the crypto market has been somewhat relaxed in the last day.
- Sequoia Capital China is raising $9 billion, a huge amount of money at a time in which we have seen venture capital activity in China slow.
- Speaking of slowing venture capital, Indian activity is falling. That deceleration comes as the country's crypto market is under pressure.
- At the same time, Twitter is pushing back against the Indian government bullying, which is good. But maybe less good for Elon Musk, who is buying the social network, and wants to sell imported cars in the country.
- Closing out, we touched on a potential database breach in China, struggles at Vauld, a new climatetech fund, and news from the quantum front.
All that and we had a good time! We are back tomorrow morning, and Friday morning!
Hello and welcome back to Equity, a podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines.
This was a live week on the podcast, meaning that Mary Ann and Alex and Natasha and Grace teamed up with the fine audio and visual folks from our mothership Yahoo to not only record the show, but to do so in front of, well, all of you! It's fun to record live, and we'll do it again in two weeks!
What did we get into? The following:
- Deals of the Week: HomeLister wants to make selling your home more of a DIY affair, and cheaper; Degreed's co-founder is coming back to the company he helped found, via a different company that he helped found; and can chat bots not suck in the future?
- Coalition: What happens when you cross a small venture capital fund, a large operator network, and shared upside? Coalition wants to find out.
- Layoffs: Backstage has cut its staff to the quick, while we saw smaller cuts at Substack this week in percentage terms. Both rounds of layoffs were launching points for questions, and discussion on the show.
- Robinhood: Will the company, beleaguered with a rock-bottom share price and slipping consumer mindshare, sell?
Equity is off Monday for the holiday, but back three times in the following four days. Chat then!
Equity drops every Monday at 7 a.m. PDT and Wednesday and Friday at 6 a.m. PDT, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts.
This is our Wednesday show, where we niche down to a single topic, think about a question and unpack the rest. This week, Natasha asked: What’s in the fine print for term sheets these days, and what does that tell us about who is going to be in control during the downturn?
The question was inspired by a recent story by Becca Szkutak - one of TC's newest venture reporters - about how deal terms look different in a downturn. Of course that means we had to bring on Szkutak to talk about her story and dig into a further analysis of how founder friendliness is being challenged right now. Expect a tactical episode all about different terms that may start sneaking into term sheets, the cost benefit analysis of each, and why down rounds aren't the end of the world.
https://techcrunch.com/2022/06/21/deal-terms-look-different-in-a-downturn-heres-what-to-watch-out-for/
Equity drops every Monday at 7 a.m. PDT and Wednesday and Friday at 6 a.m. PDT, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts.
Hello and welcome back to Equity, a podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines.
Alex and Grace are back to cover the biggest, boldest and baddest technology news. This week we are not recording on a Tuesday as it's a regular week. Though we would add that Equity will be live on Thursday, when we record our Friday episode. So if you wanted to come hang, make sure that you are following the show on Twitter.
Right, so what did we get into this morning?
- Stocks are generally up, major cryptos are not doing too much this morning, and a Coinbase downgrade caught our eye.
- Backstage Capital is laying off staff as it focuses on only investing into existing portfolio companies. With less capital than before going to Black founders, seeing a fund that focused on investing into underrepresented founders struggle is a bummer.
- The Strapi startup round was a fun one to look at, fusing open-source tech and CMSs, a tool that we use here at TechCrunch rather often.
- And then there is the mess at Digital World Acquisition Corp., the SPAC that wants to merge with former American President Trump's digital media company. It's in trouble with regulators.
- The chaos did not start there, however. 3AC is in default (like Russia!), the BlockFi rescue deal had internal pushback, Klarna may only be worth $10 billion, MilkRun loses lots of money, and we're learning more about how India's government is going after Twitter.
So, a great way to start the week. We kid. Chat soon!
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
Today Natasha and Alex were on the mics, kicking back and riffing through the biggest technology stories of the week. Our dear Mary Ann was off this week, but will be back in short order.
What did we get into? A bevy of blistering bromides, naturally:
- Accel has a new $4 billion fund, focused on the late-stage, which is at once a pile of duckets and a fascinating timing for such a large capital vehicle.
- FalconX doubled its valuation in a new round, which was also a huge pile of money at an odd moment in time.
- Oh, and Suze Orman was also on the show today, in spirit and story.
- From there we noodled on the big changes at Brex, the latest in executive turnover, and why the metaverse actually had some good news this week?
All in all it was a good time and we are back Monday!
Equity drops every Monday at 7 a.m. PDT and Wednesday and Friday at 6 a.m. PDT, so subscribe to us onApple Podcasts,Overcast,Spotify and all the casts
Hello and welcome back to Equity, a podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines.
This is our Wednesday show, where we niche down to a single topic, think about a question and unpack the rest. This week, Natasha and Alex asked: After a multi-year fundraising boom, what is the current health of the fintech startup market?
The episode was inspired by a rigamarole of news, including but not limited to Klarna's potential valuation haircut, Apple's BNPL announcement, Brex's partial market retreat and Wealthsimple's staffing cuts.
The other reason that we're chatting fintech is that after attracting a simply huge chunk of venture capital in the last few years has gone into the sector. And that means that so very many startups are in play when we discuss the fintech niche. This is not just a few unicorns, and decacorns, but a flat-out fleet of companies that are now stuck waiting for the venture capital market to reignite.
With Affirm and Klarna showing just how far prices for fintech revenues have fallen, what's ahead? How worried should founders be? We dug into all that and more!
Equity drops every Monday at 7 a.m. PT and Wednesday and Friday at 6 a.m. PT, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts.
Alex and Grace are back to cover the biggest, boldest and baddest technology news. This is our Monday show, coming to you this week on a Tuesday as, hey, yesterday was a holiday for many American workers, in honor of Juneteenth. So, we're doing our weekly kickoff one day later than usual. Here's what we got into:
- Stocks are higher globally, while the crypto market is somewhat quiet after a tumultuous few weeks.
- We're coming up on the end of Q2 2022, which means that we're at once heading into earnings season (woo!) and another venture capital data set to parse. Get excited.
- Musk has been busy around the world, helping keep Ukraine online, seeing his cars come under some censure in China, and still talking his way through buying twitter.
- In startup-land: LeadSquared raised a huge round, and is now a unicorn. Platform.sh raised a huge round, but we aren't sure what it is worth. And Stashfin also put a huge amount of capital and debt onto its own books.
- The fintech VC market is still alive, despite warning bells from, well, everywhere. Magic Eden just raised for an NFT marketplace, we note. (Though prices are, yes, coming down.)
That's our show! We're back tomorrow and Friday!
Equity drops every Monday at 7 a.m. PDT and Wednesday and Friday at 6 a.m. PDT, so subscribe to us onApple Podcasts,Overcast,Spotify and all the casts.
Equity is back in the saddle this week, with Mary Ann and Alex and Grace powering through a busy week's news. And while much of the news in startup-land is a bit lacking these days -- you may have noticed a sentiment shift on Twitter! -- we did find some good tidings as well.
Here's the rundown:
- Sesame, which operates an online medical care marketplace, raised $27 million to help people without insurance or those with high deductibles get affordable health care. Interestingly, its lead investor also previously put money in another startup in the space.
- Marc Lore's food creation, and delivery startup Wonder raised a huge stack of cash. We had mixed views on this particular deal. On one hand, we hate cooking. On the other, will the economics ever work? Investors really seem to think so. We're now waiting for the service to launch where we live so we can give it a try.
- Startups may be in better shape than you thought! That's the take that Index's Mike Volpi wrote in a letter that TechCrunch published. Alex dug into the matter as well. There are even more positive signs out there if you look.
- The real estate sector has taken a hit as of late, which led to Redfin and Compass laying off hundreds of employees. Yet one other proptech startup managed to raise capital and acquire a company this week.
- And to close, the crypto mess. Here's some layoff news. And here are some new problems. Finally, an attempt to find some understanding of what's going on.
And that is a wrap! We will chat you all next week!
Equity drops every Monday at 7 a.m. PDT and Wednesday and Friday at 6 a.m. PDT, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts
Hello and welcome back to Equity, a podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines.
This is our Wednesday show, where we niche down to a single topic, think about a question and unpack the rest. This week, Natasha and Alex brought on TechCrunch reporter Haje Jan Kamps, who, prior to and in between his journalism careers, spent years as a founder and a venture capitalist. Together, the trio asked: How might companies use math in the coming months to make our lives harder, and complicate their finances, aka the truth?
From the historical grievance folder, to more recent news from MainStreet, we had a lot of grist for the mill. But we had even bigger feelings about what's coming this year, and how important it will be to chase down the truth. And given our general view that numbers don't lie, we had strong opinions about how things should be counted, and disclosed.
A big thank to Haje for coming out and bringing his multi-viewpoint perspective. Chat soon!
Equity drops every Monday at 7 a.m. PT and Wednesday and Friday at 6 a.m. PT, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts.
Hello and welcome back to Equity, a podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines.
Alex and Grace are back to cover the biggest, best, and baddest technology news. We are back once again here with your weekly kickoff! Here’s what we got into:
- Stocks are down around the world, with nearly every major index that we checked falling 2% or more.
- Crypto prices are in the tank, with bitcoin and ether losing double-digit percentage points in the last day; the mess in crypto-land is deep this morning.
- Celcius network is falling apart, despite huge recent fundraises. Precisely what happens next is not clear, but it doesn't look good for the company, judging by its imploding token price.
- In better news, the Latin American startup scene re-upped its capital reserves right before the world went risk-off, implying that the region could be well capitalized heading into the rest of the year.
- The Coinbase CEO's Twitter rant after some of the company's employees expressed displeasure was notable, in tone, and also in terms of PR strategy.
So, yeah, not the happiest show that we have ever recorded but one that matches the moment. As we stressed on the audio version, you are not your net worth. We will get through this.
Finally, Equity is live this Thursday, so come hang on Hopin or Twitter Spaces!
Equity drops every Monday at 7 a.m. PDT and Wednesday and Friday at 6 a.m. PDT, so subscribe to us onApple Podcasts,Overcast,Spotify and all the casts.
The show is largely off this week, which means that we don't have our usual deluge of new startup news covered for you. But, we didn't want to leave you with nothing at all on this lovely Friday, so we went to the time machine to see what we could find.
The episode in the feed today is the same episode we put out nearly exactly one year ago today (June 11, 2021) to give some flavor and context to what was going on a now a year past. The idea was that we've spent so much time talking about how 2022 is shaping up to be different than 2021, so why not go back and show the distinction?
https://techcrunch.com/2021/06/11/the-huge-tam-of-fake-breaded-chicken-bits/
We hope you like our fun little experiment. The show returns to regular form Monday.
Equity drops every Monday at 7 a.m. PDT and Wednesday and Friday at 6 a.m. PDT, so subscribe to us onApple Podcasts,Overcast,Spotify and all the casts
This is our Wednesday show, where we niche down to a single topic, think about a question and unpack the rest. As the team takes a break this week, we decided to replay an old yet prescient episode from earlier this week. In February, Natasha and Alex asked: What can startups learn from the rise, and now struggles, of Hopin? For companies that grew like weeds, what’s next?
Hopin was one of the first tech companies to conduct layoffs in 2022; and as we said then, while it is is perhaps a very visible canary, it is hardly the only startup that rode COVID-19’s economic disruptions to new heights. Tell us how the episode aged, and if you're on team reckoning or team re-correction?
The market is changing. And while Hopin grew rapidly in 2021, a host of companies that thrived during COVID-19 are now resetting both internal, and external expectations. New year, new market.
This was another live week from the Equity crew, meaning that the towering Mary Ann, the inimitable Natasha, and the somewhat fungible Alex were all chatting in real time, thanks to Grace and Julio having the script and tech in place to allow for it. And as we were live, we also wound up taking a little bit more time per story than usual, which was good fun.
What did we get into? A lot:
- The end of an era: Sandberg steps down from Meta COO role.
- Deals of the Week: Affirm ties up with Stripe, Felt raises $15 million for maps, and Astro proves that quick grocery delivery is still a thing.
- A new fund is coming from an alum of Precursor Ventures, a firm that we have covered extensively on the podcast.
- The latest from Substack, a startup that we nearly all use, but wonder about from a valuations perspective.
- And we wrapped with notes from our recent spotlight on Columbus, Ohio!
Equity is mostly off next week, meaning no Monday show, and some pre-taped stuff the rest of the week. We're going to breathe, and come back recharged. Hugs, and chat soon!
Hello and welcome back to Equity, a podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines.
This is our Wednesday show, where we niche down to a single topic, think about a question and unpack the rest. This week, we're trying something new. Natasha spent a good chunk of last week at the All Raise VC summit, an annual off-the-record event that brings together some of the best and brightest in the investment community. After the summit, she sat down with Mandela SH Dixon -- All Raise's new CEO -- to unpack what happened, and discuss how today's changing venture capital market will impact diverse founders.
The first half of this episode is a conversation between Natasha and Mandela, and then we'll bring on Alex and turn to some on-the-ground clips from the summit. Sound bytes from Freestyle's Jenny Lefcourt, January Ventures' Jennifer Neundorfer, Rethink Impact's Heidi Patel and Union Square Ventures' Rebecca Kaden will get the classic Equity treatment. Or, put differently, Alex and Natasha will react to top investors talking about their game plans for the next market cycle. It's fun!
It’s Monday, which means that Alex and Grace were back as a team to cover the biggest, boldest and baddest technology news. We are once again back with your weekly kickoff! Here’s what we got into:
- More on the potential M&A boom this week, in light of this recent CNBC piece that got my mind turning. Sure, this is kinda like the CVC story we've been tracking but a bit more focused.
- China's venture capital market is taking body-blows, albeit from recent highs. Still, it is more than easy to track the country's regulatory crackdown to falling venture capital activity.
- Strong Compute raised money, highlighting the fact that early-stage companies can still raise, and that there could be huge unlocks coming in ML model training. Which would be good for all of us.
- And is on-demand pricing on the way out? Things aren't looking good for the model that once challenged the incumbency of SaaS.
Woo! Equity is live this Thursday, so come hang with us on Twitter Spaces or Hopin, yeah? Chat then!
Hello and welcome back to Equity, a podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines.
Happily we were once again at full strength this week, with Alex Wilhelm, Natasha Mascarenhas and Mary Ann Azevedo chatting, and Grace handling production.
You can tell from the topic list today that we are in an odd time. There are myriad signals that the startup market is slowing down. And there are some counter-narrative data points that paint a more complex picture. Where do you stand in your own viewpoint? Well, read on for some data to consider:
- Natasha gave us a brief update on All Raise's annual VC summit, but she'll get into more on an upcoming Wednesday show (stay tuned!)
- Monte Carlo just raised a unicorn round, worth $135 million at a $1.6 billion valuation. On the other hand, Bolt is laying off staff amidst a correction in the larger startup market, and perhaps its own space.
- If startup news is pointing in two directions, so too are data from the venture capital world. While Sequoia is warning founders about a downturn, a16z just raised a king's ransom to pour into the web3 market. Parse that as you will.
- There were other bits of news to consider as we work to understand where the startup world truly is today, including news from Zip and Nowports -- two newly-minted unicorns that Mary Ann recently profiled.
- And we closed on, what else, drama in fintech. As Stripe and Plaid gear up to battle, Finix is either in the fray, or about to jump in, depending on your perspective. What's clear is that increasingly overlapping fintech giants are going to rub up against one another. You can read more about that in The Interchange, out on Sunday.
Hugs from us to you, and we will talk to you next week!
Equity drops every Monday at 7 a.m. PDT and Wednesday and Friday at 6 a.m. PDT, so subscribe to us onApple Podcasts,Overcast,Spotify and all the casts.
Hello and welcome back to Equity, a podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines.
This is our Wednesday show, where we niche down to a single topic, think about a question and unpack the rest. This week, Natasha asked: How are early-stage founders thinking about this downturn? The inimitable Alex teamed up with her to interview Joshua Ogundu, the founder and CEO of Heart to Heart about this timely topic.
The question comes after Natasha’s recent Startups Weekly column, "Everyone is drafting their own startup Black Swan memo." The column looked at a series of memos that venture capitalist firms sent to portfolio companies about the market downturn. Some were hopeful, some were simple, and others were a vibe check as straightforward as, Can you tell us your ARR and cash-burn in writing? Pretty please?
To flip the script, as we do here on Equity, we're bringing in the founder perspective to fact check these memos and tell us what it's really like to be a founder. Ogundu told us what he's rethinking, the importance of honesty, and what to do before considering a layoff. It's not too often that we have guests on the show, so when we do, you know it's going to be a good one.
Hello and welcome back to Equity, a podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines.
It's Monday, which means that Alex and Grace were back as a team to cover the biggest, boldest, and baddest technology news. We are once again back with your weekly kickoff! Here's what we got into:
- The stock market may not vomit all over itself today, which would be a nice break from recent weeks.
- Broadcom is working on buying VMware in what would prove to be a mega-deal. Shares of Broadcom are off on the news, while VMware stock is up sharply. The transaction would be worth tens and tens of billions of dollars, if consummated.
- Paytm earnings had lots to like, and some elements that were less salubrious. Shares of the Indian unicorn have recovered somewhat in recent days, but remains sharply depressed from its IPO price.
- In the startup world: BUD raised $36.8 million, SyIndr raised $12.6 million, and 1K Kirana put $25 million onto its balance sheet.
- And we closed out with the fact that there is no free lunch, even in the crypto world.
Equity drops every Monday at 7 a.m. PDT and Wednesday and Friday at 6 a.m. PDT, so subscribe to us onApple Podcasts,Overcast,Spotify and all the casts.
The whole team was back together this week, which was pretty darn good as there was a lot to get through. Alex Wilhelm, Natasha Mascarenhas and Mary Ann Azevedo were on the mic, with Grace handling production.
What did we get into? A better question might be what did we notget into:
- We started with an update from the TechCrunch Mobility event, thanks to Natasha who is on-site and up in the air.
- From there it was time to talk deals, with the crew parsing Arrived's latest round, and why Kolkata Chai took some external capital, but very much on its own terms.
- Then it was time to chat Zenly's new mapping news, and why startups are critical when it comes to taking on incumbents.
- From there we had to ask if Elon Musk really wants to buy Twitter (seemingly no?), and how tired we are about the topic itself.
- Then we chatted through the recent unicorn vibe check that the market got, and the fact that most unicorns are not true IPO candidates. (Along with news from SpotOn, and Unit!)
- And to close, we asked about the responsibilities of tech platforms in the wake of a number of mass shootings in the United States; where should our expectations for content moderation on platforms start, and end?
Hugs from us to you, and we will talk to you Monday!
This is our Wednesday show, where we niche down to a single topic, think about a question and unpack the rest. This week, Natasha asked: How do digital health startups build in a post-Roe world?
The question comes after Natasha’s recent Startups Weekly column, "When your startup’s core mission is set to be overturned." The piece explores the ripple effects of the looming Roe v. Wade overturn, specifically in how it impacts startups. But, let's not hypothesize. We brought on Kiki Freedman, the CEO and co-founder of Hey Jane, to answer our big questions about building, raising, and existing when so much regulatory scrutiny is weighing on your business. A direct-to-consumer health company that specializes in the delivery of abortion pills, Hey Jane about to kick off its fundraising process which makes for an interesting tension. The startup - especially today - really sits in the middle of two intense moments: an overturn to Roe v. Wade would threaten all of its work, and a toughening, risk-averse VC market could be a hurdle toward next financing.
Enjoy the show, and let us know if you like this interview format. Also, here's the Found interview that we referenced during the show as well!
Hello and welcome back to Equity, a podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines. Every Monday, Grace and Alex scour the news and record notes on what’s going on to kick off the week.
What was on our minds this morning? The following:
- Global markets are generally down, albeit nothing too terrifying. The American stock market is trying to regain its footing after weeks of selling.
- What's ahead for crypto startups in the wake of the Terra/Luna meltdown? Bloomberg wonders about a general slowdown, and we look at the Crunchbase data of who backed the ill-fated stablecoin.
- Startup layoffs are accelerating -- not as bad as before, but enough to warrant our attention. Layoffs.FYI is back, y'all!
- The Topship round, invested in by Y Combinator and Flexport, has our recent look at CVC hitting just right.
It was an awful weekend in America, which leaked into the show somewhat. Take care of one another.
A few housekeeping notes before we go: This is not a live-show week, so Equity will simply come out on Wednesday and Friday mornings. And this week is our TC Sessions: Mobility event, which you can learn more about here.
This week we recorded live, which is always good fun, meaning that we took some questions from the audience. If you want that version of the show, we have a YouTube archive of it here.
For those of you more into audio, we have you covered here. Natasha, Alex, and Grace teamed up with Julio and Yashad to host the shindig, allowing us to cover the following:
- The end of iPod, a time to reflect on technology trends.
- The exit of a Modern Fertility co-founder, and the MARA round bringing more money to Africa's fintech scene.
- From there it was onto the Terra crash, Coinbase's earnings, and the general sentiment shift in the crypto scene.
- Next up was Tiger and the downturn in startup valuations.
- And we closed on some personal notes.
All told we had a blast. Mary Ann is back with us next week! Chat soon!
This is our Wednesday show, where we niche down to a single topic, think about a question and unpack the rest. This week, Natasha and Alex asked: What does the most recent wave of layoffs mean for tech workers?
The question comes after Natasha’s recent Startups Weekly column, "The Great Resignation, meet the Great Reset." In the piece, which included a round up of recent tech layoffs, she explored the idea of employee whiplash, and why this moment in pullback is different than what we saw in March 2020.
The goal of the episode was to humanize the tech layoffs we've seen ripple across the startup ecosystem, from buzzy, big names like Cameo, On Deck and Robinhood, to B2B platforms like Workrise and Thrasio. As our piece last week notes, the common thread between most of these layoffs, according to founders, is that there’s been a shift in the market and a serious pivot in business is required. A pivot, that is, that hurts the employees that built your product up after high demand.
Let us know how we did?
If you or a friend has recently been laid off, tip Natasha Mascarenhas or Alex Wilhelm on Twitter @nmasc_ and @alex.
Equity drops every Monday at 7 a.m. PT and Wednesday and Friday at 6 a.m. PT, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts.
Hello and welcome back to Equity, a podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines. Every Monday, Grace and Alex scour the news and record notes on what’s going on to kick off the week.
Happily once again we did not start the day by talking about Elon Musk and Twitter, though the news was not really very good:
- Stocks are down sharply around the world. And crypto prices, which track larger asset prices, are also sharply lower in the last day, and week.
- Uber's CEO told his company that things are changing. Adjusted EBITDA is out, FCF is in. Hiring? Going to slow. Capital expenses? Those will get harder looks, and so on. During the show, we asked about the slowdown, and how it may, or may not impact the bouyant crypto startup market.
- Neat funding rounds from Pyramid, which raised $120 million, and Paymob, which raised $50 million.
We are recording live this weekend, so catch the show on Thursday as we record our Friday episode! Chat soon!
The crew was back at full-speed, and maybe even full excitement meets exhaustion, this week. Alex Wilhelm, Natasha Mascarenhas and Mary Ann Azevedo were on the mic with moral and edit support from the wonderful Grace. If we had to give this episode it's own autobiography we'd call it: "Drama, tech twitter and therapeutic moments in between."
We got into a whole ton of news including:
- Musk's new best friends back his $44 billion bid for Twitter - and why one of them are probably experiencing deja vu.
- For deals of the week, Natasha spoke about Line's play for more inclusive fintech, Mary Ann got into Truist paying attention (and money) to a fintech startup and Alex took us to the music world with the latest on SoundCloud's thought bubbles.
- Then we talked about how digital health startups are bracing for a Post-Roe world, and which companies to pay attention to. (Insider tip: We're taking about this topic in more depth on Equity Wednesday, coming up next week!)
- Next up, how early can early stage investor go? Recent news from Backstage Capital includes a milestone and a pause - and has us scratching our heads on what other pivots we may see from investment firms.
- Finally, we ended with our favorite part of the show and spoke about the latest Stripe and Plaid drama. The two companies went from partners to competitors this week, and we talk about the tensions that result.
Equity drops every Monday at 7 a.m. PDT and Wednesday and Friday at 6 a.m. PDT, so subscribe to us onApple Podcasts,Overcast,Spotifyand all the casts.
This is our Wednesday show, where we niche down to a single topic, think about a question and unpack the rest. This week, Natasha and Alex asked: What do the crypto-curious need to know to be more savvy about the space? Better than our question, though, was our company: we brought on Anita Ramaswamy and Lucas Matney, the minds behind TechCrunch's newest podcast Chain Reaction. The crypto-focused pod launched a few weeks ago and already has a lot of folks' attention. We highly recommend a listen, and maybe start with the one that will glow up your retirement savings strategy.
Back to today, though, us four chatted through some of the largest questions that entrants into crypto may be thinking about, including untangling web3's complex jargon around decentralization to examine whether it really is different from what other tech companies are already doing. We also took a reporter's notebook lens to crypto coverage, asking if journalists need to be investors in order to report and understanding just how hard conflicts of interests can be to extract. Super light topics, you know us!
https://techcrunch.com/2022/03/24/techcrunch-debuts-chain-reaction-a-new-podcast-about-the-wild-world-of-web3/
Thanks again to our favorite duo for joining us and don’t forget that Equity is very present on Twitter these days, so follow us there for other mid-week musings.
Hello and welcome back to Equity, a podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines. Every Monday, Grace and Alex scour the news and record notes on what’s going on to kick off the week.
- Thankfully we did not start this episode by talking about Elon Musk and Twitter! You are welcome!
- Instead we started with bleak Chinese economic news, that segued into falling venture capital totals for a key startup sector in that country. It turns out that a massive regulatory crackdown will have in-market impacts!
- From there it was time to chat Yuga Labs and its recent minting chaos. Bloomberg has more.
- Then it was time to chat neobanks, in particular the recent rounds from Open ($50 million) and Cogni ($23 million).
This is not a live show week, so Equity will simply come out on Friday as usual. That said, we do have a Twitter space scheduled for today with our own Kirsten Korosec, so follow us on Twitter and we will see you there.
This was a live week! Which meant that Mary Ann Azevedo was on the mic with Alex Wilhelm, and Grace Mendenhall, our ever-trusty producer, helped us power through. A big shoutout to Dennis, Julio, and Yashad for getting all the tech working well.
Right, what did we dive into during our live taping? A lot!
- The latest from the Elon Musk-Twitter saga, including the social media company's earnings and how it is somewhat sensitive to market sentiment; Musk won't have infinite room with which to maneuver once he owns Twitter.
- For rounds of the week, Mary Ann chatted through the recent Umaro raise -- who doesn't love talking about bacon? -- and Alex picked the latest from the self-driving front.
- From there it was time to talk layoffs at Robinhood and other companies, focused around how some companies that did well in the pandemic are now suffering from what could be described as at least a hangover.
- And we closed with notes on Copper and Step and the ethics of teens investing in crypto. Which led us to question putting crypto in your 401k. Views vary!
Equity is back Monday! Chat then!
This is our Wednesday show, where we niche down to a single topic, think about a question and unpack the rest. This week, Natasha was out due to a family matter, so Alex and Amanda came together to chat through the larger Elon Musk-Twitter saga.
Yes, the TechCrunch crew got together on Tuesday for a very long, fun, and relaxed Twitter Space when the news broke. However, instead of going back through all that audio to just pull out the key bits, we decided to focus ourselves down to the core elements of that team chat and produce something a bit tighter.
Here's our question set:
- How much of an active participant will Elon really be?
- What does the deal mean for Twitter employees?
- What impact will the sale have on security, and algorithmic transparency?
- The free speech question
- What does the transaction mean for users?
In case you need more, our coverage of locked code changes is here, more on the privacy question here, and our larger tick-tock can be read here. Ok, we are live on Thursday for the live show! Chat then!
Every Monday, Grace and Alex scour the news and record notes on what’s going on to kick off the week.
- Stocks are down, and cryptos not looking too impressive as the world gears up for a packed week of mega-tech earnings.
- The Twitter-Elon Musk deal could happen soon? As soon as today? It appears that after Musk dropped a filing indicating that he actually had the funds to buy the deal, talks shook loose. What's ahead? I have precisely and exactly no idea.
- Hopin is perhaps enduring some turbulence, per the FT. The company, once riding a torrid wave of market demand, is seeing its business molt into a more steady form. That meant layoffs earlier in the year, and a decline in its share price on secondary exchanges.
- Startups! From the startup-realm this morning, new rounds for Zenda and Rooser. Not Rooster, mind, just Rooser.
- And there's a general climate of fear out there, which won't do much for market sentiment. Alas, 2022 is not 2021 when it comes to investor excitement.
And we have a live show coming this week! Get stoked, details to follow.
This week was a good week because we had the full team back together. Natasha Mascarenhas was on hand, Mary Ann Azevedo was on the mic, and Alex Wilhelm was around as well. Grace, our ever-trusty producer and lead on the Friday show, was on the dials.
As with nearly every week this year, we had to cut and cut to make the show fit into its allotted time. This is what we got into:
- Brief updates on SoftBank, Better.com, and Elon's quest to buy Twitter.
- On the deals front, we talked about Mary Ann's coverage of Kindred, the latest from the Indian crypto scene and Chipotle. Why Chipotle? Because it turns out that it is cooking up more than lunch!
- From there we dug into Natasha's coverage of the latest early-stage effort from a16z, and what it could mean for competition with Y Combinator, among other entities. The theme of large funds going earlier and earlier-stage will be with us forever, it seems.
- Shares of Netflix took a hammering this week. Why? Growth at the company is on hold, at least from a user perspective. We took the chance to chat about the pandemic's tailwinds tailing off. This impacts a host of startups, both big and small.
- From there we kept the cheery note afloat by talking about live audio apps and their future. There's some tremors afoot, even if everyone likes to talk.
And with that we are back next week!
This is our Wednesday show, where we niche down to a single topic, think about a question and unpack the rest. This week, fresh off of a reunion that included pasta and green rooms, Natasha and Alex asked: What are some startup assumptions that get it wrong?
The question comes after one of Natasha’s recent Startups Weekly column, "Let’s stop pretending there are silos in startup land." In the piece, which was teased out in her newsletter, she talked about how separations between late-stage and early-stage companies aren't as iron as investors may try to sell. Of course, that spiraled into an op-ed about what other startup notions we have, and the difference between a silo and a semblance of one.
Here's an excerpt from the piece:
You don’t need to be a web3 company to benefit from the growing mindshare around decentralization and alternative assets; just like you don’t need to be an angel investor to adopt the idea that your advice is worthy of equity in a company; and, as I’ve hopefully shown above, you don’t need to be a late-stage company to refocus on and prioritize profitability.
Our podcast continues the conversation, getting into five specific myths that we're about ready to bust. I won't ruin what we specifically get into, but phrases like "Web 2.5" and "IPO pricing" and "poetry magazines" certainly make an appearance. It's the perfect episode for people starting out in tech, or folks who are in the mood to unlearn some of their assumptions.
Don’t forget that Equity is very present on Twitter these days so follow us there for other mid-week musings.
Every Monday, Grace and Alex scour the news and record notes on what’s going on to kick off the week.
We are sitting on the precipice of a very busy few weeks, so let's get right to work!
- Stocks are mixed around the world to start the day, cryptos are off a little more but nothing too scary.
- Didi will vote on leaving the US public markets this May, and has promised to not list anywhere else in the interim. This saga is nearly behind us, but what a mess it will leave in its wake.
- The Beanstalk exploit was bad news this weekend, but my hunch is that so long as votes are tied to economic might, many neat ideas in crypto-land will remain open to exploit.
- Zambian fintech startup Union54 raised a $12 million Seed extension, led by Tiger, that caught our eye. And over in India, food-delivery rivals Swiggy and Zomato are both backing UrbanPiper.
- Finally, it seems that some private-market investors are not stoked about poison pills, a defensive setup by public companies to prevent a hostile takeover. Which makes me laugh, as dual-class shares that many VCs either back, or at least help fund amongst hot startups are similar in that they are also designed to prevent changes of control.
To close, we have a live show this week! Yes, a live show. So come hang out with us on Thursday as we record our Friday episode!
This week was TechCrunch Early Stage, so Natasha and Alex got together - in person - to record the episode for the very first time. Shout out to Grace for somehow helping us figure out a tech set up in the middle of a sold out event.
- We started with a recap of TechCrunch Early Stage so far, but check out TechCrunch+ for posts about every single panel next week. Pro listener tip: use code "EQUITY" for a solid discount, for your TechCrunch+ subscription.
- Then we of course pivoted to Elon, who is still making news about his newest fixation Twitter. This time, we led with the fact that he's trying to buy the whole darn thing.
- Deel made news with an ARR number that actually had some weight behind it, which got us thinking more about remote work bets.
- We had to talk about Braid, a new social fintech startup that wants to make shared wallets easier. We got into crypto culture without the coins, and then it took a turn when we started getting into Love is Blind and The Ultimatum.
- Finally, we ended the show with SoftBank's latest pivot: a spin out of its early-stage LatAm fund into a new firm called Upload Ventures.
And with that, we are back Monday morning. Chat soon!
This is our Wednesday show, where we niche down to a single topic, think about a question and unpack the rest. This week, given a parade of headlines and news that Fast shut down, Natasha and Alex brought on our new senior TechCrunch+ reporter Jacquelyn Melinek to ask: How is ‘Web3’ blowing up venture’s traditional playbook?
The question comes after Jacquelyn and Natasha looked into how crypto companies are altering the investing landscape for even the most disciplined VCs. Use code "EQUITY" for a sweet, sweet discount.
Here's an excerpt from that post:
The main difference between web3 cap tables and traditional startup cap tables is the structure of a company, because the way a C-corp would provide investors with equity would differ from the way a decentralized organization or DAO would, Celsius CEO Alex Mashinsky said. Today, Celsius owns half of its CEL tokens and only sold investors tokens in its initial coin offering (ICO) in 2017 when the company first launched, he added.
“We don’t need to give tokens anymore,” he said. “If you can raise money through equity, you want them as equity investors because they’ll stick with the company for a long time. Sometimes when you give tokens they sell them quickly because it’s like easy money, it’s not like equity.”
In today's episode, we walked through fresh PitchBook data on crypto funding, a crash course in web3 vernacular, and what crypto cap tables are the loudest about.
Don’t forget that TechCrunch Early Stage is happening this Thursday, so snag some last minute tickets here. Natasha and Alex will be there recording a live episode and hopefully meeting some listeners in real life!
Every Monday, Grace and Alex scour the news and record notes on what’s going on to kick off the week.
This week was big-tech heavy, as the startup market had a slow start to the week. Sign of the times or one day fluke? We'll see in time, I suppose.
Here's what we got into on the show today:
- Stocks are down today, and cryptos are doing even worse in recent days.
- Elon Musk's flirtation with becoming a Twitter board member is over, the company said. Precisely why Musk backed out is not entirely clear, though the social media company's statement might hold some clues.
- Shopify is splitting its stock, and changing up its corporate governance structure; crypto volumes are tanking in India following a legal change -- and Coinbase is struggling in the country; SailPoint is selling to private equity for $6.9 billion.
- Turning the clock back, the Ellevest round is very cool.
- And to close things out, NIO's production is on hold in China due to COVID issues. Such much for supply chain recovery.
This week is TechCrunch: Early Stage, which is going to be good fun. See you there!
This was our live show week! Yes, Mary Ann and Natasha and Alex got together with Grace for our Friday recording on Thursday, meaning that we gathered on Hopin and Twitter Spaces to yammer through the week's news. It was a very busy week, with breaking news up to the minute before we recorded -- including this piece from the Better.com saga.
- Square’s Better.com name Block is Butter-y smooth
- Failure is a choose-your-own adventure for startups
- Will rising interest rates decimate startup valuations?
- Is today's market sad or sane?
So! What did we get into? A lot:
- How Conceive is helping people manage the matter of infertility, Cottage raising $15 million to make ADUs more common, and how Tandem is taking on the hybrid work future.
- Next up was Austin, Mary Ann's home turf. We held an event there this week that we touched on, but the main thrust of our chat circled around this piece.
- From there it was time for the bad news -- including layoffs at Workrise, Better.com, and the implosion of Fast. The startup market is changing, and not every company is going to make it out the other end of 2022 it appears.
- And we closed out with our take on all things Elon and Twitter, including this three views piece and why it's hard to build a single-person social network.
And with that, we are back Monday morning. Chat soon!
This is our Wednesday show, where we niche down to a single topic, think about a question and unpack the rest. This week, given a parade of headlines and news that Fast shut down, Natasha and Alex asked: What are we missing when we talk about startup failure?
The question comes after one of Natasha’s recent Startups Weekly columns, where she looked into the complexity of startup failure, fallacy of takedown stories, and importance of diversity in newsrooms. Here's an excerpt:
"There’s the argument that startup tensions are inevitable and common, so should we spotlight every time something bubbles to the surface, especially at the cost of an underrepresented founder who may just be doing their best? There’s also an argument that the business is messy, so we should report on the issues as we hear about them; and there’s the narrative of the female takedown story, in which people believe that women are targeted by the press more than men due to unreasonably high standards."
In today's episode we discussed our own definitions of failure past Theranos and WeWork, current examples of rising tensions, and what this means for early-stage startups and historically overlooked founders. There's been more layoffs recently, some notable valuation cuts, and the implosion of Fast to weigh against 2021's strident startup optimism. That makes this the perfect time to dig into the topic of failure, and how to cover it from a startup perspective.
Finally, as promised, here's a look at our artsy depictions of the startup failure cycle:
https://twitter.com/nmasc\_/status/1511365442249580548
Don't forget that Equity is live this Thursday, and you can you come hang out with us on Hopin (free, and you can ask questions) or Twitter Spaces (free, but you cannot ask questions) if you'd like! See you then!
Every Monday, Grace and Alex scour the news and record notes on what’s going on to kick off the week.
After last weeks super startup-heavy show, we were back to our regular Monday grab-bag of news! Here's what we got into:
- A strong start to the week from global stocks, and a general updraft to crypto prices in recent days.
- Elon Musk buying a huge stake in Twitter, the popular American social network. The move comes after the Tesla and SpaceX CEO tweeted that Twitter was not allowing enough free discourse. Naturally we look forward to yet another idealist learning about content moderation, but we're also tracking Twitter rivals, making the situation both complex, and entertaining.
- PrimeBlock is going public via a SPAC! The deck hadn't dropped in time for the show, but the initial release is here.
- From the rest: Tesla deliveries were hot, lemon.markets raised $17 million, and Jumia is working with UPS.
Equity is live this week, so swing by to hang out if you want to this Thursday. Else we are back on a regular cadence!
Welcome to our Friday show! Our regular co-host Natasha was off this time, so Mary Ann and Alex linked arms with our producer Grace to blast our way through the news of the week. As always, we had to pick and choose what seemed to matter the most.
Here's what we got into:
- All Things Y Combinator: Here's our first set of favs, and our second. Here's a rundown of fintech companies from the batch, and our look at the Indian participants, and those hailing from Africa.
- Instacart as trendsetter: The well-known grocery delivery company has lowered the price at which it will value employee equity comp, something that could become a trend. It seems so, with Instacart leading a potential vanguard of similar actions from other companies in time. Also we're thinking about how startup valuations could regain their shine.
- Gaming: With the huge Axie Infinity hack making headlines, we talked about the matter and how other startups are tinkering with the play-to-earn market.
- And we closed with the topic of social networks, what Elon Musk is up to, and how Facebook managed to confirm everyone's suspicions about its ethics.
Whew! What a week, y'all. Chat Monday!
This is our Wednesday show, where we niche down to a single topic, think about a question and unpack the rest. This week, in light of Y Combinator's bi-annual demo day, Natasha and Alex asked about the utility of the parade of pitches. Our big question:
Are demo days outdated?
The question comes after Natasha’s latest Startups Weekly column, where she looked into the trend of everyone constantly trying to re-invent startup accelerators. We've seen everything from in-person events, to virtual pitch-a-thons, to record efforts, and more. Name it, it's been tried.
Today's show is a continuation of that conversation, specifically digging into how demo days served founders in the past, and how they amplify in the present. There's a good bit of factors that jolted things up, including the proliferation of accelerators, a boom in pre-seed funding and the pandemic forcing programming to go remote. We also ask for whom are demo days really for?
Listen in to hear what we landed on, disagreed with and picked for founders to focus on today.
Every Monday, Grace and Alex and Kell scour the news and record notes on what’s going on to kick off the week.
This week had a theme. Which was startups. Lots and lots of startups. Here’s the rundown:
- Markets are mixed this morning, with strong crypto trading results and big news from Tesla.
- The weekend’s leading conversation in the tech and startup world was about this analysis regarding crypto upstarts not giving out board seats to investors. Call it peak founder-friendliness? It’s also a huge risk, as investors have taken board seats for a reason, historically. All the same, you gotta win those deals.
- Y Combinator Demo Day is this week: We are going to see hundreds of startups make their pitch in rapid-fire fashion. Sure, many will have already raised capital, but the capitalist confab is still worth watching. I am looking for API-led startups and any hints about where DAOs are heading, personally.
- Zepto raised, which TechCrunch covered here, and I had a few thoughts about.
The big tech landscape is quiet this week thus far, which means we can focus in on startups. See you at demo day tomorrow!
It was a live recording this week, which was good fun. Our co-host Natasha was off, so Mary Ann and Alex teamed up with Grace to hammer our way through the news of the week live, with friends on Hopin, Twitter Spaces, and other locations on deck to hang out and ask questions.
Down a co-host or not, we tackled a whole slew of topics, including:
- Katie Haun's new mega crypto fund, and why the blockchain world seems to be so capital hungry.
- The simply bonkers pace at which Jeeves, a fintech startup, has accreted value in successive funding rounds.
- Ramp's latest round brought up the question of fintech vs. the world, and how startup commentary can at times miss the mark slightly.
- From there we pivoted to CEO changes at Kickstarter (here) and Cityblock Health (here). The changes were a jumping off point to the never-ending question of when startups should think about replacing their founders as CEOs.
- And we closed with a look at Forge's neat SPAC launch, and what its positive debut could mean for unicorns more generally.
Also you can snag Mary Ann's fintech newsletter here, which is going to launch in short order. Get hype!
We had an illness on the team, so instead of recording our usual Wednesday deep-dive, we reached into our recent archives and pulled the audio from a Twitter space we did the other week. In short, it's a Friday-style episode covering a host of topics, but just a little bit late, and on a different day.
The Equity team -- Natasha, Mary Ann, Maggie, Grace, and Alex -- were not about to cut back on feeding you the latest and greatest from the startup world. (Oh, and we have a live show on Thursday, see you there!)
What did we talk about? The following:
- Venture capital rounds for WorkWhile ($13 million) and Alloy Automation ($20 million).
- Mary Ann's reporting on Forage, focused around where its founders worked before building the fintech startup. Hint: Grocery delivery.
- Then we dug into the changes at Clearco, and what happens when founder dynamics shift. And we used the story to chat a bit about how the growth focus amongst young tech companies is changing.
It was a very good time. Back soon, so chat then!
Every Monday, Grace and Alex scour the news and record notes on what’s going on to kick off the week.
- Markets! The stock market is a bit up and down around the world, but nothing to cause too much concern. Crypto is neutral as well, but with some gains made in the last week.
- Big news! Anaplan is selling to PE for more than $10 billion. Notably the deal is not cheap, which means that we're seeing private equity get its checkbook out as software company prices come down and become, well, targets.
- Unicorns! FTX is heading to Australia, more indication that some crypto trading platforms are going to every market that they can. What will happen to smaller crypto platforms? And when does that consolidation land?
- Startups! Powered by People raises $5 million, CommerceIQ raises $115 million, and Sequoia debuts Arc, which is a non-accelerator accelerator.
Our live show is this week! Which means you can come hang out while we record our Friday episode on Thursday. Snag a free ticket here, or tune in on Twitter spaces!
This week our comrade Mary Ann was off, so Natasha and Alex teamed up with Grace on the dials to chat through the week's biggest news. Here's what our dynamic got into:
- Webflow's new round: Nine-figures of capital at a revenue multiple north of 40x? What is this, 2021? Nope, just the latest capital infusion for the no-code website company.
- All Raise's new CEO: The work of diversifying the venture capital market is far from over, and one group working to move the needle not only has plans to change the industry -- but also her own team.
- Funds: Natasha's coverage of fund-of-funds fit into news that SoftBank is turning one if its funds into an evergreen-vehicle, and Alex chatted through the numbers about Series A, B, and C rounds in the United States. Funds are maturing, experimenting and evolving into interesting vehicles. Maybe it's time we start covering them more on the show again (and check out our latest Wednesday episode for a Tiger Global-themed chat)
- What to know about China: From crashing stock prices to rocketing stock prices, it's been a week for Chinese equities. And startups appear increasingly caught in the crossfire.
- And then, crypto: From news about a hot new crypto deal to NFTs coming to Instagram, it feels impossible to avoid the blockchain world these days.
We are back next week with our full team, and a live show. So, chat you Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday live!
This is our Wednesday show, where we niche down to a single topic, think about a question and unpack the rest. This week, Natasha and Alex asked: Will Tiger's second act live up to its first?
The question comes after Natasha's latest Startups Weekly column, where she looked into one example of how Tiger Global's stamp of approval is coming for the early stage. Today's conversation is a continuation of that topic, but broadened with examples, context, and of course, some jokes as well.
- Before digging into the question, we walked through some historical venture shakeups, looking specifically at Andreessen Horowitz, SoftBank and ultimately Tiger Global's own jolt to the startup ecosystem. Remember when we weren't numb to mega-funds, and due diligence was contrarian?
- Then we get into why Tiger is turning to invest in early-stage companies, now of all times (hack: listen to our episode on market re-correction for some background).
- We spoke about Tiger cutting a new check into AngelList, and the resulting window it gets. A new-ish AngelList fund has hella Tiger vibes, notably.
- There's also a conversation to be had about how Tiger's late-stage playbook scales to the early-stage, which made us talk about due diligence, ownership, and fund structures.
- And speaking of evergreen funds, here's an evergreen reminder to take advantage of code “EQUITY” when subscribing to TechCrunch+ for a hefty discount, and gratitude from your favorite trio of tech nerds.
- We somehow fit YC in too, because why not.
All told the 2022 venture capital market is shaping up to be a very different beast than what we saw in 2021, and not only because Tiger is changing up its own posture. What we saw last year might prove a high-water mark for venture for a long time to come. So, stay tuned.
This week, Natasha is running the show, which means we're returning to our private market focus and, for the fun of it, reminding you all that Pete Davidson is getting high soon.
This is going to be a busy week for the team, so expect our sassiness to only increase as the days roll forward. Here's what I got into today:
- Markets have mixed feelings, thanks to the war in Ukraine, COVID-19, supply chain delays, inflation, and all around high tensions. This includes crypto, mind you.
- Instead of big tech, I talked about a big idea: Everyone is launching a fund to fund other funds, which is a reminder just how much relationships in VC have changed (and how much the appetite for emerging fund managers is growing). Experiments aren't just fun, they could bring big returns.
- I got into two top of mind deals: Sayso, which wants to change your accent, and Moove, which wants to bring car ownership from luxury to reality across the entire continent of Africa.
And of course we have to end with the fact that it is Mary Ann's birthday, so follow her on Twitter but definitely don't e-mail her. We are so thankful to have you as part of the show, and a go-to friend for all things fintech and existential. You can find me on Twitter @nmasc_ and the show @equitypod.
This was saw Equity back on the live-taping game, with Mary Ann, Natasha, and Alex gathering with Grace and the TechCrunch video team (shoutout Julio and Yashad!) to chat through the week's news. Naturally we had to cut like all hell, but we had a simply terrific time traipsing through the following items:
- AngelList Ventures raising a $100 million round, and what the deal seems to mean. Mara snagging $6 million for a business that had us all hype, and the Public-Otis tie-up from earlier in the week were also on the docket.
- Then we worked through the history of the Better.com rolling fiasco, which took a fresh turn through well-trod ground this week by messing up layoffs. Can Better.com get better at being a dotcom? We wrote up a whole thread of what went down on our Twitter.
- Then we nattered on the recent Acorns and Kin Insurance rounds, following what happens when a company decides that a SPAC is no longer the proper fit for its fundraising and exit plans. Alex has more here. It reminded us of our recent Wednesday episode, when we asked if fintech is playing offense or defense these days.
- And we closed on a grip of news from Africa, where startups are raising more money, more quickly, and taking part in more accelerators than ever before. Make sure you follow Tage Kene-Okafor and Annie Njanja for fresh reporting on startups across the continent.
We do live tapings every two weeks, so come to the next one! This time, we gave away a SXSW ticket, next time, who knows!
This is our Wednesday show, where we niche down to a single topic, think about a question and unpack the rest. This week, Natasha and Alex connected a slew of seemingly-unrelated news items to answer a big question:
How do we balance community and capitalism?
The original question we sought to explore was "can you buy a community?" The answer to that question, after further exploration, felt obvious enough: no, so no what? Combining Epic Games' recent acquisition of Bandcamp, Commsor's latest raise, and Lolita Taub's new venture firm, community has a set of sharper standards around it. And nobody wants to let the buzzword go unchecked.
Evergreen reminder to take advantage of code “EQUITY” when subscribing to TechCrunch+ for a hefty discount, and gratitude from your favorite trio of tech nerds.
We're really enjoying using our Wednesday show to chat through trends and major topics. Tweet us with things you want us to hit on, if you have a particular bee in your bonnet!
Hello and welcome back to Equity, a podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines. Every Monday, Grace and Alex scour the news and record notes on what’s going on to kick off the week.
As before, the Russian invasion of Ukraine was top of mind, but lots of other things were going on so we had more than plenty to yammer about:
- The global stock market is taking more body-blows in the wake of rising oil prices and geopolitical instability.
- EA and Epic are pulling titles from Russia, as other companies have made similar moves; the tech industry has made its stance clear that doing business in Russia is off-limits for some time.
- FTX is moving into Europe, which struck me as big news, while Klarna reported earnings (more to come on that front).
- Circular.io raised $10 million for tech talent recruiting, and Founders Fund put together $5 billion for new funds.
- Closing out, there's an Apple event tomorrow!
So, yeah, it's busy out there. Our live show is this Thursday, mind, and if you want to hang out with us while we record, head here to get a free ticket.
Since the birth of Equity in mid-March of 2017, Chris Gates has been part of the team. Indeed, he helped found the show, and over the next half-decade produced and edited hundreds of episodes. He was, in short, a pillar of the team, and a key driver of how show operated day to day. Which is to say that he brought kindness, and warmth, and care to our work. As one of our colleagues put it, TechCrunch's podcast history can't be written without his name as a huge part of it.
Sadly for the Equity team, but equally good news for his new employer, Chris's last day was last Friday. So we gathered to record a special episode of sorts.
Natasha, Alex, and Chris sat down and played back a number of clips from the show, including our first-every episode, the first time that Natasha was on the podcast. That sort of thing. And we said some nice things about Chris at the same time.
Technically Equity's birthday isn't for a week or two, but we decided to hybridize our look-back with Chris's exit. After all, we're an earnest team that needed a minute (or 30) to sit and be earnest.
If you are an Equity listener, don't worry too much. We still have Grace Mendenhall on the production team, so we are in good hands. And we've added Maggie Stamets in recent weeks as well, who has been doing an ace job thus far helping us write and record. Finally, Kell is helping edit our babble down into usable content.
So as with prior Equity exits -- Matthew Lynley, Katie Roof, Connie Loizos, Kate Clark, Danny Crichton -- we are hugging it out, and getting back to work.
More to come! We're not going anywhere! But we will miss Chris. A lot.
This is our Wednesday show, where we niche down to a single topic, think about a question and unpack the rest. This week, Natasha and Alex brought on Mary Ann for a special fintech episode, perhaps our spiciest of the year so far. We asked:
Are fintech startups playing offense or defense today?
To start, we spoke about Ramp and Pipe's latest moves (here, here), which include moving into the travel space and branching out into media and entertainment, respectively, and how they reflect the broader fintech competitive landscape.
We even played out a scenario in which we decide if two of the buzziest fintechs will ever compete with each other. (Answer: Yes.)
Before you go, make sure you subscribe to Mary Ann's new fintech newsletter and check out her recent TechCrunch+ investor survey from top investors in this noisy sector. Evergreen reminder to take advantage of code "EQUITY" when subscribing to TechCrunch+ for a hefty discount, and gratitude from your favorite trio of tech nerds.
Equity drops every Monday at 7:00 a.m. PST, Wednesday, and Friday at 6:00 a.m. PST, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts.
Every Monday, Grace and Alex scour the news and record notes on what’s going on to kick off the week.
This weekend was yet another that was full of news from Ukraine, which meant that the tech market was slightly quieter than usual. But not so quiet that we didn't have lots to chat about, so here's the latest:
- The Russian startup market isn't huge -- data here -- but when we consider the number of startups in Ukraine as well, the impact of Russia's war and the world's sanctions will bite. Russia is also tangling with American tech giants, which isn't going well.
- Over the weekend, the American Republican Party bashed large American tech companies. Gone are the days when the GOP was a reliable simp for corporate power. Today it's more fashionable to pump SPACs like TMTG, or Rumble.
- Weee! raised a huge sum from the second Vision Fund, we report, and OneCard is set to raise a massive round in short order, despite how recently it announced its preceding round. (Oh, and this looks very neat.)
- And Zip is buying Sezzle, in more BNPL market consolidation. A sign of the times, we decide.
That is our show! Lots more to come this week, so get ready!
Today we gathered to do our live show, something that was scheduled a long time ago. Obviously, the world's condition has changed since. So, we sat down and tore up our notes doc and put most of the show on hold. What we wound up recording was short, and frankly a little bit raw and from the gut.
But it just didn't feel right for us to sit and chit chat about funding rounds and executive shuffles when Russia is busy invading a democracy under false pretenses. TechCrunch has some notes on the situation for the tech world in Ukraine, which is worth a read.
That's it from us. Equity will return in short order when we have our heads on straight. Hugs, and godspeed.
Equity drops every Monday at 7:00 a.m. PST, Wednesday, and Friday at 6:00 a.m. PST, so subscribe to us onApple Podcasts,Overcast,Spotify and all the casts.
This is our Wednesday show, where we niche down to a single topic, think about a question and unpack the rest. This week, Natasha and Alex asked:
How has the great resignation changed the way startups hire?
The conversation started with defining the Great Resignation and sharing numbers to back the sentiment that everyone can't stop talking about. As always, the flowed to naturally care more about the employees within startups, and their feelings, than employers and the power they've traditionally sat atop.
To check our 'what about VC' box, we talked through what startups are facing today in terms of a labor market, how it has changed, and how they might be able to compete with big-tech's big dollars. After all, is any company going to be able to beat Meta on comp? Probably not.
Alex thinks VCs are the new recruiters, which will help startups some. From the other angle -- putting labor in our remit and not capital, for once -- Natasha wants to ditch her 9-5 to represent Shopify employees, it seems. We won't let her, naturally.
Closing, it appears that the forces driving more venture capital into early-stage companies are not too far from the causes of the labor shortage. Everyone is looking for return, either on their labor, or their capital. And that means a tight hiring market, and picky workers.
https://techcrunch.com/2022/02/19/arlan-hamilton-wants-to-reroute-how-startups-hire/
Equity drops every Monday at 7:00 a.m. PST, Wednesday, and Friday at 6:00 a.m. PST, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts.
Every Monday, or Tuesday, Grace and Alex scour the news and record notes on what’s going on to kick off the week.
We are a day late here thanks to the American holiday, which means that it's going to be a short week -- here at least. But that doesn't mean that things are slow. In fact, the opposite:
- Russian military aggression in Ukraine is hammering the global stock market, although not everywhere it's worth noting. Crypto prices are also flat to down, generally. Most crypto tokens are off sharply in the last week.
- SoFi is buying Technisys for $1.1 billion. The deal isn't receiving rave reviews from Wall Street, but for the consumer fintech the concept of bringing its own infra in-house does make pretty good sense.
- TRUTH Social launched, and struggled to handle early demand. Which is funny given how long it took to build. TechCrunch has more here.
- FTX.us wants to bring crypto to a game near you. The Verge has the key quote here, I will not, but it failed to lift my general skepticism.
- And we have so much more here, regarding startups.
It's going to be a busy, hectic week. And one full of stress, given the state of the world. So, no rest! More coffee! We can do this!
This is Saturday, which means it's not a usual day for us to drop an episode. But what are we if not try-hards at heart? So, we're back today.
What do we have on store for you? I brought Anshu Sharma onto the podcast -- and a Twitter space, so make sure you are following the podcast, yeah? -- to chat interest rates, technology growth, startup valuations, and how they all tie together. Sharma was the right person to have on the show because he's been a big tech employee (Oracle, Salesforce), an investor (Storm Ventures, and as an angel), and he's a founder to boot. So he's been around not just the block, but several in the world of technology over time.
TechCrunch has covered SkyFlow, his startup, a few times including its most recent fundraise.
https://techcrunch.com/2022/02/16/welcome-to-the-post-pandemic-economy-startups/
Sharma finds some of the in-market worry about rising rates harming tech stocks silly. His thesis boils down to the value of growth on a longer time-horizon than what a DCF-tuned spreadsheet might tell you. That said, rising rates will impact some startup inputs, like venture funds in the medium-term, so there was a lot to chew on.
We try to keep Equity pretty high-level, and focused on discrete events. But why have a show if you can't use it to scratch your own itches from time to time?
The pod is back on Tuesday due to an American holiday this Monday. Chat soon!
This week, Natasha and Alex and Mary Ann got together with Chris and Grace to rock our regular Friday news roundup. This time, however, with extra zip as we're staring down a long weekend that, let's be clear, everyone needs.
Regardless, here's the show rundown:
- Don't call us your metamate, friend.
- Startups news of the week: Ro raises even more, Airbase partners with Amex, and Deel wants to give employers a way to fund their payroll in crypto, no matter where their employees are based.
- The crypto regulatory world is heating up, with news from both India and the United States to chew on. Our read is that some regulation is good, but not every loss can be spun as a win.
- We also took a look at the mental health market for people of color through the lens of MindFi in the APAC region, and She Matters here in the United States. We had some startup-style questions, but are generally bullish about the companies.
- And we closed with the cannabis market of both Germany, and the United States. Alex and Natasha are bullish on, well, all of it while Mary Ann nurses a hemp allergy.
Woot! We're off Monday, but back Tuesday. Hugs!
This is our Wednesday show, where we niche down to a single topic, think about a question and unpack the rest. This week, Natasha and Alex asked:
What can startups learn from the rise, and now struggles, of Hopin? For companies that grew like weed, what’s next?
In the show, we talked through Hopin's meteoric rise and why we called them the fastest growth story of the era, comparable or better than what Slack and other well-known growth stories managed during their own ascent. However, with Hopin now cutting staff after raising mountains of cash and buying a half-dozen smaller companies, it's clear that hyper-scaling has limits.
The economy is changing, again, which is also going to shake up which startups have tailwinds, and which have headwinds. Just like it did before. Hopin is perhaps a very visible canary, but it is hardly the only startup that rode COVID-19's economic disruptions to new heights, which means it won't be the only company left to navigate a changed world when the winds shift.
https://techcrunch.com/2022/02/12/its-not-a-startup-reckoning-its-a-recorrection/
Every Monday, Grace and Alex scour the news, and record notes on what’s going on to kick off the week. Today we had were reeling in the wake of the American football championship, and the fact that is once again snowing where Alex lives. Alas.
But snow or not, the news was fascinating:
- We chewed on the Just Eat delisting situation, which appears to be a cost-cutting move. Delivery Hero is also struggling, and the value of Deliveroo is in the toilet. So it's not clear that European food delivery will wind up being the business that many expected it to be. What about in America? We get DoorDash earnings in due time, so we'll learn more but the news doesn't augur well.
- And shares of Splunk are set to rise sharply this morning in the wake of late Friday news that Cisco is interested in buying Splunk for around $20 billion. Normally such a deal wouldn't excite us much as Splunk hasn't been a startup for a long time, but the deal possibility does say that anti-trust concerns aren't stopping some major firms from pursuing big deals.
- From the startup world, two rounds: $20 million for Gaia, which Alex thinks has a brilliant idea, and TripleDot, which raised $116 million for its causal games. Don't sleep on the gaming market. It's just flat huge.
And to close we yammered about crypto ads in the football game, which were expensive, but appear to be having a nice effect for the companies in question. More soon!
We had the full crew aboard today for our live taping, headed by our killer production team Grace and Chris, and hosting crew Mary Ann, Natasha and Alex. Overall, it was a success? Our streaming tech took us to various Internet platforms, and people came to Hopin and asked questions. Thank you! It's always a risk to do something new, so thank you for making it a win.
But enough of all that, what did we talk about? Here's the rundown:
- Funding rounds from Mos (edtech + fintech), Alchemy (blockchain infra), and Cooks Venture (patented chickens). The last round got the most attention during the recording, leading to questions about the ethics of eating meat.
- Peloton's news, and the pandemic effect on companies was up next. Or more specifically, the changing impact of the pandemic on companies. Peloton is suffering in the pandemic's wake (although some argue that is due more to mismanagement than the pandemic), but other companies are coming out of the dip in reasonable form.
- From there we dug into the ethics of venture capitalists having side hustles as consultants. Our read is that the setup is possible to be done ethically, and as the investing market grow a cohort of check-writers with smaller AUMs, some additional work to pay the bills can be unavoidable. The drama was illustrative, if more rude than it needed to be.
- And we closed with insurtech. After insurtech stocks got hammered, there's some optimism that better days are up ahead.
Whew! We're back with another live show in two weeks. Until then, we're back to normal!
This is our Wednesday show, where we niche down to a single topic, think about a question and unpack the rest. This week, Natasha and Alex crawled through the Metaverse, leaning on Facebook's latest earnings and Microsoft's newest appetite as somewhat of a map.
Our question, after much thinking, gets into the heart of what the Metaverse is built for:
Will the metaverse be for work, or for play?
We’re not picking sides, necessarily, but exploring how two companies within Big Tech are staking bets in the digital world, and how we think those bets will shake out long term for them and the startups that look up to them.
Facebook seems to be taking a work-styled approach, Microsoft is big in games, and startups are trying a host of different methods for building our digital next. Who is right? Who will win? And how will we get here? That's what we wanted to dive into.
The Satya Nadella interview that we mentioned is here, as well as Natasha's piece on virtual HQs.
Every Monday, Grace and Alex scour the news, and record notes on what's going on to kick off the week. Today we had a fun mix of news, and things that made us laugh.
- The Spotify-Rogan situation continued as last week ended, with more episodes of the show coming down. More apologies. And more of Spotify trying to straddle the difference between platform and publisher, while hoping to reap the rewards of both while not fully owning up to the responsibility.
- Wag is going public, and my body is ready.
- From the funding round front, we had quick notes on Swing, which raised a $24 million Series B, and Reliance Health, which raised a $40 million Series B.
- And to close us out, an analogy about Facebook through the lens of Alphabet's Other Bets line item.
Lots of Equity is coming this week, including our first live show of the year. It's free and you can come hang out, watch us flub, and ask questions! See you Thursday!
Hello and happy weekend from the Equity crew! We had a busy week, including a Twitter Space with Natasha and Alex taking to the mics to dig into some tasty public-market news. Naturally our show is more startup-focused than public-market centered. But! We can learn a lot from the world of public companies that have a wide footprint inside particular tech niches that matter for younger companies.
So when we digest PayPal's results and what investors did to its value this week, we are not super interested in PayPal per se, but more what its results can tell us about the fintech world more generally. After all, around a fifth of all venture capital dollars invested last year went to fintech startups. And Alphabet, it has deep ties to the public cloud space, and the advertising market, both places where startups live and play.
https://techcrunch.com/2022/01/31/come-hang-with-us-for-live-recordings-of-techcrunch-podcasts-equity-and-found/
We do the occasional live taping on Twitter, so make sure you are following us on the Big Blue Bird App. Hugs! We are back Monday morning!
We had the full crew aboard today, headed by our killer production team Grace and Chris, and hosting crew Mary Ann, Natasha and Alex.
Last week we promised Cute Farming Robots, and this week we delivered, along with a lot more. But first, the Equity team along with our sister podcast Found are doing live recordings starting soon. You can find out more here, but Equity will be live-taped on Hopin next Thursday. Come hang out, it should be fun!
https://techcrunch.com/2022/01/31/come-hang-with-us-for-live-recordings-of-techcrunch-podcasts-equity-and-found/
Now, the show rundown:
- Funding rounds from Pluto (corporate spend in the Middle East), Free Agency (agents for tech talent), and Metafy (video game coaching) got us started. From a host of rounds this week, we chose the most interesting for your delectation. If you want more on gaming, check out our Wednesday show where we niche down into the universe, or in this case, the metaverse.
- The new Seven Seven Six fund got us into the crypto investing beat, which Alex explored here earlier in the week. In short: Expect more crypto deals. We also touched on the Indian crypto tax rule, which is a revelation of a regulation.
- From there we dove into the fintech realm through the lens of the Bolt fiasco/drama/truth-telling saga. More tweets, please.
- And then, we end with a section on autonomous vehicles, that has nothing to do with cars. Yep, we're talkinig Cute Farming Robots, including rounds from Vecna, Electric Sheep, and MongoDB founder doing this, which reminds us that the AWS of robots isn't too far away.
So far, 2022 is feeling good. Along with our soon to be standing live show circuit, we're working hard on making the show more focused on tension and nuance, while still sticking to our love for numbers and nerdy networks. Let's annoy some people this year, and teach you something in the meantime.
This is our Wednesday show, where we niche down to a single topic, think about a question and unpack the rest. This week, Natasha and Alex brought on the Most Online™ reporter at TechCrunch, Amanda Silberling to talk about one of her recent pieces, "maybe creator funds are bad."
The column, mixed with the recent saga between Spotify and Joe Rogan, helped us ask a bigger question for this week's episode:
What makes a platform economically viable for creators?
It's no small question. Creators are a key plank in every platform's success, from TikTok to YouTube to Instagram to, well, wherever you watch or listen to stuff made outside of major studios. But the financial relationship between platform and provider -- creator, in other words -- is often fraught and broken.
Creator funds are some proposed fix to the situation, but we find the to be more band-aid than holistic solution. Rev splits are good, and seemingly more sustainable, but with YouTube's ad load reaching truly epic proportions, they may not be a fix-all. So we sat down to chew the fat and try to work towards a solution.
Which we mostly did, except for Alex, who decided that a return to feudalism is the only way forward. We're back Friday! Talk soon!
This Monday show actually felt a bit old-school, in that the weekend controversy in tech has spilled over into the working morning, meaning that we need to talk about it. But first, markets:
- After the somewhat punishing start to last week, today's trading is somewhat more staid. Global equities are moving, but nothing suicidal, and cryptos are off a bit in the last 24 hours, but up in the last seven days. Naturally, given what has happened in recent trading sessions, all that could change in a moment but at least we're starting in un-choppy waters.
- The Joe Rogan furor continued. After several musicians decided to take their music off the service in protest of Spotify's decision to pay for material that those artists viewed as undercutting public health, Spotify made some of its rules public and said that it will append COVID-19 notes to podcasts that discuss the pandemic. We talk about why.
- In startup-land, FTX has raised another huge round, TCV is putting more late-stage money into early-stage rounds, and Bamboo raised.
- Closing out, changes are afoot in China's venture capital market.
So yes, there's going to be a lot of Twitter drama this week. But don't worry! You can compensate for that by hating on people posting Wordle scores, as that appears to be the latest way to lose friends online.
What did we get into? Well, a host of pretty awesome stuff, even if we had to leave Cute Farming Robots in the tank for another few days:
- We had funding rounds from Anyplace, which is building a way to make the digital nomad life work in a WFH world, notes on Frost Giant's Series A, which Alex really needs to finish writing up, and Parthean, which Natasha covered and did a great job explaining. Here's to better financial literacy in general. We need it.
- Then we chatted through what Mark Cuban is doing with his generic drug play, which we think is at once great (cheaper meds for the folks who need them!) and somewhat sad (how did we get here as a society?). Which of course led us into a conversation about public and private money, and the role that billionaires play in reshaping society.
- Next up was a YC credit union DAO that is collecting money from graduates of the accelerator to invest in cyrpto startups. So its a founder rolling fund, right? Kinda.
- MENTOR COLLECTIVE
And that's a wrap on another busy week. Good luck in the snow if it's coming your way!
This is our Wednesday show, where we niche down to a single topic, think about a question and unpack the rest. This week, Natasha and Alex brought on Bessemer partner Mary D'Onofrio to chat about the public market slump, but more importantly, its trickle down impact on private companies. Our big question was a broad and important one, built off of our most recent three views column for TechCrunch+.
How is this change in market conditions going to affect startups?
As a trio, we chatted about the obvious and non-obvious impact on startups as companies like Peloton, Netflix and indexes like the BVP Nasdaq Cloud Index, flash warning signs. We asked questions like what is ahead for startups that raised at premium valuations during the market peak and how the exit market may shape up in the coming quarters. D'Onofrio gave two particularly hot takes on the future of due diligence and the nearly-shuttered IPO window, so make sure to tune in.
We don't do too many guests on the show these days due in part to our all-virtual recording setup thanks to COVID. But D'Onofrio was a blast to have on, so we'll be asking her back before too long. Enjoy!
If you own stuff, I am sorry to report that you are probably poorer today than you were on Friday, and even less wealthy than you were the Friday before. Things are selling off and we had to talk about it:
- Stocks are down, and cryptos are getting utterly hammered. It's a bad time to own equities, but worse if you are invested in digital assets. Bitcoin, ether, and Solana are taking body-blows while the stock market wilts. I guess this means that all our 401k contributions will be cheaper in February? Small wins, but still.
- Swiggy raised a huge round at a simply enormous price, which is good for the company but has us asking questions. OfficeSpace raised $150 million, which caught our eye, and the recent Spectrum Labs appears to make good sense.
- And to close out we asked is the party over? This MG Siegler piece was in our brain as we chewed over the situation. The dissonance between the public and private markets feels peak, and we aren't sure how quickly their diverging velocities can keep up the tension.
Regardless of how the selloff is impacting you, we hope that you have a lovely week and stay warm. Hugs!
Despite the fact that it is a holiday week here in the United States, tech news was, well, as nuts as it usually is. At this point anything else would be a shock.
So what did we get to? All of this and more:
- Rebundle's incredibly neat startup idea, and funding round. We love a Midwest startup here on the show thanks to Alex's roots, which means that when we got to talk about banana fiber, hair extensions, venture capital, and St. Louis all at once, we were hype.
- Wheel reinvented itself again with a $150 million Series C, while Gale Health played matchmaker with understaffed shifts and nurses.
- Plaid's buy of Cognito, a fintech startup, for around $250 million. The deal had us thinking about the power of APIs, the future of fintech, and why we don't hear about more startup M&A.
- Part of the why to that question could be anti-trust pressures, the sort of which that Microsoft is going to hit with its purchase attempt of Activision Blizzard, a gaming company. Microsoft already owns several gaming studios (Mojang, Bethesda), its own gaming platform (Xbox), and has long owned and operated the key PC gaming operating system (Windows). How much more does it need to own?
- We also touched on Wordle, free gaming, and the open web in our gaming chat, so lots to unpack there, frankly! Send us your go-to starter word.
- Finally, no time like the present to return to no code. At times tech is a bunch of shiny rebrands, but at other times, basic angles become non-negotiable strategies. No code, like AI and ML, is one of them. And companies like Walnut and Softr are snapping up the resulting rewards.
Whew! What a week. If you are tired already, do not look at the calendar. It will only terrify you.
This is our Wednesday show, where we niche down to a single topic, think about a question and unpack the rest. This week, Natasha and Alex dared to refresh perhaps the most common conversation in startups these days: the ubiquity, and resulting irrelevance, of unicorns. Our big question wasn't a simple one:
Do we care that the meaning of unicorns has been hollowed out?
The conversation ran the gamut, starting with information on unicorn creation rates, startup hit success and of course, funding booms leading to aforementioned ripple effects. The majority of our time was spent asking more meta questions about the moniker, like how the quality bar has changed for $1 billion dollar companies and why late-stage thinks it needs to act like early stage?
On TC+, we've recently written about the changing characteristics of unicorns, and how public markets may bring a not-so-private reckoning to tech's stars. (For more on the software valuation thing, head here.)
This is our Monday (Tuesday) show, our short ramp into the week where we talk about the larger picture to get our feet wet. We're a day late due to an American holiday, and I can say later in the day with this thanks to my schedule. But, better late than never, here's what we got into:
- Yet another bad day for assets: Stocks around the world were broadly lower, with software shares taking yet another hit in the key US market.
- Microsoft wants to buy Activision Blizzard for nearly $69 billion dollars. It's a lot of money for a gaming studio that was so recently covered in, well, scandal? And really, does Microsoft needto get any bigger? Come on. It has already consumed several gaming companies, and is worth north of $2 trillion. At what point will regulators, you know, regulate?
- Clockwise raises $45 million! This is a very neat round from a very cool company, which Aisha Malik covered for TechCrunch earlier today. Her post is here if you need more.
We're back to our normal schedule starting tomorrow, now that the new year and holidays are behind us. To work!
Happily this week, we did not talk about NFTs, and I don’t think that we even said “token” a single time.
Instead, Mary Ann and Natasha and Alex got back to what we might consider the roots of Equity. Here’s what we got into:
- We started with a look at the recent Fertilis round. Fertilis is an Australian startup working to make the IVF process more reliable. We are big fans of the concept, though the startup has lots of work ahead of it before it moves the needle for couples hoping to conceive.
- Mary Ann brought together two very Equity topics: Fintech and SaaS, but more interestingly, fintech that only wants to serve SaaS startups. Even though we tried to define Arc’s relationship with the startups it serves, Alex landed on it being a friends with benefits for the financial world.
- Speaking of fintech, Brex made headlines (again) with its new raise and new executive – thanks to Meta.
- We keep returning to the hiring conversation, and that’s for good reason. Career Karma (news here) and SeekOut (news here) have two different strategies when it comes to empowering employees at companies -- and all of us agreed that retention, versus placement, is the future of hiring tech.
- We ended with a conversation on accelerators thanks to Y Combinator’s news, and venture reaction thereof. Plus, new AngelList and Dorm Room Fund remind us that staying niche in strategy continues to be the way that early-stage venture operations are winning deals.
A big hug to you all for surviving the start to the working year during a COVID surge. We can do this! We’ll get through it as a big team, ok?
This is our Wednesday show, where we niche down to a single topic and dive deep. This week Natasha and Mary Ann and Alex came together to talk about the changing nature of due diligence in the startup market.
The chat was loosely centered around a piece that the three of us wrote as 2021 was coming to a close, but the conversation quickly broadened to include a host of factors that are impacting how startups fundraise, and build today.
Mary Ann talked about the power of FOMO, and how that particular social factor is impacting how startups raise. Natasha brought up the importance of back-channeling, and how founders talk to one another. And Alex tried to tease out the difference in how funds of various sizes will approach doing their own diligence, or letting others take on the work.
It was all very good fun! You can read the original backing piece on TC+ here, and we're back Friday!
This is our Monday show, our short ramp into the week. Yes, it's Monday again. No, you can't stay in bed. Things are already happening!
- Take-Two is buying Zynga: In a cash and stock deal worth around $12.7 billion (enterprise value), the transaction has delighted Zynga shareholders and bummed out Take-Two's own.
- Paytm is taking shots, as other 2021 IPOs slim down.
- The macro environment that startups exist in is about to change for the first time, from a monetary perspective.
- Pine Labs is looking to go public in the United States, China venture capital data is looking pretty strong, Assent Compliance raised a huge round, and Arive is apparently a thing.
- All that and we are just getting ready for earnings season, so stay hype as there is a lot of data coming in short order.
Welcome to the week! The Equity team is entirely back from vacation now, and we are ready to freaking rock this year. Let's kick some ass!
We're getting back up to full speed this week, so Mary Ann and Alex along with Grace behind the scenes took on our Friday show. Next week Natasha and Chris are back, and we'll do our regular three-show lineup. Today, however, despite a smaller team we had just as much as always go chew through:
- OpenSea's epic new fundraise: Alex did a little Fun Math on the company's trading volume and possible revenue totals. The gist is that OpenSea is a big business. But with NFTs as volatile as they are, charting regular growth will prove difficult.
- During our crypto chat, we also dug into the Web 2.0 vs. web3 debate that has been raging.
- From there we pivoted to fintech, with notes on Petal's funding round, Ribbit's new fund, and how Mexican fintech Bankaya is going after its target customers via offline methods.
- Then it was notes on the private and public markets' dissonance, and a few moments to complain about COVID.
We are back Monday morning! Chat you then!
It's the new year! Yes, welcome to 2022 from the Equity team. We hope that our holiday episodes kept you entertained, and warm. But it's now back to work, so let's get into the news:
- Global stocks are generally higher today, while cryptos are mostly flat. In the last week, major cryptocurrencies have lost value.
- Twitter banned Rep. Marjorie Taylor-Greene for "repeated violations of [its] COVID-19 misinformation policy."
- India is investigating Apple's payment system for iOS.
- Tesla Q4 deliveries came in above expectations, leading to the company's stock surging in pre-market trading. NIO also saw a bump, which means that EV startups are also having a good day.
- The Sensetime IPO happened while Equity was on break. Despite raising far less than it had once wanted, the company's Hong Kong IPO is now in the books, and doing well as a trading equity.
- And AIMMO raised $12 million in a Series A. The company provides data labeling tooling for enterprise customers building AI models.
Whoo! The year is underway! The great gears of work have once again begun to spin. Let's get it!
As is tradition on the show, we used the last episode of the year to make predictions about the next year. To continue an annual tradition, Grace and Chris joined Natasha and Mary Ann and Alex on the mic, a rare treat and one simply for your enjoyment. Expectedly, they had a lot to say.
So what did we manifest for 2022? Here's a sampling:
- We're bullish on climate-focused startups: A notable theme from a number of us was the importance of climate startups, and how many types of startups are going to have a climate-flavor. In short, as the planet changes, it's going to touch just about everything. And if sustainability is not your entire pitch, it's going to be at least a strategy soon enough.
- We had a lot to say about crypto: Sure, we're all a bit tired of talking crypto, but there's also no chance that we could get away from the topic when considering next year. The classic tension between reinvention and regulation continues to be a dynamic we all care about, and predict will be full force over the next twelve months.
- We're not nearly as bullish on media: The Buzzfeed SPAC had some of us bummed out, but when it came to creators and not just writers, we were a bit more positive. Everything is media, even if everything doesn't make money.
- Space is controversial: We won't spoil it, but the space chat got a bit spicy. The argument wound up showing an interesting issue in the tech space, namely is all the money going to where it will have the greatest impact?
A big hug from the Equity team for your continued listenership this year. Thanks for sticking with us, and we're back in a heartbeat with another year's shows - some of which may even be in person!
It's just about Christmas, which means you may be stuck with family at the moment. Regardless of what, if any, holidays you may celebrate, there's good chance that there are more people around you than normal. We're here to distract you from that.
To ensure that you get respite from Actual Human Interaction, the Equity team has prepared a look-back at the year. Big numbers? Check. Big themes? You know it. Big moments of 'wait, that happened this year?!' Well, we'd have it no other way.
Here's what we have in store for you:
- High-level venture capital stats from the year, from around the world including India, Latin America, and the United States.
- The rise of memes and money: Remember the Gamestop/stonk saga? That was this year, amazingly. So too was the Robinhood IPO, the Coinbase direct listing, and a host of other related stories. Sure, by the end of the year we had moved on to other pieces of key news, but don't forget how wild the start of 2021 was from a trading perspective.
- The crypto boom: Love it or hate it, crypto was one of the key startup themes this year. Capital raced into NFT marketplaces, crypto infra projects, new blockchains, and more. It was a gold rush, but all the gold was digital.
- A changing creator economy: We had little choice but to talk talking, to chat chatting, to yammer about yammering. Yes, we riffed on the rise and fall of Clubhouse, and the larger live-audio market. Podcasts, videos, and the creator economy as a whole were pretty big narratives this year, so we talked through what went down.
- We also touched on remote work, fintech, insurtech mistakes, media startups, and a grip of topics that you, the Equity family, sent in via Twitter.
Did we get to everything? Heck no. We didn't even get close. But that's because 2021 was a busy damn year. It started busy and never slowed down. What do we expect in 2022? Well, just wait for next week's episode!
To close out the year, Natasha and Mary Ann and Alex headed to the mic with Grace and Chris behind the scenes. We got to our favorite topics, and honestly, got a chance to just laugh our way through the final innings of the year.
Here's what we got to:
- Factor raised a Seed round for up-chain logistics work, Phylagen is working to track airborne illness, and Notus wants to help you find the right influencer to buy.
- We also dove into the How Big Can Y Combinator Really Get discussion that Haje kicked off. We don't all agree on this one, so talk it through with us.
- Then we chatted about Course Hero, edtech, and when it can -- and may not! -- make sense to raise venture capital.
- To close we dove into Alex's SPAC story about the metaverse, touched on the Reddit IPO, and made fun of whatever garbage this is.
And that's our last news round up of the year. Stay tuned for our 2021 look back episode that comes out on Friday, December 24 and our 2022 predictions-meets-manifestations episode that comes out on Friday, December 31st. You can check out our Twitter account for when they go live.Happy Holidays from the Equity family to you and yours. May your days be merry, even if they're in the metaverse.
It finally happened, ladies and gentleman and our non-binary friends. The Holiday News Slowdown has arrived. Late, I might add, but still here at last. But that did not stop Grace and Alex from making you your weekly kickoff show!
Welcome to the final Equity Monday of the year. Here's what we got into:
- The Indian PM's Twitter account was hacked, and used to promote bitcoin. Not a great look for the crypto world.
- The SenseTime IPO is on hold after the US government "added SenseTime Group Limited to the Non-SDN Chinese Military-Industrial Complex Companies List," per the company. The AI listing's delay is not a great look for Chinese tech market liquidity.
- Fuse added $25 million to its Series B, helping bring insurance products to Southeast Asia.
- Thirdweb raised $5 million to bring together no-code and Web3, which we think is pretty cool.
Don't forget that Equity is back Friday for a final news roundup, and that we have two holiday eps coming during the last two weeks of the year! Talk soon!
Friends, we're almost there: the end of the year that felt like a decade. This week, Mary Ann, Natasha and Alex put aside their 2021 fatigue and talked through a week full of news - and candidly, tensions. As always, shout out to Grace and Chris for producing the show and making us sound a whole lot better.
We got into the Lyft mafia, garbage, and why our local truckers are giving us creator economy vibes. Or more specifically:
- Kenya’s Pariti raised $2.85M led by Harlem Capital to develop startup ecosystems in emerging markets, proving yet again how Africa's entrepreneurial scene is one not to miss. The empowerment trend continued with TrueNorth's $50 million fundraise to help biz-savvy independent truckers, and freshly-anointed unicorn AgentSync with news, as Alex reminds us, that insurtech is very much alive.
- Opensea got a new CFO from Lyft, which led to IPO rumors, denial, and rumors about why there's denial about going public. Plus, as Natasha notes, if you're not leaving Lyft to join crypto, you're leaving Lyft to join climate.
- The Trump Media SPAC is a mess, as we anticipated, frankly.
- Mary Ann is all over the Better.com saga as its comm, marketing, PR heads all submitted their resignations this week and CEO Vishal Garg issued a poorly-received apology for how badly he effed up the mass layoffs last week -- and as she hints, there's a lot more to come.
We disagreed more than usual this episode, which is refreshing. So cheers to more of that next year, and we'll see you back here on Monday.
Despite the advanced week, news is still coming in in hot and heavy, so strap in for today's busy episode:
- Cryptos have failed to recover from their weekend swoon, leading to most major crypto assets suffering from a double-digit decline in their value over the last week.
- Sensetime's Hong Kong IPO is set to raise less money than the AI company had hoped.
- BitMart got hacked, showing that even this deep into the crypto era we are still seeing embarrassing security lapses that deliver material consumer pain.
- Alibaba is reshuffling its leadership, though we are not sure at this juncture what the changes mean. Not to get speculative, but we're keeping an eye on the new leadership.
- A number of investors are considering pouring capital into Polygon, TradeDepot raised $110 million, and Stacked raised $35 million for its crypto-investing system.
I would normally say that it's a holiday week, so let's relax, but instead I wonder if we're going to see a final push of news this week before things do calm down for the holiday period.
It's Friday, which means the whole crew was aboard for this particular episode. We had Grace and Chris behind the scenes, and Mary Ann, Natasha, and Alex on the mics. And, frankly, we needed the full team because the holidays aren't slowing any news down.
- First up? Square becoming Block, which we wanted to make fun of but mostly found to be reasonable given the company's disparate interests.
- From there we chatted about Inpathy's neat take on social networking, Massive's $11 million funding round, and why Butter could help grease the skids of many a subscription business.
- Then it was time to trade startups for bigger companies, as we had to riff on Bret Taylor's quasi-ascension to the top of Salesforce along with a host of other executive exits. Alex calls it cold resignation winter, but Meta clearly has put some people on the hot seat.
- Better.com was also in our remit this week, due to its fundraising and layoffs. We debate if you should raise if it comes at the cost of your employees, and the morality of a Zoom layoff.
- And, finally, Sounding Board's Series B reminded us that executive coaching, even and especially for the folks above, isn't just a services business. It's a SaaS business.
See you here next week, unless Jack shaves off his beard and we're forced to do a shot.
Hello and welcome back to Equity, a podcast about the business of startups where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines.
This is our Wednesday episode when we niche down to a single topic, looking to expand our understanding of one particular technology trend or another. Today? We discussed if the era of founder-led companies is coming to a close, and if we have reached the peak of founder friendliness.
The decision to abdicate the CEO role by Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey got us onto the topic. You can read our first take on the matter here, or listen to us geek out about it on an earlier Twitter Spaces.
But Natasha and Alex decided that they didn't want to walk alone, so we got Floodgate's Iris Choi back on the show, along with recently venture-backed Fractional founder Stella Han to help us dig through the issue.
- Choi doesn't see a rapid change in the current market dynamic that has led to increased founder influence, and therefore control. Even more, she noted that as the public markets are willing to accept founder-friendly mechanics like dual-class shares, there's even less incentive to shake up the current dynamic.
- Han, meanwhile, spoke to the evolution of a founder's role over the lifetime of her company - as well as how she tries to build in decentralized authority (as the central source of authority)
- We end with the importance of being explicit about different roles, and how they are subject to change as a company hits different scale milestones.
Equity is back on Friday with our news roundup. Chat soon!
Well, so much for a relaxed post-holiday week on Monday.
News broke this morning that Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey is stepping down from the company entirely. The company's CTO, Parag Agrawal, will be taking over at the helm. Saleforce exec Bret Taylor will take over as board chairman.
So, Amanda and Natasha and Alex jumped into onto the mics -- and, ironically, a Twitter space -- to riff on all things Jack and future of Twitter. From the show:
- Crypto and the CTO, what can we read from the tea leaves?
- Jack's dual role, and its detractors.
- The fact that Twitter's product work has been great lately, which we don't want to stop. When is a good time to leave a company, is it on the up and up or when things are quiet?
- And, finally, Jack's somewhat biting words regarding founder-led companies, which are, frankly, a bit at odds with his own behavior until now.
The show is back on Wednesday, unless some other major CEO resigns.
With a holiday-impacted week behind us, we hope that you are ready for the next few weeks of busy news. Because starting in the back-half of December, the world is going to slow down dramatically. Make sure that you are following the show on Twitter, and let's get into it!
- No tech IPOs this week, though we will see earnings from select SaaS companies. That means that our information flow will slow over the next few days.
- India is irked at Starlink, telling the Elon Musk company to get its regulatory paperwork in order.
- Raspberry Pi is going public, it's expected. The micro-computer company could debut in Spring of 2022 on the London exchanges.
- And black Friday online sales dipped, though we have a guess as to why.
- Two acquisitions took place recently that caught our eye, including Booking Holdings buying Etraveli Group for $1.8 billion, and Clearlake buying Quest from Francisco Partners.
- From the startup world, two deals: Slice is now a unicorn thanks to Tiger Global, while Thought Machine is also now a unicorn thanks to its own six-figure round. Two new unicorns to start the week? Why not.
- And, finally, this essay on crypto.
The show is back Wednesday! We'll see you then!
Find the Found feed here: https://pod.link/found
Not only is this week's guest the TechCrunch Disrupt 2021 Battlefield winner, but Nabiha Saklayen is also democratizing access to life-saving cell therapies by using—you guessed it—lasers. Nabiha is the co-founder and CEO of Cellino which is a company developing the tech to automate stem cell production that will lower the cost of cell therapies and increase the yield of viable cells. In this episode, Nabiha tells Jordan and Darrell how she built a start-up beginning with the tech and finding a business fit, her evolving leadership style, and why this work is crucial to the biomedical field.
Take our listener survey and let us know a bit about yourself and what you think of FOUND.
Connect with us:
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- Call us and leave a voicemail at (510) 936-1618
This is our Wednesday episode when we niche down to a single topic, looking to expand our understanding of one particular technology trend or another. And this week, it was all about the ConstitutionDAO.
For those who weren't online last week, here's what you missed: a not-so-subtle group of strangers on the internet banded together to try to buy one of the remaining thirteen copies for the constitution. With crypto. The bold bid eventually fell short, but many saw it as an inspiring onramp into how communities can mobilize around a shared goal in a Web3 world. The whole movement, from its meme start to its poetic, and billionaire Ken Griffin-themed, end, was just too interesting for Equity to not dedicate an entire episode to.
So, Natasha and Alex brought on Lucas Matney and Anita Ramaswamy to unpack, decompress, and bond over our shared experience of witnessing this 'financial flash mob.'
We talked about what a DAO is, and what they might be used for. We dug into the question of just how many folks the effort really brought to the larger "Web3" space. And, of course, we had to talk about gas fees, NFTs, and the pace of innovation in crypto more broadly. Lucas even broke out an excellent analogy to explain level-two chains!
The crew were generally bullish on the blockchain economy, if skeptical of some of its current uses. In short, the potential remains potent in crypto even if some of its projects, today at least, are a bit more boring than breakthrough. Crypto, we're told, is going to shake up the world. More of that, we reckon, and less of the meme-wars wouldn't be amiss.
Happy Monday everyone, and welcome to a holiday week here in the United States. Yes, we here in the good ol' States will be off the second half of this week. TechCrunch won't grind to a halt, but we will certainly slow down a little bit. But, that doesn't mean that we didn't have a lot to talk about this morning:
- Shares of Indian fintech giant Paytm fell further today, after a very disappointing first-days trading last Thursday. The company now has lot of ground to make up just to get back to zero.
- Facebook is delaying the rollout of E2E encryption until 2023, which has us a bit bummed.
- Also in big tech news, ByteDance is calling it quits on edtech in India.
- Turning the page to startups, we chatted through three news items this morning: Jina.ai raised $30 million, Deliverr raised $250 million, and Lydia added equity and crypto trading to its French financial superapp.
- And we closed on the just what the point of a DAO is.
Woo! We are back Wednesday morning. Chat soon!
Good news, everyone: Mary Ann is back! Yes, after a short absence we have our third Friday host back where she belongs. Namely right in front of a microphone, talking to us.
And it was good to have her back, as we had a small mountain of news to talk through:
- OpenSea could be worth $10 billion: Right before we recorded, news broke that OpenSea could raise new capital at a far-greater valuation than it did earlier this year. While we had some jokes, we also did a little math on why OpenSea could really be worth so much money.
- Other rapid-fire funding rounds: If OpenSea does raise again, it will join good company in putting together several rounds in under a year. Facily has done the same, as has Justt. In short, the old 18-month cycle for raising capital is so dated it might as well get delivered by telegram.
- Lambda School rebrands:
- Casper goes private: After a tough time as a public concern, DTC mattress company Casper is going private. Notably its issues have not dampened market interest in taking other DTC companies public.
- What makes a founder, a founder:
We're entering the holiday period, so expect the usual disruptions to Equity's production calendar. We'll be taking short breaks as per usual, but will be recharging some ahead of what should prove to be a very, very busy 2022.
This is our Wednesday episode when we niche down to a single topic, looking to expand our understanding of one particular technology trend or another. This week? iBuying.
- Zillow made a decision to get out of the iBuying market, with huge costs hanging over its head and a grip of layoffs to manage. Natasha and Alex were curious what went wrong.
- So we brought along Ryan Lawler, one of TechCrunch+'s reporting team, who has covered the space for a chat. Ryan helped us use Opendoor earnings as a comparison point -- it turns out that the iBuying model can work, even if Zillow itself struggled with the model. (Opendoor went public via a SPAC, recall.)
- We also talked about what the situation could mean for startups in the real estate market more broadly. It turns out that merely having data is not enough to make money in the housing space.
Equity is back Friday morning with our weekly news roundup, and if all goes well, also back on Saturday with something both special and fun.
And if you haven't given our sister podcast, Found, a listen, check it out!
This is Equity Monday, our weekly kickoff that tracks the latest private market news, talks about the coming week, digs into some recent funding rounds, and mulls over a larger theme or narrative from the private markets. You can follow the show on Twitter here. I also tweet.
- Tesla shares are off further this morning in the wake of declines following stock sales by Elon Musk. The company retains its $1 trillion market cap, per Yahoo Finance data, but is at risk of losing a comma if it keeps slipping.
- Elsewhere in Big Tech, Microsoft is making Windows worse, while bitcoin gets an upgrade
- On the startup front, we took a look at Writer.com, Zoomo and Rsquared.
- Up ahead, we have the Braze, Usertesting and Sweetgreen IPOs. Nubank and Paytm are also in the queue.
Friday afternoon the Equity team took to a Twitter Space to hit on a topic that we had to cut from our regular end-of-week show, namely crypto earnings and how Wall Street is digesting the results. And to bring in extra mental horsepower, Natasha and Alex lassoed new TechCruncher Anita Ramaswamy to help.
We touched on Coinbase's Q3 financial results and what they tell us about trading incomes, and the company itself. Robinhood's own Q3 results were part of the chat as well, as they showed a similar pattern to what Coinbase disclosed.
More companies than just those two, newly-public entities are reporting crypto trading declines. Square did as well, after its bitcoin revenues slipped in Q3. Simply put, consumers traded less crypto in Q3 than they did in Q2, and a number of companies that were recently riding high on that particular volatility cycle had to deal with a down-cycle period.
We talked about what the results mean for the noisy world of crypto startups, many of which are looking to the highly-visible Coinbase as an indicator of what they can expect as they attempt to scale in a volatile market.
Equity is back Monday!
Hello and welcome back to Equity, a podcast about the business of startups where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines! This is our Friday show, a roundup of the week's biggest and most fascinating stories from startups, venture capital and technology.
Natasha and Alex along with Grace and Chris had to cut and cut and cut to get the show to fit this week, so if we didn't get to your favorite story, we wanted to. We just ran out of space!
Here's the rundown:
- Twitter Blue: Natasha is not sold, but Alex is all-in on Twitter's new subscription service. What does it include? What do we hope it adds? We have it all for you.
- Seasoned raised $18.7 million for its frontline worker app and matching service, You.com raised $20 million to continue taking on Google's search hegemony, and Helsing.ai raised a huge pile of money for reasons that we like, even if the details of what it intends to do are still a little vague.
- INDIAN EDTECH
- Tiger Global's investing rush. Thanks to an act of journalism by our Twitter friend Sar Haribhakti, we had fresh perspective on just how the startup investing community is handling Tiger's race to win growth-stage investing. The Information has more, as does FT and Crunchbase News,
And then we were out of minutes! Don't worry, however, Equity is back Monday morning!
This is our Wednesday show, the time of the week when we niche down to a single topic. Today we spoke about the revolution within agriculture otherwise known as vertical farming.
Alex and Natasha spoke to Hardware editor Brian Heater, who recently wrote a TC-1 about Bowery Farming spanning over 11,000 words and topics such as the taste of sustainable turnips and produce sections at grocery stores. The core of his multi-part exploration, though, was built around a question: Can Bowery Farms bring the newest and most innovative technologies to bear on civilization’s oldest and most optimized industry?
As a result, our episode went down a lot of tasty rabbit holes. We spoke about the current state of vertical farming, the challenges that come with commercialization and our struggling climate, and if your local dairy farm is actually thinking about adding a robot to their staff.
There was more to chew on, including the balance between sustainability and profit, how to think about carbon footprints, the commercialization of vertical farming today, and how some folks are spending $30 on a strawberry. We had lovely time and will have Brian back on the pod.
Here's the TC-1 if you're interested:
- Bowery Farming is forcing us all to look up at the future of vertical agriculture (3,500 words/14 minutes) — explores the evolution of vertical farming, it’s expansion in Japan and how Bowery Farming was started to bring indoor farming to the masses in the United States.
- Hacking lettuce for taste and profit (2,500 words/10 minutes) — evaluates how Bowery collects data from its farms in order to optimize flavor while also potentially expanding its produce line into new categories like strawberries and turnips.
- Can LEDs ultimately replace the sun? (2,100 words/8 minutes) — investigates two of the most important questions about Bowery Farming: Can it develop a competitive moat with its technology (which it dubs BoweryOS) and just how much environmental benefit can the company derive from its farms?
- The voracious fight for your salad bowl (3,000 words/12 minutes) — looks at the extremely competitive nature of the produce section at the grocery store and how Bowery intends to build a brand with consumers while finding a route to profitability.
The Equity team will be back Friday morning with our weekly roundup. Our hearts go out to Mary Ann who will return to us in due time, and our general ire is reserved for Danny. Because we are still smarting from his divorcing of us for Lux.
This is Equity Monday, our weekly kickoff that tracks the latest private market news, talks about the coming week, digs into some recent funding rounds and mulls over a larger theme or narrative from the private markets. You can follow the show on Twitter here. I also tweet.
- The stock market wasn't incredibly dramatic this morning, from an index-viewpoint. Crytpos were slightly more exciting but only moderately. A host of earnings results this week should provide us with fireworks, however.
- And on the subject of crypto regulation, news from Congress isn't great for fans of coins and chains. And the rising popularity of NFT games could put consumers in bad tax territory.
- The SoftBank Vision Fund 1 posted poor results, harming SoftBank's earnings, and leading to the company promising a huge share buyback.
- And Elon Musk made news not only for tweeting some sort of dick joke at an American Senator, but also for polling Twitter regarding whether or not he should sell 10% worth of Tesla shares. That's one way to do corporate governance, I suppose.
- Matter Labs raised $50 million, while H2O.ai raised $100 million.
- And weekend chat concerning this piece detailing Google's history with AMP underscores just how much trust is being lost between major American tech companies and their communities.
We are back Wednesday! Hugs!
Equity, a podcast about the business of startups where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines. And have fun!
This week our very own Mary Ann was off -- we send her our best, as she is a living saint -- so Natasha and Alex and Grace and Chris got together to compile our news roundup. And oh boy was there a lot to corral.
- Up top this week, news from Indiegogo that the crowdfunding service is tightening up who gets to post projects on its platform. We view this as a general good, and one that could prove helpful to the long-term viability of crowdfunding.
- From the funding round rodeo, we riffed on the musical and potentially exciting Mictic (which raised $2.5 million), female-health focused illumigyn and what it might do for care access (it raised $33 million), and Martie, which wants to prevent food waste and perhaps provide low-cost foodstuffs to folks in need ($3 million in fresh capital).
- FEMALE FOUNDERS
- VSC
- And then we chatted for a minute on alternative investing. Namely what Aqua is building, and why Alex is writing columns on NFTs.
Hugs and love from the team, we will chat with you bright and early Monday morning!
This is our Wednesday show, the time of the week when we niche down to a single topic. Today? The issue of venture capital expectations in certain sectors where startups may not be the best fit. And what happens when they raise a mountain of capital.
Natasha and Alex had former founder and present-day indie journalist Vincent Woo to come on the show with us. Why? Because he's written extensively about Lambda School, one of our subjects of the day.
- We started with Ro, and Natasha's excellent piece on the matter: Employees detail rising tensions at Ro as healthcare unicorn struggles to grow beyond first win.
- Next we chatted Lambda School, which has a well-documented history of raising venture capital and attracting controversy. Most recently, Woo published a piece about the coding bootcamp's misleading claims on job placement. The company is perhaps a cautionary tale of how venture-level growth can struggle in certain sectors. Education is hard and may not scale like software.
- At the heart of conversation was a question: In this time of high valuations and easy access to large amounts of capital, how can VC incentives lead some startups into a cycle of pain?We didn't land on a single conclusion, and that was kind of the point of the episode. Venture capital isn't inherently bad or good, but the money can come with a list of demands (and pressures) that cause risk-taking founders to make mistakes. A recalibration is necessary, but, as we talk about every week, the "up and to the right" market will take its time getting there.
It was good fun to focus on a single topic, but we're back with our news roundup Friday morning! Chat soon!
Today we had a goodly bag of things to dig into, including:
- The FT finds that major social platforms are taking a bath thanks to Apple’s new privacy rules. But is that such a bad thing?
- The Chinese labor standard of ‘996’ is losing its dominance in its domestic market.
- The Dell-VMware spinoff has finally happened. At last.
- Digital Currency Group raises $700 million, Mosaic Building Group raises $44 million, and When I Work locked down $200 million of its own.
- Looking ahead, we have AllBirds and NerdWallet IPOs this week!
Sorry that the show was late! Chat soon!
This week Mary Ann and Natasha and Alex (along with our amazing production team Grace, Chris, and Kell) took on a host of topics from the public and private markets alike. In our wheelhouse this week:
- An IPO rush: Sure, IPOs are still not keeping up with unicorn births, but the current pace of public offerings has us nattering. Paytm is coming. Sweetgreen as well. NerdWallet and Backblaze to boot. It's a crowd!
- Alchemy raised $250 million for its blockchain-infra work, reminding us that A16z has all of its eggs in the same ol' crypto basket.
- Heart to Heart raised $0.75 million for audio-focused dating. And even though we're not the targeted customer base, we were excited about the founder and his big bet on intention.
- Built by a student, Tasseled wants to help college students get their lives, and credits, together.
- More on the great Sequoia business model shakeup, building from our comments earlier in the week. We dig into exit timings, and other potential impacts of the change.
- And we got to riff on the Midwest startup-boom, which is a region near and dear to Alex's heart. And it turns out that Denver is not a Midwest city.
While we're sad about Danny's exit, it's also edifying to have our new crew in place for 2022. Expect nothing less than more Equity than ever.
This is a special, if somewhat bittersweet episode. It marks the final official podcast with our own Danny Crichton, who is off to other pastures in short order. Danny stepped in when we lost a host a few years back, and has been both a staple and a pillar of the show since. We're going to miss the ever-loving heck out of him.
But the show must go on, so we spent this episode discussing issues core to our remit: The venture capital market, startups, and the interplay between each.
Natasha and Danny and Alex and Chris got together for this particular Wednesday edition of Equity, the part of the week when we niche down to a single topic and discuss it at length.
This time 'round we tackled the very small of whether today's pace of venture capital investment is sustainable, and whether the current structure of venture capital funds will survive. It was the right time to do so, given that:
- Tiger is reloading with even more capital. Danny noted that its rising asset base is a good indicator of just where things are today.
- Venture capital is at all-time highs. Natasha and Alex riffed through the numbers, noting just how crazy things have become.
- And as we were collecting our notes, Sequoia announced (after Primack scooped them) that they are revolutionizing their firm into a new sort of vehicle.
- We also discussed the unicorn traffic jam, which gave Alex a chance to jump atop his favorite hobby horse one more time.
With more money than ever bouncing around startup-land, the question of whether the sums, and their resulting valuations, make any sense is a conversation that we are not done with. But we hope that after this short podcast, you are at least up to speed.
Bon voyage, Danny. We love you. And a regular shoutout to the folks who have helped host Equity in the past: Kate Clark, Katie Roof, Matthew Lynley, and Connie Loizos. You are very much still in our hearts.
Here's the next few million downloads!
Hark, all ye who pay attention to the stock market, for Elon Musk's wheels-focused company broached the $1 trillion market cap threshold today.
Yeah, it finally happened, so the Equity team quickly scrambled for the microphones. Chris put together the show, allowing Alex and Kirsten to dive into the matter. Kirsten, in case you aren't familiar with her, is TechCrunch's transportation editor -- her crew handles everything that moves under its own power for the team. She's tremendous.
Aside from the obvious market cap point, we got into:
- What news drove Tesla higher today, leading to its new valuation record?
- How is Tesla's overall financial performance looking?
- Has the model mix at the company changed over time?
- And, because Alex was curious, why Telsa cars all look the same when will the Cybertruck will come to market?
In short, it was a very fun Twitter shot. Cheers, and Equity is back Wednesday with our regular programming.
This is Equity Monday, our weekly kickoff that tracks the latest private market news, talks about the coming week, digs into some recent funding rounds and mulls over a larger theme or narrative from the private markets. You can follow the show on Twitter here. I also tweet.
- Taking a look around the world, stocks were largely higher in Asia and Europe and are looking somewhat mixed in the United States. There are a host of technology earnings coming this week, mind.
- Facebook is taking all sorts of incoming fire from media reporting on a trove of documents that a whistleblower leaked. The company is not having a good month, let along quarter from a PR perspective. It reports earnings later today. Here's the NYTimes piece we noted, the Bloomberg article, the CNN piece, and the Verge entry.
- The PayPal-Pinterest deals is done for now. PayPal said so this morning. Its shares are up, while Pinterest shares are sharply lower.
- And from startup-land: Routine is a new app that looks slick, Billie raised $100 million, Tier raised a huge bloc of cash, and Groww just tripled its valuation.
It's going to be a busy one, so strap in and get hype because it is earnings week.
This week Mary Ann and Natasha and Alex (along with our amazing production team Grace, Chris, and Kell) took on a bevy of topics from around the world of startups and technology more broadly.
- We naturally kicked off with news that Facebook intends to rebrand itself. Which we don't think will do much to detract from its various crises. But the news does underscore that Facebook is, in fact, serious about writing its next chapter.
- From there it was time to talk funding rounds. This week we picked Vertical Oceans and its fishy plans, Superplastic and its stable of rude digital critters, and Modern Age and its plan to help us all age a bit more gracefully.
- Vibe Capital, founded by Teachable's Ankur Nagpal, is a $60 million fund for international, scrappy founders. We spoke about the founder to investor pipeline, and why everyone wants eachother's jobs.
- And then Alex ran us through some data from the Chinese venture capital market, information that was far more positive than we anticipated. Given, you know, the country's regulatory crackdown on technology companies.
- We closed with a number of major fintech rounds, including new capital for Deel and a funding scoop on Brex.
While we're in a bubble, it's easy to get lost in the same narrative: everything is booming! This week's episode was a good reminder of how diverse, and nuanced, this ever-lasting startup summer truly is.
Look, we don't get it either.
Taking some time as a group to sit around and chat through the possibly impending PayPal-Pinterest deal, Natasha and Alex didn't wind up cracking the story. Which makes some sense, as investors sent PayPal stock down 5% on the news, implying that they didn't really get it either.
Recall that PayPal has made a few other deals in recent years, including buying Honey ($4 billion) and Paidy (less than $4 billion).
Regardless, the transaction -- worth potentially dozens of billions -- could scoot the social giant into the welcoming arms of PayPal, an American consumer and business fintech giant. Here's what we tried to sort out:
- Does Pinterest have a big enough ecommerce story to make the deal line up with our first expectations?
- We talked about Pinterest's historical stock performance, as well as a number of culture controversies it has been embroiled in.
- Why doesn't PayPal just buy Etsy instead? Here we dug into why a shop-able, searchable mood-board may satisfy customer demands, thus Pinterest's lag on fintech infrastructure - in comparison to Etsy - has been somewhat surprising.
- And if technology is all bundling, and unbundling, does it make some sort of sense for PayPal to join forces with a more e-commerce content focused business, now more than a half-decade removed from its eBay divorce?
- We ended with jokes about fintech's expected (and unexpected) consolidation, and we want your best guesses for what's next on Twitter.
Frankly we had a good time. Mary Ann was going to join up but was thwarted by Apple's iPhone headphone design, while Danny was slightly busy trying to figure out why his spouse beat him at Settlers of Catan, his favorite board game. We are back Friday with our regularly scheduled programming!
Natasha and Danny and Alex got together to dig into the recent NerdWallet IPO filing, and what it can tell us about how the written word -- in its digital form -- can still be worth quite a lot. Here's an outline of the chat:
- NerdWallet shows the financial power of the written word, even if it isn't the precise form of writing that we know and love.
- Automattic is a large, startup bet on the written word, amongst other things. Danny had notes for us on the scale of its business, thanks to a new TC-1 all about the publishing empire. Here we talked about the importance of proving value internally, before going external with word power.
- And from Kindle Vella to Substack to Memberful from Patreon, there are more and more models for getting paid to write these days. Hell, you can charge for your tweets now.
We were left with questions about if the return of text is inevitable, in an everyone-runs-to-video world. As Natasha notes, distribution is still a bottleneck and human attention is not entirely predisposed to sitting around reading things. But with Gen Z perhaps a little over screentime, perhaps there's good news ahead for writers of all stripes.
This is Equity Monday, our weekly kickoff that tracks the latest private market news, talks about the coming week, digs into some recent funding rounds and mulls over a larger theme or narrative from the private markets. You can follow the show on Twitter here. I also tweet.
- This week, the week of October 18, 2021, kicked off with a mixed markets picture. Asian stocks were mixed, down in Europe, and set to fall in the United States. China remains a concern.
- There are hardware events this week from Apple, Samsung and Google. Along with earnings from Netflix, IBM, and Qualtrics.
- Amazon is in hot water with American regulators, China may force its tech giants to allow for cross-platform search, and Facebook wants to hire lots of Europeans.
- From startup-land, Enpal landed a huge dollop of cash for its solar work, while OfficeRnD made bets on a hybrid working future. Notes to come shortly on the Expensify IPO filing.
The show is back on Wednesday! Chat then!
In today's episode, talk our way through some big breaking news from the technology world so that we can better understand just what is going on.
Danny and Alex got together late Friday on a Twitter Space to discuss Microsoft's decision to pull LinkedIn from the Chinese market, a move that lit up headlines around the world. That LinkedIn was still in China in 2021 may feel more surprising than the news that it will exit that particular market, but the moment matters all the same as it marks the end of an experiment -- could a mega-tech company have a US HQ and a first-party service live in China?
Er, no, it turns out. Not really.
Microsoft found itself jammed between its own ethics, and governmental censure. It was a lose-lose for the company, so pulling the plug was the smart move. The company isn't going to miss the revenue.
For startups, the Microsoft decision is a good reminder that doing business in China is at a minimum very hard for non-Chinese companies, and perhaps impossible. Recall that Microsoft had to work with a Chinese company (21Vianet) to get Azure into the country at all, and that the Chinese government is using a few companies to build a new OS for the country so that it can replace Windows.
Precisely how good that OS will prove is not yet clear, at least from a consumer perspective.
And then we riffed on GitLab's IPO. My favorite topic of the week. You'll see why it came up when you hit play. Chat Monday!
This week was one of our strongest shows yet, with a wide diversity of news items that were genuinely fun (and complicated) to chew through. And even though we started off kind of grumpy, we laughed through tech difficulties, crypto puns, and fintech CAC. It's called coping.
Here's what we got into:
- Magic Leap raised $500 million about which we have thoughts, Mindbody's acquisition of ClassPass caught our eye for obvious reasons (and the fact that it also raised $500 million), and we dug into SoWork's fascinating business proposition.
- mPharma and the race to horizontal, holistic mental health: Telehealth is great and useful but no panacea. However, in the realm of mental health it's potentially life-changing for millions.
- OpenSea went from being one of the main characters in our fraud show, to being the underdog that we're rooting for - now that Coinbase is building a copycat.
Since we tried to keep the show tight, a ton of news was left on the cutting room floor. The good news, though, is that we're back tomorrow with a spicy bonus episode about Microsoft pulling LinkedIn from the Chinese market. Oof.
This is our Wednesday show, the time of the week when we niche down to a single topic. Today? Fashion.
Natasha and Danny and Alex got together to dig into the world of fashion resale and rental. It's no small market, giving birth to both public companies, unicorns, and startups. Most recently, well-known fashion rental player Rent the Runway filed to go public, giving us a window in its own numbers.
Those figures led us to a few questions about how best to go about making money from clothes in a retail context. From our chat:
- Selling vs. Renting vs. Reselling: To start, we wanted to help you group startups into three buckets: those who sell customers to people, those who rent goods to customers, and those who resell pre-owned goods to customers.
- Rent the Runway's numbers: We had some issues with Rent the Runway's business model given that it appears that the company is simply underpricing its clothing items given its cost structure. How Wall Street will price the company, or whether Rent the Runway is hoping to sell to a larger company came into the conversation.
- Who else should we have an eye on: To close, Natasha detailed a number of startups including Queenly, Curtsy and Rebag. Oh, and Depop (which recently sold to Etsy $1.6 billion).
Startups are tearing up old retail models, which we are here for. We are less here for adjusted EBITDA that reads like magical realism.
This is Equity Monday, our weekly kickoff that tracks the latest private market news, talks about the coming week, digs into some recent funding rounds and mulls over a larger theme or narrative from the private markets. You can follow the show on Twitter here. I also tweet.
- Markets were busy, with Chinese tech stocks rallying and the rest of the world posting a mix of gains and losses. If you are bullish on public markets, excellent. But if you are bearish, don't worry -- there are diverse enough signals out this morning to satisfy any investing thesis.
- Facebook goes on American political TV: To talk about changes it is going to make to its product. A product that it built. It wants point for fixing the thing it made broken. Sure.
- And Tesla, after delaying the roll-out of a beta for Full Self Driving, is also being asked by some in India to build cars in that country.
- CRED is raising even more money, at an even higher valuation.
- Mono gets the Tiger imprimatur, which matters as the startup could prove that the Plaid model will spawn regional players.
- French mobile gaming company Homa Games raised $50 million on the back of huge download numbers.
- And ahead we have the GitLab direct listing, and AvidExchange IPO.
Chat you on Wednesday!
Natasha and Mary Ann and Alex were all aboard this week with Grace on the dials, which meant that we had a flat lovely time recording Equity for you. Of course, Equity is TechCrunch's venture capital focused podcast where we dig into the most critical funding rounds, and natter about the key news items impacting startups.
Before we hop into this week's topics, you can follow the show on Twitter, where we rather often host impromptu Twitter spaces that sometimes become episodes. Come hang!
Here's the rundown for this week:
- Chalo raises $40M to improve bus transit in India: This startup wins name (and startup) of the week. Chalo wants to tackle inefficiencies in India's bus system, so we noodle over why that makes sense and what challenges could be ahead.
- Masterworks raises $110M for fractional art ownership: Call it a Series A if you must, but the megaround that Masterworks just raised helps underscore the global shift towards alternative investing, and fractional ownership. How long until we get Masterworks on the blockchain? That would be the real IRL-NFT crossover we are kinda waiting for.
- CostCertified wants to save your next home reno project: CostCertified, which just participated in Y Combinator's summer cohort, raised $8.45M in seed funding. The Canadian company's end goal is to build the “Amazon for construction.” CostCertified allows contractors to send a shoppable interactive estimate to homeowners so that they can choose their selections during a project, and see the effect on price instantly.
- All about community: Community has been watered down, there's no doubt about it. But, there is still arguments for why it works - and we make them (often).
- Google invests in Africa: American tech giant Google is putting capital to work in Africa, but in the form of infra investment and early-stage investing. Frankly both make good sense given the advertising giant's business model.
- Edtech goes B2B: Udemy is going public! We have dug through the numbers already, but thankfully with Natasha on the show we got to go a level deeper on where edtech revenues may come from next.
And that's our show! We are back bright and early on Monday!
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch's venture capital focused podcast where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines. This is our Wednesday show, the time of the week when we niche down to a single topic. Today? Gaming.
Natasha and Danny and Alex got together to discuss the gaming world from a few perspectives, including those of startups and the largest platform players in tech. Alex is a gamer. Danny is a board gamer. And Natasha isn't big on digital games. So, we had a good array of viewpoints. The goal of our episode was to understand why gaming is garnering more interest from Big Tech and startups alike, and how the business model and environment has evolved over the years.
Here's what we got into:
- A new gaming fund from a16z, and recent venture capital totals, as compiled by our friends over at Crunchbase News.
- Amazon's new hit game, and Apple's epic gaming profits.
- It appears, by our read, that the gaming industry has evolved from single-sale titles to games with recurring incomes that studios have become venture-backable; this is testament to both business model evolution and general gaming popularity, as much as it is indicative of how much money it is possible to earn supportingthe games industry as a tech shop as well.
- Still, we wanted to spend a few minutes on the challenges that still await those trying to spin up a game overnight.
- After we talked through the context and challenges, we riffed on the why! It includes just what a metaverse is, how NFTs can slot into the conversation, and more.
All we need now is a release date for Royal Court, Paradox.
This is Equity Monday, our weekly kickoff that tracks the latest private market news, talks about the coming week, digs into some recent funding rounds and mulls over a larger theme or narrative from the private markets. You can follow the show on Twitter here. I also tweet.
Sorry that the show is so delayed today, it's utterly my fault. Regular service returns Wednesday, and we'll make to not be late on a Monday again this year! Here's what we got into on the show:
- Tech shares are falling in America in a larger domestic selloff -- but once again we're seeing high-valued technology stocks lose the most ground. Software companies are having a particularly rough morning.
- The Facebook whistleblower situation remains the biggest news item in the technology world this morning, dominating aggregators and conversation. Precisely what comes next isn't clear, I reckon, but Facebook shares haven't lost enough ground yet to be a worry for the firm; that could change with another few days' declines, however.
- What else was on our mind? Apple's epic gaming profits, new AI guidelines from China, and data concerning just how much money semiconductor startups are raising. It's more, but is it enough?
- Byju's raised $300 million, this time at an $18 billion valuation. Its upcoming IPO will help set the tone for global edtech valuations.
- Ladder raised $100 million, proving that the insurtech market is still active. Sure, shares of public insurtech startups have taken a pounding in recent quarters, but there's still plenty of private capital ready to make bets on the market.
- And the Vision Fund 2 is even more Vision Fund-y than we anticipated!
Chat soon!
To cap the week off, Danny and Alex and Chris got together live on Twitter to chat through the demise of the Zoom-Five9 deal. Those of you who remember how recently the deal was announced are likely a little surprised -- how did it fall apart so quickly? Well, a few reasons:
- There could be inherent risk in all-stock transactions provided a rapidly-changing market.
- It may be the case that Zoom simply did not bid enough for Five9.
- And there's a mix of anti-trust and national regulatory issues to the deal that never got fully hammered out.
So, you can pick your poison, even though the answer appears to be some of each above point.
https://techcrunch.com/2021/07/19/the-zoom-five9-deal-is-a-big-bet-for-the-video-conferencing-company/
Those of you who caught the Friday episode will wonder, and fairly, what the end of the Zoom-Five9 deal will have on other M&A activity. We talked about it.
That's enough for now. Hit play and have a laugh with us. Thanks for sticking with the show!
Natasha and Mary Ann and Alex were all aboard this week under the guidance of Chris and Grace, meaning that we were running full-strength for our roundup of this super busy week.
Before we hop into the topics, you can follow the show on Twitter -- all the cool kids do! -- and keep in mind that on Mondays Equity provides a short kickoff to the week, we chat a single topic on Wednesdays, and Fridays are when we go through the full week. Make sense? Hell yeah:
- Fiveable
- Cobalt raised $2.8 million to help creators build and sell more stuff. As part of our continuing focus on creators more broadly, we had a few questions!
- Found came out of stealth with $32 million in total funding from GV, Atomic and Define Ventures. The startup is focused on "weight care management" and it's notable that the co-founder of Atomic, which incubated this company, also co-founded hims and hers -- which also has a telehealth component. Found's new CEO is the former COO of Bumble, who drafted its S-1 while getting chemo treatment for stage 3 breast cancer.
- From there we dug into trends! First up was the trend of startups going full-stack, which we kicked off with a look at AngelList's new Stack -- har har -- product. It's a bit like what Carta and Stripe offer, which gave us some good angles to chat about the news from.
- Next up was consolidation, which echoed our first conversation. Discussing a recent deal in the RPA space, the Equity team made predictions about which sectors in the startup world are the most likely to see consolidation in the coming quarters.
- And we closed with climate tech, a startup niche that could bring a small sliver of hope to our heating planet.
WITTY CONCLUSION
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture-capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
We got the crew together — Natasha and Danny and Alex — this time 'round to talk fraud, one of our favorite topics. Sure, we've riffed on the ups and downs at Luckin, and we've spent more time talking about WeWork's implosion than we want to admit. But that's not the most recent stuff. There's been a raft of fraud lately which caught our eye. The heart of today's episode is a question about fraud, and what more of it might mean: Does more fraud indicate that we're in a growing bubble, or that we're in the later-stages of a bubble about to burst?
Here's what we got into to help us understand our question:
- OpenSea admits incident as top exec is accused of trading NFTs on insider information -- NFTs are good fun until the market for them is bent in the favor of insiders!
- Goldman Sachs, Ozy Media and a $40 Million Conference Call Gone Wrong -- How to not get money from Goldman Sachs and possibly sink your company at the same time!
- App Annie and co-founder charged with securities fraud, will pay $10M+ settlement -- If you tell your customers that you won't use their data in a particular manner, and then you do, and possibly commit something akin to securities fraud at the same time, what happens? This!
- Turning to historical examples, we also brought up Nikola and Luckin and Theranos to help us draw a line around what its fraud, and what is not.
- With definitions out of the way, we ended this episode by trying to answer our complex, core question. We won't spoil the eventual conclusion, but here's a hint: checks are flying fast into startups with minimal due diligence, and it looks like there's much more money is coming.
This is Equity Monday, our weekly kickoff that tracks the latest private market news, talks about the coming week, digs into some recent funding rounds and mulls over a larger theme or narrative from the private markets. You can follow the show on Twitter here. I also tweet.
A few things this morning:
- Instagram is pausing work on the kids-focused version of its social service. It claims that the product is the right thing to build, but that it wants to talk to folks about why, first. TechCrunch has more here.
- Shares of Box are up this morning, after the company endured a period of time in the wilderness.
- Google is cutting its cloud app marketplace take rate as marketplaces more broadly lose their ability to accrete economic value as middlepeople.
- Spotify is spending to advertise its advertising solution so that others can spend more money on Spotify.
- Swiss startup Frontify raises $50 million, more than double its previous round's size.
- And from Sweden, EV company Polestar may go public via a SPAC, as EV company Cake raises $60 million. Nice to see Sweden do so well in a key business category.
- Tesla is doing FSD stuff, which confuses us.
- And looking ahead, Amplitude will set a reference price this evening and direct list tomorrow. Warby Parker will set an IPO price tomorrow evening, and trade on Wednesday.
And that's that! Chat Wednesday!
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
Today we got the gang together -- Natasha and Danny and Alex -- to chat about the most recent IPOs in tech-land, namely debuts from Freshworks and Toast.
TechCrunch has covered their pair of firms somewhat closely during their IPO run, as they each have some notable characteristics:
- Freshworks' IPO provided a fresh window into how public market investors are willing to value growth-oriented software companies out the gate. The news is good. Which means that we could see more unicorns looking to list in coming months.
- Toast's IPO provided a lens by which we could gauge public-market sentiment for hybrid software-and-payments companies. The answer? That the stock market is pretty dang enthused about the companies in question.
So it's a good news day for unicorns, for tech startups, and for Boston, a city that Danny has many thoughts about. Please send him your complaints, and not the show. We take no responsibility.
It's Disrupt week, so we'll have more in a few days but until then we'll see you at the event!
This is Equity Monday, our weekly kickoff that tracks the latest private market news, talks about the coming week, digs into some recent funding rounds and mulls over a larger theme or narrative from the private markets. You can follow the show on Twitter here. I also tweet.
A few things this morning:
- I shook up the show format a little, including how the script came together and how it was organized. Hit me up on Twitter if you have notes.
- Disrupt is this week, so strap thyself in for the best tech event of the year, coming to your living room. The Equity team is hosting -- between the group of us -- a zillion panels and one of the two stages. Come hang out with us. It's going to be on heck of a show.
- On the news front, the global stock market is taking a whacking. US stocks are set to fall after European stocks went lower thanks to concerns that the Chinese property developer Evergrande and its constituent debt issues could spread to other parts of the market, possibly leading to contagion.
- Cryptos are also off sharply in the last 24 hours, so there sems to be little refuge in today's markets.
- A French hosting company is going public, an Indian used-car marketplace raised a boatload of cash, and Amazon is investigating a bribe.
- And we are expecting IPOs from both Freshworks and Toast this week.
It's going to be a very busy few days. Pour some extra coffee, and get hype.
Natasha and Mary Ann and Alex were all aboard this week under the guidance of Chris and Grace, which meant we had the full team. And speaking of teams, Mary Ann is joining the Friday show on a weekly basis now. She's been a friend for years, and a colleague now twice-over for Natasha and Alex and we could not be more excited.
That personal news aside, here's the rundown for today's show!
- Funding rounds in the logistics and infra markets: We went physical-world with our funding round roundup this week. BridgeLinx put together the largest Seed round in Pakistan's history, Releaf is doing incredibly interesting agtech work in Nigeria, and Stord's huge round from earlier in the week brought us to Atlanta.
- And oh boy has Atlanta had a week. TechCrunch did a deep dive into the city's superlative startup fundraising in recent quarters, and, of course, one of its home-grown startups sold to Intuit for $12 billion just a few days ago. We had a few thoughts on the Intuit-Mailchimp transaction, even if we tried to steer clear of territory that we've already tread. For more about the controversy, Business Insider wrote about how some Mailchimp employees are reacting to the deal.
- From there we turned to a layoff story. Casper, the DTC mattress company that is now public, had another round of layoffs that cut three C-suite executives. It brought us into a conversation about how Apple's tracking updates are impacting startups in this category more broadly, and if more layoffs are on the horizon.
- And then there were IPOs to discuss. Natasha talked us through the news that Quizlet may go public soon, which meant we had to chat edtech for a minute. Rounding out the Going Public conversation was notes on both Toast and Freshworks. Alex does not apologize for his lame joke, we hasten to add.
Disrupt is next week, so expect some possible changes to the regular Equity show lineup if the news cycle gets dicey. Hugs!
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
This is our Wednesday show, where we niche down to a single topic. This time 'round we took a look into the world of on-demand delivery in Europe, with an especial focus on the so-called "instant" grocery sector, and delivered convenience items. To help Natasha and Danny and Alex get through the subject, we lassoed TechCrunch alum and present-day VP at Zapp, a company in the sector under discussion, Steve O'Hear to chat with us.
We spent time chatting through the following:
- Recent news from the sector, including that Turkey's Getir has just raised a bucket of new capital, and that Weezy is looking to exit; the latter item wound up being important we got around to discussing consolidation in the space.
- Steve gave us an overview of Zapp, and how its approach to infra could help its economics.
- We chatted about GoPuff and its economic fortunes, which in fundraising terms are solid, even if questions regarding future profitability are still in play.
- And regarding the ever-present pandemic question, Steve was bullish on consumer behavior staying where it is if -- when? -- the COVID-19 pandemic eventually leaves us.
We are back on Friday! Chat then!
We are back! From this morning, I suppose. But the news cycle doesn't wait for our publishing schedule, so the Equity crew got together to yammer all about the Intuit-Mailchimp acquisition.
A $12 billion deal comprised of stock and cash, it's a big on. And as Mailchimp has both a history of boostrapping and a founding story in a non-Silicon Valley city we had lots to chat about.
As a general reminder, if you do listen to the show, hit us up on Twitter as we are doing more and more of these Spaces. They are good and relaxed fun, so don't take them too seriously. We like to have fun.
Alright, Equity is back on Wednesday with our regularly scheduled programming. Chat then!
This is Equity Monday, our weekly kickoff that tracks the latest private market news, talks about the coming week, digs into some recent funding rounds and mulls over a larger theme or narrative from the private markets. You can follow the show on Twitter here. I also tweet.
Vacation was good, and a big thanks to Mary Ann and Natasha -- not to mention Grace and Chris! -- for keeping things flowing while I mostly sat around reading books and playing video games. But enough being maudlin! To the news!
- Investors are kinda thinking that the run-up in stocks needs to take a breather. And that the reset could land between 5% and 10%, with another 10% of respondents expecting a correction of more than 10%. Yowza.
- China may break up Ant, keeping the pace of its regulatory deluge going as this week starts. And the Chinese government thinks that its country has too many EV companies. If the market or central planning will wind up taking point on solving the "problem" is not clear.
- The Apple v. Epic decision is still driving conversation. Here's TechCrunch's coverage, and here's the MG piece I mentioned.
- Toast and Freshworks have new filings up. Which is good news if you want to dig into new S-1/A reports. Forge is going public via a SPAC.
- And Babyscripts and Commercetools raised rounds, while Jungle Ventures raised a fund.
Got all that? Ok good. Chat you Wednesday!
Natasha and Mary Ann took over this week's show with Chris and Grace, which meant that our overdeveloped senses of curiosity filled up the script just fine (even on a somewhat short week). Unintentionally, today's episode was built around a theme of inclusion - from auto-insurance to women's health, and from payments to knowledge.
But here are some more specifics on what we got into:
- For our funding round section, we discussed UK’s Marshmallow getting unicorn status for its more inclusive, big-data take on car insurance, Women’s health tech brand, Elvie, topping up its Series C to $97M, and an ambitious fintech play from Leap, which wants to give gig workers access to financial products by partnering directly to marketplaces.
- After getting past the dollars and the deals, I indulged by bringing up my latest piece: Edtech leans into the creator economy with cohort-based classes. The core of the story gets into a ton of tensions, the biggest of which I'd pose as a question to you: should anyone be allowed to be a teacher?
- Then we headed into Mary Ann's world of fintech to understand what I dubbed feels like national BNPL week. If I may, I'd argue that this is the can't miss segment of the entire show, as we made sense of why it's a global phenomenon, which markets are popping off, and what this means for the credit card industry. Below is a smattering of headlines we walked through.
- PayPal acquires Japan’s Paidy for $2.7B to crack the buy-now, pay-later market in Asia
- Zip acquisition of Payflex means Africa is ripe for BNPL disruption
- Addi raises $75M to advance ‘buy now, pay later’ in LatAm, nearly triples valuation
- And then we ended by talking about an adorable, but potentially dangerous robot unicorn. Yep. You read that right.
Remember when we were all thinking about what 'the new normal' would look like? Well, I guess it's here.
Alex is on a well-deserved vacation this week, so for the Equity Wednesday deep dive, we took the conversation to Twitter Spaces. Danny, Mary Ann, and Jonathan Metrick, Chief Growth Officer at Portage Ventures, dove into growth marketing. You can listen to the full episode on the Equity Podcast feed.
This conversation was spurred by the TechCrunch Experts project, where we're looking for the best growth marketers for startups. Metrick had been recommended to us in July (you can read his featured recommendation in our growth roundup) and we were eager to have the opportunity to learn from his experience.
Help TechCrunch find the best growth marketers for startups.
Provide a recommendation in this quick survey and we'll share the results with everybody.
In this conversation, we cover:
- Influencers take on the marketing world
- Challenges marketers face with iOS 14
- How Metrick sees trends develop geographically
- New capabilities with attribute in the past year
- What holiday advertising might look like in 2021
This is Equity Monday, our weekly kickoff to catch up on weekend news and prep for the days ahead. We're here on Tuesday this week since us folks in the United States had off for labor day. You can follow the show on Twitter here, and while you're at it, throw me a follow too.
- Jobs report: Over the weekend, the US government posted the Jobs Report. It wasn't ideal, with a sharp drop in percentage of women rejoining the workforce. I give you the startup angle, and talk about a somewhat poetic unicorn.
- Instacart, meet Instagram: WSJ reports that new Instacart CEO Fidji Simo is expanding the grocery delivery store's consumer-product advertising business, with a goal of hitting $1 billion in revenue next year. I riff on why this makes sense and what challenges the business make come up against.
- Behemoths, beware: The largest Series A within Africa just closed, and it's not even close. Wave is taking on telecom-led mobile money, now with four-big name backers. It's not the only startup trying to take on a behemoth. I also gave a shout out to Glass, which wants to take on Instagram as a new go-to destination for photographers to share their content.
And that's a wrap. I have a fun edtech piece coming out on Extra Crunch this week, so keep your eyes out for it.
Natasha and Alex and Grace and Chris gathered to dig through the week's biggest happenings, including some news of our own. As a note, Equity's Monday episode will be landing next Tuesday, thanks to a national holiday here in the United States. And we have something special planned for Wednesday, so stay tuned.
Ok! Here's the rundown from the show:
- Apollo completed its takeover of Verizon Media Group Yahoo: Yep, we have new bosses, and we have feelings about it. But mostly the TechCrunch news was a useful segue to Drift's majority exit to Vista Equity Partners at a price that made the Boston-based startup a unicorn. Terms were not disclosed, sadly, but Drift's revenues looked strong going into the transaction. That left us with questions.
- Then we chatted about Databricks, which raised a small country's GDP in a single funding round this week, valuing the data-and-ML company at a staggering $38 billion valuation. Why isn't Databricks going public? Because it doesn't have to, mostly.
- Hum Capital believes the future of startup fundraising requires a return to old school Wall Street. The startup helps founders and investors navigate the overly fragmented market these days, and just raised millions to scale this service.
- Form there we dug into two IPOs, including the very interesting story of Toast, another Boston-based company, and AllBirds. The AllBirds offering was less exciting from a numerical perspective, though Natasha and Alex both like their shoes from the company.
- And to close out, we discussed how Compound Foods wants to save the planet by making coffee sans beans. Which we are willing to try as soon as we can.
That's a wrap from us for the week! Keep your head atop your shoulders and have a great weekend!
After a 17-hour marathon through nearly 200 startup pitches, the Equity team was fired up to get back on Twitter and chat through some early trends and favorites from the first day of Y Combinator's demo party. We'll be back on the air tomorrow, so make sure you're following the show on Twitter so you don't miss out.
What did Natasha and Alex chat about? The following:
- First Impressions: We started by going through top-line numbers, geographic breakdown, and how the accelerator is doing when it comes to the representation of diverse founders. The last bit had a tiny bit of progress, but diversity continues to be an issue in YC's batches - even as cohort size grows. We also chatted about what startups pitching can work on: like better mics, which are cheap and good.
- Our early favorites: Metaphor, Lumify, Alex's favorite duo Indian real estate plays, Akudo, Reframe, and Playhouse.
- And some hmmm moments, including our thoughts on Writesonic, which Natasha has a potentially paranoid theory on.
TechCrunch has extensive coverage of the day on the site, so there's lots to dig into if you are in the mood. More tomorrow!
This is Equity Monday, our weekly kickoff that tracks the latest private market news, talks about the coming week, digs into some recent funding rounds and mulls over a larger theme or narrative from the private markets. You can follow the show on Twitter here. I also tweet.
We are heading into a simply crazy week, so make sure that you keep Twitter pulled up as often as you can. Why?
- This is Y Combinator Demo Day week, which means a zillion startups are going to be doing their best to make noise, stand out from their peers, and raise capital on uncapped notes sans discount. TechCrunch is going to be busy as bees tracking the accelerator cohort, and bringing our favorites to your ears and eyes.
- The Chinese regulatory story continues, with new gaming restrictions and fresh warnings about anti-monopoly action coming this morning. As before, the news is moving stocks. And the gaming news underscores that the Chinese state is not too bothered about directly undercutting its private sector to meet government goals.
- All that regulatory work is harming venture capital investment, it appears. Despite a rapid-fire July for Chinese startups, August is looking thinner from a foreign-investor perspective.
- Vietcetera has raised new capital, along with Urbanbase. In India, Ola Electric is looking to raise a huge amount of capital, we report.
- In public market news, Astra's rocket didn't go up high enough, so its shares are falling. And we are heading back into an IPO cycle, so get ready.
Alright! That's our show! Let's get to work!
After news broke that meditation app Headspace and on-demand mental health care platform Ginger were merging, we couldn't resist hopping on the mics to do a bonus episode. And, because we were in the mood for hot takes, Natasha and Alex held the conversation on Twitter Spaces. The special guests we had on, who we'll get to down below, did not disappoint.
It's a quick show, but the tl;dr is that you want to listen if you're curious why a meditation app would get into therapy, the precedent by Lyra Health and Calm, and how consolidation looks for the sector going forward.
Here's who helped us understand and contextualize the news:
- Lux Capital partner Deena Shakir (who is also coming to Disrupt, incidentally)
- Chrissy Farr of OMERS Ventures (who you may also know as a former CNBC reporter in the healthech space)
- 7WireVentures' Alyssa Jaffee (who needs her own podcast because she was shining during the Spaces)
And, special shout out to Ginger CEO Russell Glass, who joined the Space but wasn't able to come up on stage due to technical difficulties. Twitter Spaces are fun, but the platform is still a bit nascent so goofs can bedevil live production.
However, we managed to get some notes from him via email, so let's take a quick look at those:
- Glass said that he agreed with "what Chrissy Farr and others said about there simply not being enough therapists in the market today to meet the overwhelming demand," adding that there's "real global need today for what Headspace Health can offer - a scaled, comprehensive platform that can truly democratize mental healthcare."
- He also doubleclicked on the discussing regarding future "meaningful market consolidation," noting that he expects to see it "especially" happen in "areas that address higher acuity care for severe mental illness.”
Make sure you are following the podcast on Twitter so that you catch us when we go live. These are meant to be spontaneous pop up shows, so your best bet is to turn on notifications to never miss our Spaces. Ok that's all. Thanks everyone!
Natasha and Alex and Grace and Chris were joined by none other than TechCrunch's own Mary Ann Azevedo, in her first-ever appearance on the show. She's pretty much the best person and we're stoked to have her on the pod.
And it was good that Mary Ann was on the show this week as she wrote about half the dang site. Which meant that we got to include all sorts of her work in the rundown. Here's the agenda:
- Funding rounds from: Ramp, which raised $300 million at a $3.9 billion valuation; NoRedInk which put together an impressive $50 million Series B; and Playbook, which is building a sort of Dropbox for designers. Each company gave us something different to noodle on, be it the diverging strategies at Ramp and Brex, how NoRedInk is different from Grammarly, and why Dropbox is not the Dropbox for designers.
- Then we spun the globe to narrow our focus to Latin America, a booming startup scene that Mary Ann recently profiled for Extra Crunch. In a nutshell, venture capital is helping drive an enormous wave of startup activity in the region -- or perhaps a wave of startup activity is driving a boom in venture investment? -- leading to huge companies, and perhaps some tech-powered inclusion of more folks into the modern banking, and digital economy. (For more, here are notes on the Brazilian market's rising exit tally! And Flink raised, which was worth chewing on as well.)
- We quickly pivoted to the hot button issue of the moment for every startup (and business): hiring. Natasha noted how startups used to focus on runway, and now they are looking to fill empty seats amid the great resignation.
- Finally, we nattered about huge venture results from Boston, big numbers from Austin, and what increasingly feels like an everything bubble. Chicago is doing well, too. Pick a city, it's putting up big numbers.
And that's a wrap, for, well, at least the next 5 seconds.
The Equity crew felt that there was enough media news out recently that we simply had no choice but to fire up a Twitter Space and have a chat. The above episode is a discussion of a few things, in a loose and relaxed manner, so don't take any of the Verizon jokes too seriously, Verizon, as we still work for you. For a few more days.
Regardless, here's what Danny and Alex got into:
- Politico sells for $1 billion: Its new parent company Axel Springer also buying the rest of Politico Europe and all of Protocol at the same time. This deal exploded everyone's Twitter feed due to its scale, and the fact that it was one heck of an exit for a media company. One billion dollars? For media? In this economy? Yes!
- Forbes is going public via a SPAC: Yep, the venerable Forbes magazing and its enormous digital arm are taking the blank-check route to the public markets, which means that we got its numbers and time to stroll through them. Our take is that Forbes has done massive work to take its IRL brand and extend it into the digital world. The company has big plans to boot, and will be worth more than $800 million when it combines.
- Layoffs hit Vice: As Vice turns its focus to video content — you've heard this story before — it is shedding some of its editorial staff. The layoffs were a stinkbomb on Media Twitter after the other news of the week, but were sadly not a huge surprise. The company's union decried them as something of a yearly recurrance. Not good, not good at all.
And there's more media news to come. Our parent company Verizon Media is expected to close its sale to Apollo on September 1 or sometime soon after, which means we will either be hosting Equity regularly as always, or we'll be hosting the RUDE (Recently Unemployed Due to (Private) Equity) podcast.
For our Wednesday show this week, Natasha and Alex and Danny had colleague Amanda Silberling on the show to help us parse through OnlyFans' precedent-setting move to ban sexually-explicit content on its service. The decision was a bolt from the blue for many of its creators, a great portion of whom created and monetized adult videos and images through the subscription service. It also stirred up a ton of debate around fintech, crypto, venture capital, and the morality of decision-makers.
We put all the facts in context for you, hitting the following points:
- OnlyFans' recently leaked financials. Of course, the company's historical, and projected revenues are now dated thanks to the platform's planned content changes, but all the same the numbers help put into context just how much money OnlyFans' adult creators were earning on its platform.
- The leaked financials were part of a pitch deck that the company was using on its plight to raise more capital - an endeavor that has apparently been challenging for the startup. This tension made us think about the role that venture capital plays in funding vice startups, and why a tiny clause may stop many from getting into the game. Let's just say, the money behind the money has a way of having weight.
- And finally, we wondered what might be ahead for adult-content creators. Per Silberling, the world of adult content has ever been in flux, with creators and other sex workers moving from platform to platform as corporate policies, and national laws evolved. To see OnlyFans wind up where Patreon and Tumblr previously tread is not a complete surprise.
This is Equity Monday, our weekly kickoff that tracks the latest private market news, talks about the coming week, digs into some recent funding rounds and mulls over a larger theme or narrative from the private markets. You can follow the show on Twitter here. I also tweet.
Today's show was good fun to put together. Here's what we got to:
- Global stocks are up to kick off the week. It's a great way to start Monday, frankly.
- Thinking broadly, the latest regulatory news from China regarding ByteDance is not super bullish for the nation's tech industry. And what the Indian government is doing to its own technology industry is not encouraging. But all of that and tension between the two countries, is not stopping deals. You can't stop deals!
- Facebook bowed to pressure, and released a content report that it had previously shelved.
- Zetwerk raised a $150 million Series E. The Indian startup scene is trucking right along, perhaps acting a bit as-if its government wasn't increasingly authoritarian.
- Shelf.io raised a $52.5 million Series B in what we're somewhat considering a classic Tiger-led deal.
- And the SPAC boom is not over yet, with yet another Virgin space company headed for the public markets.
Woo! And that's the start to the week. Hugs from here, and we'll chat you on Wednesday!
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
Danny was back, joining Natasha and Alex and Grace and Chris to chat through the week's coming and goings. But, before we get to the official news, here's some personal news: Danny is stepping back from his role as co-host of the Friday show! Yes, Mr. Crichton will still take part in our mid-week, deep dive episodes, but this is the conclusion of his run as part of the news roundup. We will miss him, glad that his transitions and wit will continue to be part of the Equity universe.
Who will take the third chair? Well, stay tuned. We have some neat things planned.
Now, the rundown:
- Funding rounds: Maven has built a women's health unicorn, Monte Carlo raised $60 million for data observability, and Launch House wants to scale venture community with a fresh $3 million in its accounts. The last round is probably the most controversial one of them all, so each of us took a side and discussed what's new and old about hacker homes.
- The next crop of key IPOs: Please say hello to the rising seniors of the startup world, companies that are the next IPOs that we are excited about. The list includes Discord, Databricks, Chime and Carta, which made headlines this week after setting its own valuation with its own tool. Will investors and startups turn to a third-party to value companies? What happens if secondary investors aren't as into your product as you are? We had a ton of questions.
- Brazil's burgeoning startup and exit market: In the wake of Nuvemshop raising a zillion dollars, it was time to sit down and talk about Brazil. Alex and Anna Heim have been rigorous in their reporting on the fascinating exit market. Who knew dual-listings were so dramatic?
- After traveling overseas, we went very close to home to speak about the news industry. Danny had a piece about informed., which a trio of media veterans believe could fix the economics that plague subscription-based publications. The nuts and bolts are in the episode, but prepare to debate if you're the kind of reader that likes a snack, or the whole lip smackin' meal.
- Finally, we discuss the wack reality that YikYak is indeed back.
For our Wednesday show this week, Natasha and Alex and Danny had colleague Tage Kene-Okafor on the show to chat about the burgeoning African startup scene. Tage has become TechCrunch's key correspondent in the area, chronicling the continents expanding venture capital totals, public company performance, and startup ecosystem.
Given that we've paid attention to just how much money African startups are raising, we wanted to have Tage on to give us a better, deeper understanding of the continent's technology activity. Here's what we got into:
- The power of Y Combinator in Africa: Is the well-known American accelerator a kingmaker in Africa? Or are we merely seeing more of its activity thanks to our own information biases?
- Fintech as core focus: As in many markets, fintech investment and startup activity stand out in Africa. We wanted to better understand why that's the case in Africa, and what startups are building in the realm of financial technology.
- African ecommerce: The continent's ecommerce market is perhaps best known through the lens of Jumia, a public tech company that works in the sale of goods online, and their delivery. How quickly is ecommerce growing in Africa, and which startups could be the next breakouts? We asked Tage.
Equity is back on Friday with our weekly news roundup!
Equity drops every Monday at 7:00 a.m. PDT, Wednesday, and Friday
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
This is Equity Monday, our weekly kickoff that tracks the latest private market news, talks about the coming week, digs into some recent funding rounds and mulls over a larger theme or narrative from the private markets. You can follow the show on Twitter here. I also tweet.
It's a surreal day to talk about technology, but here we are. If you can pull your eyes away from the greater geopolitical tragedy that is our world today, here's what we talked about:
- T Mobile may have suffered a material breach. If this bears out, it could be a leading tech story for the week. Vice has confirmed that at least some of the data in the leak appears genuine.
- Indian travel service ixigo is going public. The company's IPO follows Zomato's own domestic debut.
- And speaking of IPOs, the Tencent Music offering in Hong Kong could be on hold until next year.
- And a trio of American tech companies raised a raft of capital as last week concluded. Carta put together $500 million in a huge deal, as Chime raised $750 million. And as the week closed, Discord was reported to be hunting up a new round at a $15 billion price tag.
And stocks are set to open lower this morning. That's the morning report. Equity is back on Wednesday.
This week Danny and Alex and Chris took to Twitter Spaces to chat about the current state of the crypto economy, and hang out with friends in a live Twitter Space. We're doing more of these, so make sure that you are following the show on Twitter.
As a small programming note, I forgot to tell the folks who chimed in during the chat that we were recording it, so we had to cut most the Q&A portion of the show. We got Ezra's permission, thankfully. The mixup was a bummer as we learned a lot. In the future, we'll not make that mistake and keep all the voices.
So, what did we talk about? The following:
- The current state of crypto regulation in America, and how the government may screw everything up. In short, tech moves fast, and government moves slow. This creates friction.
- Coinbase kicked the ever-loving shit out of its Q2 earnings. But as it turns out the future for trading-powered companies could include a few quarters of slower results.
- And everyone wants to fund the next Coinbase. You can understand why. The company is printing cash lately, helping drive more investment into localized exchanges in different markets.
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
Our beloved Danny was back, joining Natasha and Alex and Grace and Chris to chat through yet another incredibly busy week. As a window into our process, every week we tell one another that the next week we'll cut the show down to size. Then the week is so interesting that we end up cutting a lot of news, but also keeping a lot of news. The chaotic process is a work in progress, but it means that the end result is always what we decided we can't not talk about.
Here's what we got into:
- A little URL to IRL update from Natasha, who just got back from an edtech conference.
- How one VC got hit by ransomware, and why stolen LP data could be a wake up call for investors.
- The crew chatted through some Cloud 100 numbers, and riffed for a minute on Figma, Gusto, and Mailchimp, companies all reportedly worth around the $10 billion mark.
- From the early-stage funding round side of things, we noodled on Surfside's $4 million raise, and the capital that Pave recently attracted. Felt also raised money to make maps more mainstream, which had us thinking about use cases galore.
- In unicorn-land, Trendyol raised a mountain of cash, while UpGrad became India's newest unicorn.
- Climate change is going to mean lots more companies needed to handle disaster prep, Danny argues. His recent EC-1 here about RapidSOS got into the deep and complex world of three simple numbers: 911.
- And we ended the show with a riff on Salesforce+, which we had fun with but also tried to take seriously because we are journalists after all.
This week we were back to full strength, with Danny Natasha and Alex joined by Chris to chat through the latest venture capital brouhaha. Namely whether or not venture capital is about to get shaken to its core, or if we're really parsing some long-term economic trends that will eventually revert.
Here's a rundown:
- Sam Lessin kicked off the Twitter conversation by positing that venture capital as we know it is kaput, with software and later-stage investing possibly seeing the most disruption.
- Both Alex and Crunchbase News posted responses to the concept, which could best be summarized as yeah, but.
- However, the point that there is a lot of non-venture money flooding into startups is both real and material, and worth chewing on. So, masticate we did, parsing which areas of startup investing might be the most winsome for the VCs we spend so very much time talking to,
The direction and future of the venture capital world has largely been lost amidst a sea of large numbers. New megarounds. New unicorns. That sort of thing. But inside the rising tide of capital available to private companies has been a mix-shift of sorts. The question is where that goes long-term. We tried to posit a few things that could happen next.
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
This is Equity Monday, our weekly kickoff that tracks the latest private market news, talks about the coming week, digs into some recent funding rounds and mulls over a larger theme or narrative from the private markets. You can follow the show on Twitter here and me here.
It's going to be a busy week, with a Samsung event and a host of earnings reports that we'll have to pay attention to. But more important there are a few stories still dominating the news cycle:
- Apple's privacy choices: The American hardware company's plans to scan iPhones for some illegal material is once again raising the issue of privacy versus safety.
- China's tech crackdown: The continued clampdown by regulators continued this weekend with Tencent once again under the spotlight.
- The American crypto regulatory push: This is still causing waves this morning as Congress works to pass a major bill that could include crypto regulations that are opposed by industry leaders.
All that and we also riffed on the Siemens-Sqills deal, Cornerstone OnDemand going private, and Delivery Hero buying a piece of Deliveroo.
And, for added flavor and fun, Canopy Servicing just raised a $15 million Series A, while Siga OT Solutions raised a $8.1 million Series B.
All that, and we got to talk stocks! Hugs and love from the Equity crew — chat Wednesday!
Sara Spangelo's startup Swarm now has nearly 100 of its satellites in orbit, but the journey to get here has had plenty of challenges. After a track record that included working at Google X, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and plenty more, Sara realized with her co-founder Ben that including low-bandwidth network capabilities on tiny satellites was not only possible, but offered massive cost-savings vs. the usual way of doing things. But our talk focuses on the challenges of being a first-time founder and CEO, and creating a whole new business model.
Links for this episode:
- Swarm
- Swarm’s low-cost satellite data network is now available to commercial clients
Connect with us:
- On Twitter
- On Instagram
- Via email: found@techcrunch.com
For our Wednesday show this week, Natasha and Alex hosted a PR roundtable. Yep, our promise back when Alex Konrad came on the program to chat funding rounds is being fulfilled. Here's who joined us:
- Amy Widdowson, VP Corporate Communications at Zeno Group and newsletter writer extraordinaire
- Kelsey Cheng, PR Director at Walker Sands
- Creighton Vance, Media Strategist at Mission North and maker of music
We had a few things to chat about, so we broke the show into a few sections:
- Today's PR world: The impact of COVID-19, burnout, what their work entails, and some tips for startups.
- The sheer pace of news today: The evolution of client expectations, managing clients themselves, and burnout.
- Tech vs. Media: We chatted content marketing, sharing details with the press, and why the media never shares drafts of stories before they go out.
Frankly it was a very good time and a fun chat. Shoutout to our guests for arriving early and being very put together. May all podcast guests in the future learn from such efforts. One guest was even wearing a shirt with a collar! In 2021! We were impressed.
Recall that Equity is off the rest of the week so that we can recharge and retool a bit. Hugs!
Last week, Natasha and Alex jumped on Twitter Spaces to discuss the tale of two edtech IPOs: Duolingo, the consumer language learning company, and Powerschool, the enterprise K-12 software platform. It was a rare moment in the sun for the recently-revitalized sector, which saw two companies list on the NASDAQ on the same dang day.
Special shout out to our producer Chris Gates for handling this impromptu live chat, tech difficulties and all, and bringing it to your ears on this lovely Monday. Don't forget that Equity is largely on break this week!
Here's what we got into, featuring some edtech entrepreneurs nice enough to drop on by:
- China's edtech crackdown and how it is impacting startups both internationally and domestically. The regulations, one of which will force for-profit tutoring companies to turn into non-profits, are also getting the cold shoulder from U.S. edtech VCs, it seems.
- As Lightspeed Ventures investor Mercedes Bent so aptly put it, the news is somewhat ironic: "[T]he US edtech IPO market is on fire (after being dormant for so long) and the China edtech market is crumbling (after being on fire for so long)."
- Evidence of that can be found in the Duolingo IPO pricing arc. The company first posted a strong estimate of its worth, raised its range, priced above that raised interval, and still managed to trade higher. The company is still up more than $30 from its IPO price.
- Powerschool was a bit different. It priced at $18 per share, the low-end of its $18 to $20 range. The company is up from its IPO price, albeit a much more modest two, or three percent in today's early trading.
In the second half of the show, we brought on the following host of edtech founders to share their hot takes about the current state of edtech:
-
- Philip Cutler, the founder & CEO of PAPER gave us an enterprise perspective. The startup recently raised $100 million in a Series C round led by IVP.
- Taylor Nieman, the founder & CEO of Toucan spoke language learning -- and how she's using Duolingo's S-1 as a competitive advantage.
- Anada Lakra, the founder & CEO of BoldVoice, a startup that wants to help non-native English speakers hone their accents. TechCrunch covered the company here.
- Yeva Hyusyan, the founder of Sololearn, a Duolingo-like company that wants to teach coding instead of languages. The company recently raised $24 million.
Before we go, Equity is on a "break" this week, as we do some soul searching and refresh before our next run of shows. Obviously we still had to shaare this episode, and um, are recording another episode this week too, but you, my dear friend, will hear from us again next Monday.
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
We were a smaller team this week, with Natasha and Alex together with Grace and Chris to sort through a week that brought together both this quarter's earnings cycle, and the Q3 IPO rush. So, it was just a little busy!
Before we get to topics, however, a note that we are having a lot of fun recording these live on Twitter Spaces. We've found a hacky way to capture local audio and also share the chats live. So, hit us up on Twitter so you can hang out with us. It's fun - and we may even bring you up on stage to play guest host.
Ok, now, to the Great List of Subjects:
- Robinhood went public! Yep, at long last, it is done. The company priced at $38 per share, the low end of its range, and had a medium-weak day of trading once it started to float. In short, Robinhood seems to have deftly priced its IPO, leaving zero fat on the table. So, it is now richer than ever, and public. More here.
- Earnings! We took a moment to chat about earnings reports from Alphabet, and Microsoft, and Shopify. Why? Because we care lots about the cloud and platform companies. So, we took a minute to chat about public cloud results, and what Shopify got up to.
- Batteries! Tesla is moving towards iron-based batteries, and is looking to source other materials direct. At the same time battery recycling is raising lots of cash, and Nikola is Not Dead. We call it two truths and a lie.
- Unicorns and soon-to-be's: Contentful raised $175M at a $3B valuation from Tiger for its content delivery service, Squire, a barbershop tech platform, tripled its valuation (again) with Tiger Global (again), and Class squashed acquisition rumors with SoftBank Vision Fund II funding,
- More venture rounds! To cap off our venture roundup, two neat healthtech investments stood out, namely rounds from both Oova and Peppy. Both startups agree with the idea that hormonal health is a massive yet nascent opportunity. (We did an entire show about the imbalanced world of hormone startups if you're interested).
- We ended on a musical note, which lucky for you all, didn't include us singing: meet a quartet of early-stage music startups
For our Wednesday show this week, Natasha and Alex Chris had prior Equity guest Phil Libin back for a chat. Libin was first on our show a while back to chat about his startup studio. But since then, he's been a little busy.
You may recall that mmhmm, Libin's project to build a better video communication service, raised $100 million the other week. And we here on the Equity pod made a little bit of fun at the number. It was just so very much money for a roughly one year old company. What was the company going to use it for?
Well, Libin's folks got in touch and so we decided to just have him on to chat. And we wanted him back because he was one of the most memorable guests on the show, frankly, thanks to his candor the last time around.
So, what did we get into? A refresh on the mmhmm story, and notes from Libin about what's ahead for his company. It certainly has the cash to pursue its vision. But as we learned, building software for a variety of platforms comes with challenges. Challenges that are ameliorated by having lots of smart staff. So, that's where the money is going.
Regardless, it was good sporting of Libin to come back for another chat. Equity is back Friday morning with our news roundup. Make sure to follow the show on Twitter, as we're doing the odd Twitter space that you won't want to miss.
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
This is Equity Monday, our weekly kickoff that tracks the latest private market news, talks about the coming week, digs into some recent funding rounds and mulls over a larger theme or narrative from the private markets. You can follow the show on Twitter here and myself here.
Ever wake up to just a massive wall of news? That was us this morning, so we had to pick and choose. But since this show is about getting you caught up, we decided to focus on the largest, broadest new information that we could:
- Asian stocks were down, European shares are lower, and American equities are set to open underwater. Bitcoin had a great weekend, however.
- China's edtech crackdown continued over the weekend, with the country's ruling party setting new rules for online tutoring companies; they can no longer go public and will be forced to become non-profit entities. Chinese edtech stocks around the world fell.
- China's larger tech crackdown continued over the weekend and into the week, with new moves against the present-day business models of both food delivery companies, and Tencent Music. The former must ensure minimum incomes, while the latter must give up exclusive rights deals. Shares fell.
- The Jam City SPAC is kaput. It will not be the last similar deal to fall apart.
- And we chatted about this bit of Rivian news, as it stood out to us.
All that and we had a good time. Hugs and love from the Equity crew, chat Wednesday!
We were smaller team this week, with Natasha and Alex together with Chris to sort through yet another summer frenzy of a week.
This time around we actually recorded live on Twitter Spaces, which was a first for the podcast. If you missed it, it's probably because we didn't promote the taping since it was just an experiment. Good news, though, is that it went well, and we're going to some more live tapings of the show with the entire crew on the mics. Make sure to follow the show on the Big Tweet to ensure that you can come hang with us next week. We'll also do some Q&A at the end, if we're in good moods.
Until then, let's live in the present. Here's what we got into in today's show:
- The blisteringly-hot EU startup market: You can raise money anywhere, but you might want to do it in Europe where VCs are putting a acre-feet of capital to work this year. Hours before the taping, Index Ventures announced a $3 billion trio of funds (and TikTok strategy?), basically solidifying our earlier reporting.
- The huge round for crypto trading house FTX, and OpenSea raising again: Regardless of whether or not you are paying attention to the crypt market today, investors are still firing capital at startups in the space at an eye-catching pace.
- Duolingo's first IPO price range: It's a good-news week for consumer-focused, edtech startups, since the public markets will finally get a taste of an non-enterprise sector startup. Plus, Duolingo's upcoming finance event could lead to them finally bolstering areas like speech, cultural norms, and fluency.
- From the world of funding rounds, we had notes on Sololearn, Numerade, NewCampus, Mural, Spreadsheet.com, and Bolt. The conversation ran into some fresh corners, such as how a company raised less than its preceding round but 4x'd its valuation and if we should bite-size all learning.
For this week’s deep dive, Alex and Natasha took a trip down memory lane to the great WeWork saga. We had WSJ reporter and author Eliot Brown on the show to chat about his new book, The Cult of We, written with his colleague Maureen Farrell. You can snag it here if you haven't already.
Brown and Farrell were key reporting voices during WeWork's rise, and fall, covering the company's growth, hijinks, and demise.
Recently, WeWork has filed to go public via a SPAC, bringing the co-working startup to the public markets years after it initially tried for an IPO. It will debut at a fraction of the value that it once commanded on the private markets.
- For fun, you can read the original WeWork S-1 filing here.
- The WeWork-SPAC deck is here.
While we had Brown on the show, we took the time to dive into how he handled reporting the WeWork story, what his take is on today's startup market, and how the tech media in general can do a better job. It felt like a masterclass for journalists and founders alike, which we'd argue is Equity's sweet spot.
What lessons can we take away from WeWork's rise and fall? At a very basic level, that companies with slim gross margins are not software companies and should not be valued as such. And that allowing founders to have monarchical control of their company goes against historical norms of good corporate governance, which isn't so smart.
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
This is Equity Monday, our weekly kickoff that tracks the latest private market news, talks about the coming week, digs into some recent funding rounds and mulls over a larger theme or narrative from the private markets. You can follow the show on Twitter here and myself here.
It was a big damn morning, so we had to cut some stuff. Here's what we got into:
- Stocks and cryptos are off this morning, as inflation and COVID-19 concerns rise.
- Zoom is buying Five9. The deal is not super expensive, nor is it cheap. But given the huge percentage of Zoom's market cap that it represents, it's a serious wager from the video conferencing startup.
- Carlyle is buying LiveU for around $400 million. TechCrunch broke this news. The deal shows that private equity interest in startups that aren't unicorns.
- Robinhood dropped a new SEC filing this morning! That means we have a price range and valuation target to play with. More from TechCrunch on the matter shortly.
- From India: A huge round for Lenskart, and a big Series A for GlobalBees.
- And we covered this round from Nigeria. A smaller transaction, but one that could prove to be quite neat, we reckon.
Ok! Chat Wednesday!
The whole crew was here this week, with Danny and Natasha and Alex together with Grace and Chris to sort through a very, very busy week. Yep, somehow it is Friday again which means it's time for our weekly news roundup.
Here's what we got to in our short window of time:
- The Jianzhi Education IPO: We have questions. The Chinese edtech company is looking to list in the United States after Chinese regulators clamped down on Didi and other China-based, American public offerings. Bravery? Stupidity? Brilliance? It's hard to say, but we'll be watching.
- Zomato's IPO and the Indian tech scene: As Zomato puts the final touches on its impending public offering, we chatted about the listing and what it may mean for the larger, red-hot Indian startup market.
- The AI conversation: ZoomInfo bought Chorus.ai this week, which we had lots of say about especially in light of Gong's epic valuation. And Discord bought Sentropy, which also uses AI, albeit for a very different purpose. The great AI startup marketing push of years' past has finally led to a few neat exits.
- Apple vs. Startups: That's the gist of our chat about the BNPL space and Apple's possible invasion of the hot startup market. In short, who's at risk? We have a few ideas.
- The TechCrunch List is dead — long live commodity capital: We get into how a list that separates VCs by sector and stage makes no sense into today's lawless investing world.
- Which brings us to a series of new funds. As Natasha pointed out, the scene for emerging fund managers has never looked more diverse.
- Nooks raised a seed round, which turned us back into the world of virtual HQs.
- And we closed with a quick digest of the latest morsels from the fake-meat startup smorgasbord, including what Gourmey is cooking, what Next Gen Foods is whipping up, and how Beyond Meat plans to keep its market cap sizzling.
Like we said, a busy week! Chat you all on Monday morning, early.
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
For this week’s deep dive, Alex and Natasha and Danny decided it was time to chat about funding rounds. Yep, everyone's favorite topic, just in time for the return of our wonderful producer Chris.
To help us navigate these particular waters, we had our friend and friendly competitor Alex Konrad on the show. Konrad is a senior editor over at Forbes, and part of the founding duo behind the Midas Touch newsletter. We like him - and his puppy!
With four of us around the Zoom table, here's what we got into:
- An overview of the venture capital market in Q2. You can read TechCrunch's coverage of the global numbers here, and our further exploration of the US market here. TechCrunch has more coming on the matter, so stay tuned.
- While the show includes the staggering statistics on the current funding frenzy, we soon broadened the conversation to why it all matters.
- Consider this a peek into the reporter's notebook! We spoke about the supply and demand for covering funding rounds, the imbalance in who receives what money, and how an overall reader ad writer numbness to that $2 million pre-seed impacts the headlines.
- Which landed us into our final section: how to stand out in the overall deluge of funding rounds. Here we all had a take, because all reporters find different things interesting. Here we answer questions about what metrics to pay attention to, how to be more than a number in your pitch, and the value of talking about topics other than your startup's success.
Thanks again to Alex K. for joining the show! Find him on Twitter,https://twitter.com/alexrkonrad and check out his work at Forbes.
Chat with everyone on Friday, a show that is already coming together to be a scorcher. A bit like the weather. Except in San Francisco. Natasha is cold!
This is Equity Monday, our weekly kickoff that tracks the latest private market news, talks about the coming week, digs into some recent funding rounds and mulls over a larger theme or narrative from the private markets. You can follow the show on Twitter here and myself here.
It was a busy weekend for everyone, regardless of whether you were watching the technology, what Branson was up to, or the footie. I won't take sides on the match, but I will say that it was gripping unto the very end and a great example of sport. Now, the news:
- Microsoft is said to be hunting up the purchase of RiskIQ, a cybersecurity firm. The deal is reported to be worth around $500 million.
- And this weekend, Twitter began to conform with new regulations in India, moves that come after it lost some legal protections during a scrap with the Indian government.
- China's tech market has been busy: News is out concerning ByteDance's IPO delay, Tencent is being forced to drop some music label exclusivity, and the Chinese government recently blocked a merger of streaming giants in the country.
- There's big news out from Flipkart this morning, thanks to its recent and huge new funding round worth $3.6 billion.
- And returning to the cybersecurity theme from earlier, startups in the sector are having a lovely time raising capital in recent months, it turns out.
And don't forget that earnings season is just around the corner. It's a pretty important cycle. Why? Because startup valuations are hot, and could take a hit if earnings come up short. And the IPO market is pretty freaking active; poor earnings from major tech companies could crimp exit-prices for mature startups.
Ok! Talk to you on Wednesday!
Danny and Alex were on deck this week, with Grace on the recording and edit. Natasha will be back with us starting next week. So, it was old times on the show with just two of our team to vamp on the news. And oh boy was there a lot of news to get into. Like, loads.
- What's going on with Didi? Didi's woes have continued this week, with the company seeing its share price continue to fall. The Equity team's view is that the era of Chinese companies listing in the United States is over.
- What's going on with facial recognition tech? With AnyVision raising a $235 million round, Danny and Alex tangled over the future of privacy, and what counts as good enough when it comes to keeping ourselves to ourselves.
- Nextdoor is going public: Via a SPAC, mind, but the transaction had our tongues wagging about its history, growth, and how hard it can be to build a social network.
- Dataminr buys WatchKeeper: In its first-ever acquisition, Dataminr bought a smaller company to help it better visualize the data it collects. It's a neat deal, and especially fun given taht Dataminr should go public sooner rather than later.
- Planet and Satellogic are going public: One week, two satellite SPACs. You can read more about Planet here, and Satellogic here.
- FabricNano and Cloverly raise capital: Satellites had us into the concept of climate change, so we also dug into recent funding rounds from FabricNano and Cloverly. It's beyond neat to see for-profit companies tackle our warming planet.
- Two new venture capital funds: Acrylic has put together a $55 million fund for moonshot crypto work, while Renegade Partners has a $100 million fund for early-and-mid-stage generalist investments.
- Mmhmm is big time: And then there was mmhmm. Which now has $100 million more, and some big plans. Our question is what it will do with the money. We'll have to wait and find out, we suppose.
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
For this week’s deep dive, Alex and Natasha and Danny decided that it was time to talk about drugs. No, not like drugs for fun, but instead drugs that you might have considered fun, but are now being redirected to help bolster your health.
Yep, that's our theme today. As it turns out, there are a number of startups and even nascently public companies that are pursing using drugs that we might consider recreational for serious health purposes. Which is neat, as our habit of decrying any drug that makes you feel better as immoral has likely held us back from learning quite a lot about them.
- Venture capital investment in psychedelic start-ups, per CB Insights, rose from sub-$100 million results in 2018 and 2019 to $346 million last year.
- Vice clauses, however, can pause a legitimate issue for investors who might want to cut a check in the space.
- From the startup angle, NUE Life Health recently raised $3.3 million, and Osmind is up to some neat stuff regarding mental health.
- From the public markets, Atai Life Sciences, Compass Pathways, and MindMed are the companies worth watching.
Frankly this was a fun one to record, even if the topic at hand is actually rather serious. Chat Friday morning!
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture-capital-focused podcast where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
This is Equity Tuesday, our weekly kickoff that tracks the latest private market news, talks about the coming week, digs into some recent funding rounds and mulls over a larger theme or narrative from the private markets. You can follow the show on Twitter here and myself here.
What a busy weekend we missed while mostly hearing distant explosions and hugging our dogs close. Here's a sampling of what we tried to recap on the show:
- Didi vs. China: The Chinese government's crackdown on Didi continued over the weekend, after announcing a cybersecurity review of the company on Friday. That decision blocked new user signups. Now Didi has had its app removed from pertinent app marketplaces. That's going to hit revenue. Shares of the company are sharply lower in pre-marketing trading here in the United States. The company went public last week.
- Twitter vs. India: India's attempts to cow Twitter into not enacting its own content moderation policies continues. Now India has taken away legal protections from the well-known American company. It's not great news for India's growing technology sector, or the investors backing the upstarts.
- Funding rounds: Lots of companies raised money, including Byrd, with $19 million in a Series B, Pleo with a huge $150 million unicorn round, and Obviously AI, which just extended its Seed round.
It's going to be a busy week! Chat tomorrow.
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
Danny, Natasha, and Alex were on-deck this week, with Grace on the recording and edit. But, if you want to hear more about Robinhood, this is not the episode for you.If you want to learn more about the consumer fintech company's IPO filing this is the episode you want. Basically, Robinhood filed after we had wrapped taping, so we had to do a special pod for the news.
So, this is the everything-but-Robinhood episode. And here's what's inside of it:
- Startup and investor tensions at Bessemer and Hinge Health. Natasha has the latest.
- Didi's IPO, and what's going on with Chinese IPOs more generally. Also SentinelOne's expensive and notable debut.
- And then all things Duolingo, including TechCrunch's overview and more in-depth look.
- From the venture capital side of things, Zipline raised $250 million, Daylight raised $5 million, Articulate raised $1.5 billion, Acceleprise rebranded to Forum Ventures, and Peanut put together a micro-fund.
- We closed with Neeva, Brave, and other alternative search tools. Alex has a piece coming on the subject, once he gets around to finishing it.
A four-episode week! With only Grace handling production! She's amazing.
It's a sweltering day here in New York City, and that means Wall Street is on fire, and so is Robinhood, apparently. The popular stock trading app officially filed its Form S-1 with the SEC a few hours ago to go public, where it will trade under the ticker "HOOD."
The Equity crew has been yammering about Robinhood for years now, and we have been chomping on the bit to see those S-1 results for what feels like ages. Well, we finally got the numbers, we chomped that bit (or at least Alex and Danny did, since Natasha went on vacation about 15 minutes before the IPO hit the wires), and so here's a special Equity Shot to talk about all the highlights.
We talked about so much in an itsy-bitsy 15-minute episode: crazy revenue growth, crazy revenue concentration from two major sources, regulatory hurdles that the company has been clearing up, better financials with a bit of nuance on the company's Q1 finances, and the company's special plan for its IPO.
Wowza.
Here's what we got up to:
- Historical growth and profitability.
- Revenue mix and revenue concentration, along with constituent concerns.
- The importance of options-related incomes for the company.
- Dogecoin.
- Why the company's adjusted income may help it assuage investors who have their eyes pop out of their skulls when they see its GAAP Q1 2021 results.
And a lot more. Of course, if you hate Robinhood, we will be back with our normally-scheduled Friday episode of Equity tomorrow.
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
For this week’s deep dive, Alex and Natasha brought on Alexis Gay, a former operator at Patreon who now makes her living as comedian and podcast host, to talk about the creator economy - including our disdain for that horrid phrasing. You may know her from her cheeky, on point shorts about tech culture (and tech Twitter).
https://twitter.com/yayalexisgay/status/1369346460911734784
Gay gave us an honest look into the life of creator helper turned creator actual, admitting that her current job path wasn't possible in 2018. Somewhere, somehow, a VC in the distance heard that admittance as an opportunity to back a creator economy startup.
Here's what we got into:
- Gay's experience at Patreon, and why she left. Alex had some thoughts on the theme. It appears that growing list of creator-focused tools could increase the vapor pressure of folks who write, talk, art, and otherwise create, regarding their present-day employment.
- Why one size doesn't fit all when it comes to the diverse world of folks engaged in creative work. We also dipped our toes into the issue of indie creators needing to be CEOs as well as artists.
- We chatted on Vibely, a startup that wants to make interactions with creators ~ multi-directional~ and what it says about scaling time.
- We also got into what an average day looks like for a full-time creator-comedian-podcaster, why she's annoyed with how creators are discussed by founders and investors, and the tooling she hopes to see in the future.
- And, well, we had to ask her if she's starting a rolling fund too.
All told, if you care about the economics of the creative world and want to add some nuance to your theories about it, it's a fun episode.
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
This is Equity Monday, our weekly kickoff that tracks the latest private market news, talks about the coming week, digs into some recent funding rounds and mulls over a larger theme or narrative from the private markets. You can follow the show on Twitter here and myself here.
First, happy belated birthday to Chris Gates, one of the founding members of the show. His birthday was yesterday, and while he's on vacation for two weeks, we still wanted to give him a shoutout. Chris is a very good person, a good friend, a good father, a good partner. He's kind, supportive, and hilarious. And he has a very good beard.
But Equity waits for no single person, regardless of their merit, so on we went! Here's today's show:
- Stocks are a bit blah this morning, though set to rise in the United States. Cryptos are up a little.
- From the weekend, Venmo is getting into ecommerce, and Apple loves Surface.
- From this morning: Binance is beefing with the United Kingdom, and appears to be winning, which is somewhat humorous.
- On the funding round beat, Slice raised $20 million, Botrista raised $10 million, and Thursday raised $3.5 million.
- We wrapped with this.
The Equity crew is back on Wednesday for our deep-dive, this week focusing on the creator economy which should be good fun. Chat then!
Hey Equity fam, we have a small clip of extra for you today. After our live show - listen to the recording here, it was good fun - we got to take a few questions from the audience, audio that was not included in the main episode as we didn't have the time. But we've cut it out, given it a short polish, and have it for you today.
If you wanted even more Equity, here you go!
As a small note from the team, we know that this week's Wednesday episode didn't have the best audio quality. And to do a Twitter Spaces experiment the same week as a live show might have felt like a lot of change. Don't worry, it just worked out that way. Equity will keep tinkering and having fun, but we're back to normal next week.
Enjoy the Q&A, and we'll see you at our next live show!
- Grace, Chris, Natasha, Danny, and Alex
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
This week we did something fun and different and good: a live show! A good number of people came, and asked questions, and altogether, it was a blast.
Danny, Natasha, and Alex had a lovely time with the regular work, while Grace and Chris and Kevin made the whole operation function. We'll likely post a bonus episode of the Q&A on Saturday if people are interested in Equity After Hours.
That aside, what did we talk about in a longer-than-usual episode? Here's the rundown:
- Buzzfeed is going public! Alex wrote about the news here, but the gist is that the media company is merging with a SPAC, buying Complex, and raising some capital at the same time. We have thoughts about it.
- Maybe neobanks will break even? We dug into some fintech news through the perspective of some recent news from the neobank market.
- MAJORITY raised MONEY for migrants to the United States, while MFast, a Vietnamese financial services app, got some funding of its own amid the neobank boom.
- Alex interviewed a leading venture capitalist. So, we talked about that.
- What's going on with the early-stage venture capital market? That's something we tried to parse. The gist is that the rapidly-evolving world of investing in startups is in the midst of a few trends that are worth understanding. Even if they are slightly contradictory.
- A16z tripled down on crypto with a new $2.2 billion fund, giving it a total of $18.8 billion in assets under management.
- Edtech leaders rallied around a memo of their own this past week.
- And then to close, we raced through some of our recent reporting on a new fund that will invest in American military institute graduates, Figma's huge new round of capital, and WaitWhat?
It's always fun to play around with our show, and thank you to everyone who came out and supported us in our first-ever, but probably not last-ever, virtual live show. We are back to regular, however, starting Monday.
For this week’s deep dive Danny, Alex, and a bunch of the TechCrunch crew took on the recent happenings in the world of bitcoin. In a break from our regular format, we recorded live from a Twitter Space -- it's like a Clubhouse, but closer to where your social network is -- so the audio quality is not going to be Utterly Perfect. But we think the conversation will more than make up for it!
Before we get into the show notes, do not forget that we're recording Equity live on Hopin Thursday the 24th. Come hang with us and have some fun. It's free, of course, and should be a good time. Details here, sign up here!
So what did we get into? A lot!
- Recent price changes to the value of major coins
- The impact of China on the larger crypto ecosystem
- What's the latest from the NFT craze?
- Are DAOs, you know, actually a thing?
And more. A big thanks to Romain Dillet and Lucas Matney for hanging with us, Drew Olanoff for hosting, and Chris Gates for snagging the audio and making it all work.
See you tomorrow!
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
This is Equity Monday, our weekly kickoff that tracks the latest private market news, talks about the coming week, digs into some recent funding rounds and mulls over a larger theme or narrative from the private markets. You can follow the show on Twitter here and myself here.
Our live show is this week! And we're very excited about it! Details here, and you can register here. It's free, of course, so swing by and hang with us.
Back on theme, we had a lot to get through this morning, so inside the show you can find the following and more:
- The Chinese cryptocurrency clampdown is a big damn deal: With lots of the nation's mining capacity heading offline, there's a scramble to relocate rigs and generally figure out what a crypto market sans China might look like.
- In the wake of the news, the value of cryptocurrencies fell. As did shares of Coinbase this morning in pre-market trading.
- Facebook's Clubhouse rival is out. The American social giant follows Spotify into the live-audio market. You have to give it to modern software companies, who thought that they could be both leading tech shops and Kinko's clones at the same time?
- Revolut is unprofitable as hell but increasingly less so. That could be good news for fintech as a whole.
- Amber Group raised $100 million; Forto raised $240 million.
See you this Thursday at the live show!
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
This week, Natasha and Danny, otherwise known as your two new favorite Book influencers (inside joke, you'll get if you listen to the show), hopped on the mics to take everyone threw the news, with Grace and Chris in the background.
Here's what we got into:
- Wise announced plans to go public via direct listing, making it the biggest company to use this route to debut on the London Stock Exchange.
- Andreessen Horowitz goes into publishing with Future, so Danny and Natasha took turns fawning over why everyone has hot takes about a blog, and what could be in the future for Future.
- Harry Stebbings turned up the volume on 20VC with new $140M fund. Natasha broke down why it matters for emerging fund managers, and why it might quiet some concerns about the growth potential of micro-funds.
- After we left our usually programmed media and venture conversation, we turned to community. Commsor bought Meetsy to build community tools for all for an undisclosed price.
- Danny found hobby-market fit with BookClub, a startup that just raised $20 million to make reading experiences more engaging with author-led discussions. Then, the edtech convo continued with Formative's $70 million financing event from this week.
- Danny had the scoop on Gusto's first-ever acquisition as well as Clair, a tool that is skipping the direct deposit and heading straight for the paycheck.
- To close out the funding round section, we spoke about Carbyne making emergencies more streamlined, and what Natasha argued is the headline o' the week: Neo4j raises Neo$325m as graph-based data analysis takes hold in enterprise.
- To close, we spoke to HBCUvc's $1 million fund to back overlooked founders, and onramp aspiring investors.
Well, as you can tell, it's been a busy writing and speaking week for your humble hosts. We're grateful for the opportunity, and will be back in your ears on Monday.
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
For this week’s deep dive, Natasha and Danny unpacked the Expensify EC-1, which includes a ton of surprises, building tips, and, as we discuss in the show, some life lessons as well. This is our largest EC-1 to date, and is the result of six months of prodigious work from the inimitable Anna Heim. Of course, we had to add our Equity spin on the feature and boiled down our favorite musings into a succinct episode.
Here's what we got into:
- Expensify's silent period as a fun dynamic to deal with as reporters
- There's always an Uber angle, and Expensify is no different when you realize its early roots are tied to entrepreneur Travis Kalanick's persuasion
- How Expensify manages to stay slim, focus in a rural town in Michigan, and achieve profitability
- Natasha asked if lack of structure negatively or positive impacts minorities and underrepresented folk, while Danny explained a nifty way that the company deals with promotions and raises.
- Danny explained how re-writing the playbook might positively impact recruitment, and how joining Expensify doesn't come with your classic SaaS pitch.
- And we end with a meta conversation on how society views work, and why neither of us went to spend the next 50 years with predictability.
Once you're done listening to the episode, make sure to check out Heim's EC-1 below:
- Part 1: Origin story “How a band of P2P hackers planted the seeds of a unique expense management giant” (2,400 words/10 minutes
- Part 2: Culture: “How Expensify got to $100M in revenue by hiring ‘stem cells’ and not ‘cogs in a wheel’” (3,120 words/12.5 minutes)
- Part 3: Expansion and remote work: “How Expensify shed Silicon Valley arrogance to realize its global ambitions” (3,250 words/13 minutes)
- Part 4: Engineering and technology: “How Expensify hacked its way to a robust, scalable tech stack” (3,300 words/13 minutes)
- Part 5: Business model: “How bottom-up sales helped Expensify blaze the path for SaaS” (4,200 words/17 minutes)
And that's the show! Make sure to register for a seat at our FREE Equity live show next week, and follow us on Twitter @equitypod.
Until Friday!
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
This is Equity Monday, our morning coffee chat with you that is all about the weekend, what to expect this week, and some funding rounds you may have missed. I'm subbing in for Alex Wilhelm today, who is deservedly out on vacation. You can find me on Twitter @nmasc_, and Equity on Twitter (turn on those notifications!) @equitypod.
Biden and world leaders are congregating at the NATO summit, which kicks off this week. Also, the Dublin Tech Summit is happening on Thursday with yours truly, other TC folks, and many entrepreneurs making a virtual appearance.
Now, onto the news!
- The weekend: The seat next to Jeff Bezos as he launches into space just got filled for $28 million. Also, Elon Musk tweeted about how Tesla might start accepting Bitcoin as a payment once at least half of it can be mined using clean energy. The comment sent Bitcoin up more than a few percentage points, hovering at $39,173 at the time of the recording.
- This morning: The FT reports that Flagship Pioneering, which is responsible for incubating and launching Moderna, has raised a new venture capital fund at $3.4 billion. Flagship isn't your traditional VC. It forms teams around problem areas and brainstorms solutions, incubates the most promising ones, and then eventually spins out and finances those companies.
- Funding rounds: Byju's got a check from UBS and Zoom founder Eric Yuan, making it the most valuable startup in India. The company is now valued at $16.5 billion post-money. Plus, The Pill Club has raised an extension Series B round with former Uber exec Liz Meyerdirk newly at the helm of the company.
- Finally, please take the Equity Listener Survey. We want to make the show better for you, so spending a few seconds filling out our survey and we will be very grateful.
And that's all. Be kind with yourself this week, and take more than a 5-minute lunch because true glamour is being present and chewing slowly.
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
We're closing our survey soon, so this is your last chance (probably) to get your voice heard!
Despite it being a short week, as always, it was a busy, busy time. We had Grace on the dials today, and Danny, Natasha, and Alex making chit-chat about the tech world. As with every week this year, we had to cut and cut and cut to get the show down to size. Here's what made it in in the end:
- Medium saw more employees depart the company after CEO Ev Williams published a 'culture memo.' While the Medium memo doesn’t wholly ban politics, some allege that the undertone of the statement, timed weeks after a failed unionization attempt, created an unsafe environment. A week later, Natasha covered another controversy, this time at Y Combinator. We riff on the takeaway, and what this story looks like three months from now.
- The issue of company culture is attracting companies. Or more precisely startups, with Blendoor dropping a new report this week that TechCrunch covered, and Vault raising $8.2 million to provide a software solution to aid employees in reporting misconduct.
- On the funding round beat, we explored ChartHop's new $35 million round that Danny had many thoughts about, fake-chicken nuggets startup Nuggs raising $50 million, and Faculty's latest deal that will help power its vision for the future of male grooming. We also got into Lifted's elder-care focused round, a startup in the larger healthtech beat that Natasha is giving some of her attention to.
- And we wrapped with the ExtraHop exit. We spent a minute trying to figure out why the company was valued at $900 million in its exit. The number, while large, felt light based on what we knew about the company.
Thanks for hopping along with us this week and every week. Quick programming note: Natasha will take Alex's spot on the Monday show for next week since he's out, so be nice, and send her stuff to mention.
For this week’s deep dive, Alex, Natasha, and Chris dug into the world of hormonal health, a sub-sector within the massive (and booming) world of digital health.
The show was inspired by Natasha's latest Extra Crunch piece: "Hormonal Health is a massive opportunity: Where are the unicorns?". To round out the show, we asked one of the featured founders, Dr. Elizabeth Ruzzo, to hop on the mic and help us understand if hormonal health is at its infancy, or at an inflection point, in tech.
The tl;dr before we hop into the show is that hormones -- while constantly evolving and changing -- are center node for a ton of health conditions that disproportionately impact women. These can include mental health issues, infertility, diabetes, and more. If you're someone interested in the world of digital health and always read about the Ro's and Hinge Health's of the ecosystem, this episode will teach you what else there is that deserves equal - if not more - attention.
Here's what we got into:
- We started with landscaping! We defined the term "hormonal health" and got a sense of market size, as to show the opportunity there is to innovate here right now.
- Ruzzo walked us through the opportunity in pro-active medicine, as well as how investors reacted to her pitch when she was first raising her seed round.
- We ping-ponged around different reasons as to why hormonal health is an underserved category, starting with stigma and ending with stigma.
- This post from a set of venture capital investors discussing the market opportunity that women's health may have for founders and VCs alike.
- Then we got into Modern Fertility's acquisition by Ro, and why Ruzzo and many in the digital health community were surprised at the outcome. That said, it’s still one of the rare exits, and as far as unicorns go, there are virtually no companies valued at over $1 billion that focus explicitly on women’s hormonal health.
- Shifting gears, the trio turned to startups working on PCOS, one of the most common hormonal conditions out there that impacts one in ten women. Former Ro director Rachel Blank announced today that she is starting a company in this world, Allara.
- To round out the conversation we touched on the recent Veera venture capital round, and closed with a short discussion concerning the the term "femtech" and why it's not so good.
Don't forget to take the Equity survey, and we'll chat you on Friday morning!
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
This is Equity Monday, our weekly kickoff that tracks the latest private market news, talks about the coming week, digs into some recent funding rounds and mulls over a larger theme or narrative from the private markets. You can follow the show on Twitter here and myself here.
It's WWDC week, so expect a deluge of Apple news to overtake your Twitter feed here and there over the next few days. But there's a lot more going on, so let's dig in:
- The Weekend: A supercharged, supercharged Model S Tesla car is not coming out. Instead, a merely supercharged version will come out. It's still stupid fast and expensive. And Nigeria's war with Twitter continued, with new efforts from the African nation to limit access to the social media service within its borders.
- This Morning: Flipkart is raising $3 billion at a roughly $40 billion valuation The deal underscores not just how big the Indian tech scene is, but also how much investor interest there is in ecommerce bets more generally. And Jeff Bezos is going to space. Soon!
- Funding Rounds: Trulioo raised a $394 million Series D. The Canadian startup is now worth far more than $1 billion. And Chinese company Kanzhun is going public in the United States, which raised an eyebrow here amongst the Equity Morning Crew.
- Take The Damn Equity Survey: Take it! All the cools kids are taking it!
And that's your start to the week. More to come from your friends here on Wednesday, and Friday. Chat soon!
Despite it being a short week, as always, it was a busy busy time. Our regular Friday producer Grace was under the weather today, so Chris stepped in to help out.
And as noted at the top of the episode, we're running a survey. The survey is here, dear Equity family. Please fill it out so that we can keep making the show better.
That aside, here's what Danny and Natasha and Alex got into:
- Stack Overflow has a new owner, and a $1.8 billion sale price that is minting 61 new millionaires in the process.
- Katerra is dying, as in going to zero. As the company has been a regular feature of TechCrunch coverage, we had to discuss its end. You can also catch up on Greensill here if that's your jam.
- Back on the acquisition front, Etsy is buying Depop for $1.625 billion. Our take is that the deal makes good sense, even if it is not cheap.
- Amazon is now open to being sued after an overwhelming number of arbiration claims were filed. Also we get to talk about everyone's favorite judge's writing style.
- Unit raised money to help teams unionize; Chipper Cash raised a huge round for its fintech product; and One Concern underscores Danny's larger disaster tech thesis by raising $45 million.
That's all we got! If you have heard Equity before, take the survey. Thank you!
For this week’s deep dive, Alex and Natasha dug into the burgeoning of sports media, sports gaming, and fantasy sports world today through the lens of some early-stage startups. Naturally, the Equity team is what comes to mind when you consider the correct and right people to discuss sports. We are here to back up your priors.
Jokes aside, we had a good time digging into the following:
- THE GIST raised $1 million. Both Natasha and Alex were very bullish on the company's product, focus, and market. Especially in light of some recent media deals that have kept our hearts aflutter over the last few quarters.
- Blaseball raised $3 million. Whether it is blah-ZAY-ball, or BLACE-ball, the Equity team thinks that having fantasy fantasy sports is meta, good fun, and perhaps appeal-broadening the larger, somewhat hoary world of baseball. Also baseball could use more whimsy in general.
- And the fantasy talk continued as we got to cricket, which is a massively adored and obsessed over sport in India especially. Earlier this year, Dream11's parent firm raised $225 million at an over $2.5 billion valuation to build an end-to-end sports tech company around the sport.
We'd venture out to say we are probably the only tech podcast this week that found an angle to riff on within sports and donuts, which is why we love our jobs and why we hope you love the show. Surprises keep things fun, and much love to our producers, Chris and Grace, for constantly sourcing creative material that may have flown under the radar otherwise.
Back Friday!
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
This is Equity Tuesday, our weekly kickoff that tracks the latest private market news, talks about the coming week, digs into some recent funding rounds and mulls over a larger theme or narrative from the private markets. You can follow the show on Twitter here and myself here.
We are back from a long weekend here in America. But not break here in the States can stop the flow of global tech news. So, here's the rundown:
- The Weekend: Tata bought BigBasket, setting up a fascinating ecommerce war in India. China is cracking down on edtech companies, leading to an IPO freeze. And Wejo is going public via a SPAC. You can read its investor deck here.
- This Morning: The are a zillion funding rounds in Europe and globally this morning, the start of what could be a super busy week's cycle. Private Equity is buying Cloudera, which is a surprise. Nio had chip shortage issues that impacted its delivery cadence. The Chinese EV company does expect to meet its Q2 delivery goal, however.
- Funding Rounds: Truebill raised $45 million. Chipper Cash raised $100 million. Zenyum raised $40 million. WeFox raised $650 million. Malt raised $97 million. Sennder raised $80 million. idwall raised $38 million. Belvo raised $43 million. And that was not even close to all the big ones.
- Riff: Late last week we missed the Sprinklr filing. You can read it here. Quite a number of VCs have money riding on the IPO.
Welcome back, America, to the week. It's nice to see you, everyone else. Maybe Robinhood will file this week.
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
This week had the whole crew aboard to record: Grace and Chris making us sound good, Danny to provide levity, Natasha to actually recall facts, and Alex to divert us from staying on topic. It's teamwork, people - and our transitions are proof of it.
And it's good that we had everyone around the virtual table as there was quite a lot to get through:
- Team felt all kinds of ways about the Amazon-MGM deal. Some of us are more positive about than the rest, but what gists out from the transaction is that for Amazon, the purchase price is modest and the company is famously playing a supposedly long-game. Let's see how James Bond fits into it. Alex receives four points for not bringing up F1 thanks to the Bond-Aston Martin connection.
- Turning to the SPAC game, we chatted through the recent Lordstown Motors earnings results, and what we can parse from them regarding blank-check companies, promises, and reality.
- After launching last June with just $2 million, Collab Capital has closed its debut fund at its target goal: $50 million. The Black-led firm invests exclusively in Black-led startups, and got checks from Apple, PayPal, and Mailchimp to name a few. We talk about this feat, and note a few other Black-led venture capital firms making waves in the industry lately.
- We Resolved our transition puns and eventually spoke about the Affirm spin-out, which raised $60 million in a funding round for BNPL for businesses. There's bigger questions there around the accessibility and point of BNPL, and if its really re-inventing the wheel or just repackaging it with simpler UX.
- Next up, we got into a can of worms about the future of meetings thanks to Rewatch, which raised a $20 million Series A this week led by Andreessen Horowitz. The startup helps other startups create internal, private Youtubes to archive their meetings and any video-based comms. We could only spend a second on this, so if you want our longer thoughts in the form of text, check out our 3 views on the topic on Extra Crunch! (Discount Code: Equity)
- From there we had Interactio and Fireflies.ai, two more startups that are tackling the complexities of meetings in the COVID-19 era, and whatever comes next. Both recently raised new funding, and Alex brought up Kudo to add one more upstart to the mix.
- Noom, a weight loss platform, bulked up with $540 million in funding after nearly doubling its revenue from 2019 to 2020. The pandemic has made many people gain weight, but we chew into why Noom's moment might be right now after a decade in the works.
Thanks for hanging out this week, Equity is back on Tuesday with our usual weekly kickoff, thanks to the American holiday on Monday. Chat then, unless you want to follow us on Twitter and get a first-look at all of Chris' meme work.
For this week’s deep dive, Alex and Natasha dug into Danny's latest mega-project: A long, fascinating, and deeply-reported series into the world of disaster tech. It's all about the market, startups, and their backers, so it was perfect fare for our Wednesday episode, in which we dive deep into a single topic.
Part 1: The most disastrous sales cycle in the world
Part 2: Data was the new oil, until the oil caught fire
Part 3: When the Earth is gone, at least the internet will still be working
Part 4: The human-focused startups of the hellfire
We were super curious why Danny had picked disaster tech to niche into, as we hadn't heard that much about it, frankly. But past the fact that it's a world where sales cycles can last as long as House Congressional tenures, there was quite a lot to get into:
- Consumer: Dorothy wants to to provide bridge loans to folks who get rekt by a hurricane. As government, and insurance money can take ages to arrive, the startup could be onto something. and Perimeter wants to take data, and help folks actually know where to go when there is am emergency.
- Data: Danny's deep dive into the world of data in the disaster space came with a provocative headline, but the market backs him up. In this space we took a look at Cornea, which just raised $15 million to help firefighters better understand conflagrations, and Gridware raised $5.3 million to install boxes on power lines. Very smart boxes, we should add.
- Mental health: We end with a riff on how companies are preparing humans to better handle disaster before and after it strikes. Alto Neuroscience, which is a stealthy startup founded by Amit Etkin, is looking to solve PTSD with brain-wave data, while NeuroFlow uses polling, and savvy collabs with practitioners to monitor emerging symptoms. Psychedelic therapeutics also might have some opportunity to shine thanks to Osmind.
The series was fun to mine through, and expect Danny's byline to be all over the topic in the coming weeks. Talk soon, unless - actually especially, if - all of hell breaks loose!
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
This is Equity Monday, our weekly kickoff that tracks the latest private market news, talks about the coming week, digs into some recent funding rounds and mulls over a larger theme or narrative from the private markets. You can follow the show on Twitter here and myself here.
After a somewhat quiet weekend, things are kicking off in rapid-fire fashion this week. Here's what you need to know:
- The cryptocurrency selloff that was in full-swing on Friday continued over the weekend. Though bitcoin and ether managed to recoup some of their losses since they set new local minima, the value of popular cryptos is vastly depressed compared to recent highs.
- Looking ahead, it's the final day of arguments at the Epic Games vs. Apple trial. And we're seeing a smaller company try to crack some of the hold that a major tech incumbent enjoys over a huge piece of the digital economy. So, if you like startups, you might want to put aside your Apple fandom for a minute.
- More than a few funding rounds are cracking off this morning, including neat rounds from African fintech Mono, India-and-UAE-based Zeta, Emitwise raising $3.2 million, and Aurora Solar raising $250 million.
With a busy funding market and a yet-busy IPO cycle, it should be yet another busy week. Strap in!
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
This week was good fun not only because we had the whole team together to record, but also because we are still basking in the endless glory of our winning a Webby earlier this week. Frankly we are still shocked. But happy-shocked, like when you get a new toy and it is covered in static electricity.
Anyhoo, we had a packed show with much, much left on the floor as we tried to shoehorn the week into our time slot. Here's what we got into:
- The world of connections: Fave raised $2.2 million to connect fandoms, Somewhere Good raised $3.75 million to build feedless micro-communities, and both Spokn ($4 million) and Spot ($5 million) are hoping to use the spoken word to connect companies and their staffs. Honestly we think that the overall connection-community world is super exciting.
- Piano, one of those startups we actually have the luck of using, raised $88 million for analytics, subscription, and personalization tools. We get into why the round makes sense, and why one investor stood out more than the others.
- Corporate media: Coinbase is building out a media-ish org (Alex wrote about it here on his personal blog; Scrawler.co has more on the matter), and with TheSkimm hoping to find a corporate home and The Hustle doing the same, we had to dig into the matter. Our take is that content marketing is a response to expensive social advertising. And that it's fine. And that it is not news.
- Shoutout Forbes and its new union effort. Well done.
- Uptrust raised $2M, which let us talk about the venture-sized opportunity in fighting the billions of dollars wasted on useless mass incarceration.
- And then we chatted about the public markets. Monday.com's IPO is filed, Marqeta's IPO is filed, Squarespace's direct listing is done, and more. It's hectic out there for late-stage startups.
The show flew by, much like our days recently, simply because it was so fun and jam-packed with news. And we got to make jokes about our listeners and Monday.com PR timing, so what else could we ask for? Talk soon!
This is our Wednesday show, where we niche down to a single topic and go deep. This time Natasha and Alex corralled TechCrunch transportation editor Kirsten Korosec to talk to us about the endless parade of EV SPACs, and more. Before we get into the show notes, you can follow Equity on Twitter here.
https://twitter.com/kirstenkorosec/status/1394726967203667969
And, because we are proud, we won a Webby! Our show! How cool is that? Thank you for love listening, hate listening, all of it. We are so thankful.
Ok, here's what we talked about:
- Why is every electric vehicle company going public via a SPAC, and why is there so much potential fraud in the space? Kirsten has some notes on the matter, but it boils down to money in both cases.
- The Bird-SPAC deal in all its glory. You can read Alex and Kirsten's dive into the Bird investor deck here. We had questions like why was the shared scooter model ever considered viable, and, how did the company improve its economics during a pandemic? The SPAC world never, ever disappoints.
- Of course, we couldn't resist talking about the scooter barrage of news from years ago and how things have changed since.
- We end with her latest scoop, a series of exits at Waymo, and what that means for the future of the autonomous vehicle company. Plus, we didn't get to make a joke about it in the show but let's just say: Waymo has a waymore to go before it has driverless tech all over the streets.
- And one more thing: Kirsten gives a look at some of the speakers at our upcoming mobility event. Snag tickets here, and subscribe to her newsletter, The Station, for all things mobility every week.
And that's that! We are back with our regular weekly news rundown Friday morning. Chat you all then!
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
This is Equity Monday, our weekly kickoff that tracks the latest private market news, talks about the coming week, digs into some recent funding rounds and mulls over a larger theme or narrative from the private markets. You can follow the show on Twitter here and myself here.
There was lots to get through today, so, in order, here's the rundown:
- Early-stage founders can still apply for the impending Disrupt Battlefield even. You can sign up here if that's you. It's going to be a lot of fun tbh.
- From the weekend: San Francisco real estate is a mess; Twitter Blue is coming and I am hype about it; Elon Musk roiled crypto markets by being himself, which doesn't speak too highly of the asset class.
- AT&T is getting out of the TV game to some degree, selling media assets to help pay down debt. Just like Verizon did by selling TechCrunch and family to Apollo.
- We also chatted about two Indian mega-rounds: Pine Labs raising $285 million and Moglix raising $120 million.
- From the early-stage front, two rounds this morning for your pleasure: Telda's super-cool pre-seed round, and recent Y Combinator-grad Houm's latest investment, which explains why the accelerator program is still so popular.
- Extra Crunch Live this week is Shaun Maguire (Sequoia) + Samir Vasavada (Vise) on Wednesday, May 19th, at 11:30AM PST / 2:30PM EST.
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
The fully-vaxxed and officially fully-immune took over the podcast this week, with Natasha and Danny co-hosting the show while the inimitable Alex is out from Shot #2. Grace and Chris, as always, were behind the scenes making sure we sound pretty and don't fall down too many punny board game rabbit holes after vacation.
Here's the rundown of what we got into:
-
- Crypto crashed - thanks to either Elon or the guy who created Ethereum and then donated some to relief efforts for COVID-19. We debated how signal gets lost and rediscovered and lost again in this news cycle, and what that means for anyone in tech trying to get a pulse of. what's actually happening.
- One symptom of market craze and disconnected booms? A startup named Caplight that wants more people to buy and sell short positions on private startups.
- We then pivoted into the last bit of our 'The World Is Melting' section to talk about home ownership and the slow stink of real estate stocks right now. Ontop of that, Better.com, a digital mortgage lender, decided to SPAC after reportedly tabling an IPO.
- A mention of SPACs obviously opened up a can of worms, or should I say, oasis of woods.
- The world might be melting, but Softbank could be having the last word. The Japanese conglomerate shut us up with its recent profits - proving Danny's point in an old EC piece (use code EQUITY for a discount).
- We switched gears and talked about a neat new $20 million fund coming out of the Midwest, Sixty8 Capital, and its plan to invest in underrepresented founders.
- The show ended as chaotically focused as it began with a round robin of the most interesting funding rounds of the last week, not limited to but including Blind's $37 million raise, The Last Gameboard's $4 million check, Just Women's Sports, and Morressier's $18 million Series A.
And that's where we break! Follow the podcast on Twitter, be kind to your humans, and be the kindest to yourself. Back sooner than you can raise a $25 million pre-seed round for an audio app for Dogecoin lovers.
For this week’s deep dive, Alex and Danny unpacked Natasha's latest project: The Duolingo EC-1. The 12,000 word four-part series was published last week and is worth a read. But, until you get to it, enjoy our podcast that doubles-clicks into its most interesting bits.
[caption id="attachment_2146587" align="aligncenter" width="482"]
Duo, Duolingo's mascot, flying around. Image Credits: Duolingo [/caption]
Here's how it went, after we got our morning allergy banter out of the way:
- What's an EC-1? A TechCrunch-style deep-dive into one of the startup world's most promising, and interesting companies.
- What's with the flying vermin up above? That's Duolingo's mascot. Which is a combination of hypercutness and modest menace. (You will have fun learning a language. Or the owl will visit.)
- Why did we write about Duolingo? No, it wasn't only because Duolingo is edtech. Natasha dug into the company's product-led growth mode, and its views on gamification, which were fascinating.
- What's up with today's show name? As it turns out, Duolingo has a Tinder angle. In fact, Duolingo leaned on some of the biggest companies out there when it came to design and monetization.
- And as with all edtech companies, we talked monetization and outcomes!
The Duolingo EC-1 comprises four main articles numbering 12,200 words and a reading time of 48 minutes. Here’s what’s in store:
- Part 1: Origin story “How a bot-fighting test turned into edtech’s most iconic brand, Duolingo” (3,300 words/13 minutes) — looks at how Guatemalan immigrant entrepreneur Luis von Ahn pivoted from fighting bot attacks on login screens with squiggly text to building one of edtech’s great success stories.
- Part 2: Product-led growth strategy “The product-led growth behind edtech’s most downloaded app” (3,000 words/12 minutes) — analyzes the tactics and tradeoffs that an edtech company has to evaluate as it grows from thousands to 500 million registered learners.
- Part 3: Monetization “How Duolingo became fluent in monetization” (2,800 words/11 minutes) — examines how Duolingo experimented with a variety of different business models to match its unique community, and why it chose subscription in the end.
- Part 4: New initiatives and future outlook “Duolingo can’t teach you how to speak a language, but now it wants to try” (3,100 words/12 minutes) — explores how Duolingo is launching new business lines, their chances for success, and how the company is attempting to expand its main product from basic language fluency to mastery while adding speaking skills to the mix.
And of course, use code Extra Crunch "Equity" for a sweet, and perhaps the best, discount to access this story and all of our best stuff.
Until Friday!
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
This is Equity Monday, our weekly kickoff that tracks the latest private market news, talks about the coming week, digs into some recent funding rounds and mulls over a larger theme or narrative from the private markets. You can follow the show on Twitter here and myself here.
This weekend was all about memecoins. And I am sorry about that. But Equity doesn't run the world, sadly, it merely notes what is going on:
- Dogecoin dropped during Elon Musk's SNL appearance. Which was somewhat ironic. Also there's another memecoin that is skyrocketing.
- Palantir, DoorDash, Airbnb, Alibaba will report earnings this week, amongst others.
- Clubhouse is finally coming to Android. In the United States. By invite. So, if that's you, congrats, welcome to the app.
- A major cyberattack and ransom situation in the United States is a data point, yet again, that we're woefully unprepared for cyber risk.
- StuDocu raised $50 million which was cool, while Gojek raised another $300 million, which was the very opposite of surprising.
- This week's Extra Crunch Live is going to be really good. I will see you there!
It is going to be a busy week! Already since we recorded this show there's more drama from Box, and more. Strap in!
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
The whole team was aboard for this recording, with Grace and Chris behind the scenes, and Danny, Alex, and Natasha on the mics. We had to cut more than we included this week, which should give you a good idea of how busy the startup and VC worlds are of late.
Make sure that you are following the podcast on Twitter, where we post all sorts of memes and cuts and, perhaps, the occasional video here and there. That aside, here's the rundown:
- Investing legend David Swenson passed away.
- Twitter is buying Scroll (neat, very cool) as part of its subscription push, but also killing Nuzzel in the process (bad, very uncool). Natasha and Danny fill us in on why Nuzzel will be missed. Alex has thoughts on why Twitter-Scroll is good.
- Epic bought ArtStation and cut its marketplace take rate. This is the future, says Danny, who throws his own estimates in, too.
- Sony and Discord are tying up after the Microsoft-Discord deal fell apart.
- Edtech is doing the edtech thing in which it raises money and consolidates, as shown by Kahoot's latest scoop.
- A friend of the pod, Jomayra Herrera, is joining Reach Capital as its first ever outside-partner hire.
- Uber is teaming up with Arrival for ride-hailing designed electric vehicles. We're pretty bullish on the idea. Also Alex likes to say "microfactories."
- IVF startups are raising venture capital, and this time its Alife Health that we're talking about.
- WorkBoard raised again. Alex once again made us talk about OKR-focused startups. He needs to get a life, and so does the rest of the Equity team which fought to do the transition into this segment.
- To end, we spoke about Leda Health, a new startup focused on at-home rape kits for sexual assault survivors. It's a controversial company, and we discuss critiques and opportunities,
And that's our show! No private equity deal can slow the Equity team down, so we'll see you Monday!
For this week’s deep dive Natasha and Alex and Chris dug into the world of the IPO. Not just the numbers and the metrics and the calculations of valuations at diluted, and non-diluted share counts. No. We wanted to talk about the morality and efficacy of going public.
So to round out our conversation we enlisted Steve Cakebread, the CFO of Yext and Garth Mitchell, the CFO of Latch. Cakebread is known for being aboard the Salesforce, Pandora, and Yext's IPOs. Mitchell has sat on both sides of the table during the IPO process, and is currently helming the money equations as Latch approaches the public markets via a SPAC.
For more context, Yext, a company that first launched at a Techcrunch event back in 2009, provides data tooling and search software to businesses, while Latch builds software and hardware for rental-focused buildings. Yext is public. Latch will be in a few months.
Back to our topic, we asked Cakebread to talk about his thesis on why going public earlier than later can help a company's maturity process and can help provide greater returns to the general public. The CFO has written a rather good book about the IPO process more generally and what it means for a company's internal processes, but his morality notes especially stood out because its an argument far less noisy than the POP critics. Baked beans comes up, somehow!
We also asked Mitchell to talk about Latch's choice to go public, and what opportunities and challenges the SPAC route brings for the company. Of course, there's a SPAC joke in there (or two), but we get into broader "what's next" debates about if more companies will start to leave the private world, venture capital's role in this whole mess, and the financial lift of going to the public market.
Hope you enjoyed the show, and get excited: Equity is going to have more guests on from time to time, and we welcome any suggestions you want to throw at us.
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
This is Equity Monday, our weekly kickoff that tracks the latest private market news, talks about the coming week, digs into some recent funding rounds and mulls over a larger theme or narrative from the private markets. You can follow the show on Twitter here and myself here.
This morning was a notable one in the life of TechCrunch the publication, as our parent company's parent company decided to sell our parent company to a different parent company. And now we're to have to get new corporate IDs, again, as it appears that our new parent company's parent company wants to rebrand our parent company. As Yahoo.
Cool.
Anyway, a bunch of other stuff happened as well:
- Flywire, a Boston-based payments company filed to go public. More on the site about this shortly.
- Earnings this week are coming from Uber and Lyft and PayPal and Square and more.
- Dell is offloading Boomi to private equity as it wants to de-lever. Again.
- Cloud market share numbers are out, but what matters is that the growth of the cloud market helps explain the growth that we're seeing in the startup game. (Our own Ron Miller dug into some rival cloud metrics here.)
- The Chinese government's crackdown on its tech giants continues. And it's impacting valuations.
- And Wealthsimple raised an epic CAD$750 million round, while Ohio-based Path Robotics just raised a $56 million Series B. Super cool.
We're back Wednesday with something special. Chat then!
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
First and foremost, Equity was nominated for a Webby for “Best Technology Podcast”! Drop everything and go Vote for Equity! We’d appreciate it. A lot. And even if we lose, well, we’ll keep doing our thing and making each other laugh. (Note: we are in last place, which is, well, something.)
Regardless, the Equity team got together once again this week to not only go over the news of the week, but also to do a little soul searching. You see, some news broke yesterday, so we figured that we had to talk about it in our usual style. So, here's the rundown:
- Do you want to buy TechCrunch? Apparently you can? Albeit probably along with a few billion dollars worth of other assets -- whatever is left of Yahoo and AOL -- you can now own an NFT. A non-fungible TechCrunch. What is ahead for us? We don't know. So if you do know, tell us. Until then we'll just yo-yo gently between panic and optimism, as per usual.
- We also dug into the latest All Raise venture capital data, and the results were abysmal.
- Next up was the news that fintech startups are setting records in 2021, raising more capital than ever before. That brought us to the latest from Brex.
- And then there was a suspicious trend when three fintech companies focused on teen banking raised in one exhale. We talk Step, Greenlight, and Current.
- Natasha talked about her last Startups Weekly post, in which she unpacked The MasterClass effect's impact on edtech.
- And to close, we discussed the latest cool-kid venture capital funds. Sure memes are cool, but did you know that they can help you raise a $10 million fund? They can!
We are back Monday morning with our weekly kick-off show. Have a great weekend!
For this week’s deep dive Natasha and Alex and Danny and Chris dove into the world of audio. Sure, you've heard of Clubhouse, but there's lots more going on than just a single app's cultural rise. So from the biggest companies to niche startups, we compiled all the recent audio news into a single show for all our delectation.
Here's the rundown:
- Facebook is building a number of audio products, including a Clubhouse clone and a short-form audio service that we think could be neat.
- Reddit is also building a Clubhouse-like service, and Alex is excited about it.
- It's not just the established social networks that are trying out live audio. Peanut, a social networking app for women, added live audio "Pods" to its platform. It kicked off a conversation on what it takes to win this market, and what's a smart versus silly bet.
- While a drop in downloads doesn't necessarily mean a drop in active users, it's worth pointing out that Clubhouse's monthly downloads dropped 72% in March. Where is that gosh darn Android app?
- And Alex explained why the Clubhouse-NFL deal matters for the company, as it could molt into something more akin to a platform over time.
- Danny explained how Apple and Spotify are building paid podcast services -- more here, and here, respectively -- and we have thoughts about which service is being more fair with the money. Natasha tied in how sentiment around the creator economy might be driving some of these individual-friendly business models.
- Alex brought up TWiT's new business model.
All told there's quite a lot of excitement around the spoken word. Which is good as Equity is a podcast? Right?
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
This is Equity Monday, our weekly kickoff that tracks the latest private market news, talks about the coming week, digs into some recent funding rounds and mulls over a larger theme or narrative from the private markets. You can follow the show on Twitter here and myself here.
This weekend had a key story, earnings are on the way, and there is a huge number of funding rounds to talk about. Ready?
- The Indian government's move to remove a number of social media posts critical of its handling of COVID-19 was the key news item this weekend. As the country's healthcare system buckles, and deaths spike, the move by the current administration to censor the Internet was just about as bad a look you could imagine. At least in terms of a tech response.
- Also this weekend conversation continued about Substack's recent push to hire away well-known writers from traditionally-respected publications continued, with Insider reporting that six-figure offers to join the paid newsletter platform are the norm.
- This morning we're focused on the impending earnings deluge. Major American tech companies, along with some key social media and ecommerce names will report, giving us a look into how tech companies performed in the first quarter of 2021. We already know that the venture market was hot during the period. How business fared, however, is less clear.
- On the funding round beat, Mighty Networks raised $50 million, LEAD School raised $30 million, Kidato raised $1.4 million, StashAway stashed away $25 million, and Kyligence put together a $70 million Series D of its own.
The Honest Company also set an early IPO price range after we stopped recording. More to come on the IPO front. Chat Wednesday!
First and foremost, Equity was nominated a Webby for "Best Technology Podcast"!!! Drop everything and go Vote for Equity! We'd appreciate. A lot. And even if we lose, well, we'll keep doing our thing and making each other laugh.
Natasha and Danny and Alex and Chris got together to chat through the week's biggest news. And like every other week in recent memory, it was a busy one. But we did our best to hit some M&A news, some unicorn news, and some funding news from smaller startups.
Now, onto the show rundown, here's what we discussed:
- The Discord-Microsoft deal is done, and Danny has a hot take. Namely, in his view, the deal was mostly banker chatter more than a real possibility. More chaff than wheat, in other words. Agree or not, we're stoked for the Discord IPO in a few years (quarters?) time.
- Mastercard bought Erkata, and Danny was on hand to hand to explain why we care about the deal. Sure, it was $825 million in value, but some venture data from Finledger helped explain just how much capital is flowing into similar companies. Let's see how that math works out.
- Clearbanc rebranded itself into a fintech unicorn, providing services along with sweet, sweet capital.
- The UiPath IPO finally priced and started to trade. It had a good first day, and you can check out what we learned talking to its CFO here.
- Over in China, a country that we've not covered enough lately, Laiye raised $50 million more. Like UiPath it competes in the RPA world.
- Deel, for one, had a good 2020. It hit 20x growth in revenue last year, and recently raised at a $1.25 billion valuation.
- And then we closed with two seed rounds raised by recent Y Combinator grads: Here's the Queenly round, and here's the Albedo deal!
We'll see you on Monday.
For this week’s deep dive Natasha and Alex and Danny wanted to chat crypto. No, not cryptography, but cryptocurrency. The topic has been hot in recent months thanks to Coinbase, recent weeks thanks to the rapid price appreciation in the value of many coins, and in recent days because dogecoin went crazy.
Vote for Equity to win a Webby so that our parents are proud!
So with our minds tuned to the future of money, and commerce, and content, here's the show's rundown:
- Recent crypto news has been more than busy, with Venmo adding crypto support, Brian Brooks joining Binance, and the Coinbase direct listing.
- But that's not all, there have been a host of NFT marketplaces that have raised millions in the past week. We talk about Rarible, SuperRare, OpenSea, and Dapper Labs. We talk about differentiation, UX, and if more than one marketplace can win.
- Dogecoin's to the moon moment had reached a new price high and come down some before our show recorded, but the cryptocurrency's joke apparently is still funny after all these years. Here's a tweet and an article about it.
- And the idea that Coinbase's successful direct listing will matter for investors betting on crypto-focused startups is true, at least according to investors. More on that here, and hit us up if you want a sweet discount code to get past that paywall.
Equity is back on Friday with our weekly news roundup. It's going to be a treat. Chat soon!
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
This is Equity Monday, our weekly kickoff that tracks the latest private market news, talks about the coming week, digs into some recent funding rounds and mulls over a larger theme or narrative from the private markets. You can follow the show on Twitter here and myself here.
First, our news roundup from last week was probably the most fun I've had in a few months, so make sure to catch up on that if you haven't. That said, here's a rundown of what we got into on the show this morning:
- The new Clubhouse round has us thinking about what is a good venture-style bet, and what isn't. At least you can't fault the Clubhouse crew for not having conviction.
- UiPath raised its IPO range, as expected.
- There's an Apple event this week, which caused us to wonder why more startups aren't competing with the giant.
- Cryptos have recovered from the flash crash, which had us thinking.
- Druva raised $147 million as TechCrunch will report later today, and Razorpay raised even more capital at a newly refreshed valuation.
- Finally, DoNotPay had some news, but it's corporate ethos proved even more interesting.
The week is here, everyone! It's Monday! We can do this!
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
Natasha and Danny and Alex and Grace were all here to chat through the week’s biggest tech happenings. It was yet another busy week, but that just means we had a great time putting the show together and recording it. Honestly we have a lot of fun this week, and we hope that you crack a smile while we dig through the latest as a team.
Ready? Here's the rundown:
- The Coinbase direct listing! Here's our notes on its S-1, its direct listing reference price, and its results. And we even wrote about the impact that it might have on other startup verticals!
- Grab's impending SPAC! As it turns out Natasha loves SPACs now, and even Danny and Alex had very little to say that was rude about this one.
- Degreed became a unicorn, proving yet again that education for the enterprise is a booming sub-sector.
- Outschool also became an edtech unicorn, thanks to a new round led by Coatue and everyone's rich cousin, Tiger Global. The conversation soon devolved into how Tiger Global is impacting the broader VC ecosystem, thanks to a fantastic analysis piece that you have to read here.
- Papa raised $60 million, also from Tiger Global. What do you call tech aimed at old folks? Don't call it elder tech, we have a brand new phrase in store. Let's see if it catches on.
- AI chips! Danny talks the team through grokking Groq, so that we can talk about TPUs without losing our minds. He's a good egg.
- And, finally, Slice raised more money. Not from Tiger Global. We have good things to say about it.
And that is our show! We are back on Monday morning!
For this week's deep dive Natasha and Alex wanted to dig into the Tonal EC-1, a huge document spread across a number of posts. Our goals were pretty simple: To better understand Tonal's journey, and also to get into the mind of its author.
So we corralled JP Mangalindan into firing up his computer, microphone, and recording software for a chat. Here's what we covered:
- What is Tonal, why is it interesting, and why did JP spend so much time learning about the company?
- What did he have to leave out of the final report?
- His views on fitness gear, and the Peloton effect more broadly
- What was it like to write something so gosh darn long?
The Tonal EC-1 comprises four main articles representing about 10,600 words and a reading time of about 43 minutes:
- How a homegrown experiment became one of the fastest-growing companies in fitness tech
- Millions of dollars and 3.5 years, and it all came down to this
- Building online communities for fun, profit and product
- Can Tonal become the luxury fitness market champion?
As Natasha is currently -- shh, it's a secret -- working on an EC-1 of her own, we had more than a usual amount of interest in the project. Use code Equity for a super sweet discount to access this story and all of our premium content.
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
This is Equity Monday, our weekly kickoff that tracks the latest private market news, talks about the coming week, digs into some recent funding rounds and mulls over a larger theme or narrative from the private markets. You can follow the show on Twitter here and myself here. It is good to be back!
There was a lot to get through, so, in order that we discussed the topics on the show, here's our rundown:
- Microsoft is buying Nuance Communications today. The deal is worth around $19.7 billion. The transaction could be viewed as pretty good news for AI startups and the broader private healthtech space. That said, how much bigger should Microsoft be allowed to get by absorbing rival public companies?
- Tiger Global is making a wave of bets on Indian startups.
- And from the political realms, read this Buzzfeed News story on India and its tech ecosystem, this piece on what's happening with Alibaba, and, finally, this entry discussing the growing divide between the American business and regressive politics.
- This morning's headlines: Uber isn't dead! Senator Josh Hawley has an idea. And Darktrace is going public.
- On the funding round front, make sure to read about The Zebra's latest, and this neat investment from Africa.
Don't forget that Coinbase is listing this week, yeah? Chat soon!
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
Natasha and Danny and and Grace were all here to chat through the week’s rigamarole of news. Alex took some well-deserved time off, but that meant we got to poke a little fun at him and create a Special Edition segment to start off the show.
Jokes aside, this week was yet another spree of creator economy, edtech, and new fund announcements, with fresh and unexpected news hailing from Natasha's home state, New Jersey.
Here's what we got into:
- Box got a lifeline in the form of a $500 million check from KKR, and as Danny mentions, Box CEO Aaron Levie shifts his role a bit, too.
- Patreon, an early startup in the creator economy space, has tripled its valuation to $4 billion. Another, not-so-old startup with the same reported valuation? Clubhouse. We threaded the line between the two, and gave some color on a new monetization feature rolled out.
- As an aside, looks like Clubhouse is everyone's favorite app to tweet about so much so that even Twitter is reportedly considering an acquisition.
- MasterClass raising new funding at $2.5 billion valuation. That is up from a $800 million valuation just last year, and shows that aspirational teaching packaged as celebrity-taught Youtube-like videos with Netflix-like quality is enough to be considered edtech.
- Speaking of edtech, a series of exits have caught our attention. The consolidation has begun!
- We spoke about two new funds. First, New Jersey is proposing a $10 million fund that would go to Black and LatinX founders. Second, Index raised nine-figures for seed startups, beating Sequoia's seed fund by a measly $5 million.
- The show closed with two early-stage funding rounds you don't want to miss - Walnut and Real - as well as a conversation on the future of telehealth.
What a show! We'll be back with the full trio next week, and until then, stay safe and thank you for listening.
For this week’s deep dive, the Equity team sat down not with external investors or founders, but with two of our own. Yes, this week, for the first time Natasha and Alex got to break a little internal news instead of focusing on the world outside.
Why did we have Jordan Crook and Darrell Etherington on the show? Because we're jazzed to add a second startups-focused podcast to a slowly but surely growing TC podcast network: Found. Found lands April 9, so tune in! The show will focus on talking to early-stage founders about building their company, from the emotional rollercoaster moments to tactical insights no one tells you until you've raised your first dollar.
Equity will keep its eyes on the news, with extra attention to all the dollar signs that are to be found in startup-land and the venture capital world. At the same time, Found will bring a number of startup founders aboard to talk about the more human, and procedural work of building the next great tech company.
We hope you love a new show from our friends as much as we do, and remember Equity will be back on Friday with news, banter, and fun soon. In the meantime, here's where you can find Found:
- Spotify
- @Found on twitter
Chat soon!
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
This is Equity Monday, our weekly kickoff that tracks the latest private market news, talks about the coming week, digs into some recent funding rounds and mulls over a larger theme or narrative from the private markets. You can follow the show on Twitter here and myself here.
This morning we took a global look at the news, trying to take in the latest from around our little planet:
- American stocks are set to rise as much of the world had the day off from trading; Indian stocks fell on the back of poor COVID-19 news.
- The biggest tech news was this bit of bad news from Facebook, if you are a fan of privacy. And the FT has data on the Chinese tech liquidity market that isn't great news.
- Amazon is in trouble after it illegally retaliated against workers. And there's more reporting on how low the company was willing to stoop to try and block union activity. Corporations, they're always letting us down.
- And edtech giant Byju's buying an IRL tutoring service for a billion dollars.
- On the funding front, Meesho is now worth $2.1 billion thanks to SoftBank Vision Fund 2, while Cresta now has $50 million more in its own coffers.
- And we wrapped with a peek at the Alkami Technology IPO, which was good fun thanks to where the company was founded.
It's going to be a blast of a week. Talk to you Wednesday!
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
Natasha and Danny and Alex and Grace were all here to chat through the week’s biggest tech happenings. It was a busy week on the IPO front, Danny was buried in getting the Tonal EC-1 out, and Natasha took some time off. But the host trio managed to prep and record a show that was honestly a kick to record, and we think, a pleasure to listen to!
So, for your morning walk, here's what we have for you:
- The Substack conversation: Does the new $65 million check make sense? What is Substack? Does it have a moat? Why is Natasha's URL so much better than Alex's?
- Cameo raised $100 million and none of us really have a bone to pick with that. Danny actually argues in favor of it.
- The Clubhouse conversation: Does every single product need to feature live audio? The answers appears to be yes, oddly enough. Discord comes up along with Spotify, as does LinkedIn. And somehow, Microsoft Excel and Miami?
- TechCrunch scooped that Pipe is raising more money at a huge new valuation, and we argue about what a derivative really is.
- Harlem Capital raises $134 million for its new fund.
- MaC VC raises $103 million for its new fund.
It was a mix of laughs, 'aha' moments, and honest conversations about how complex ambition in startups should be. One listener the other day mentioned to us that the pandemic made it harder to carve out time for podcasts, since listening was often reserved for commutes. We get it, and in true scrappy fashion, we're curious how you've adapted to remote work and podcasts. Let us know how you tune into Equity via Twitter and remember that we're thankful for your ears!
For this week’s deep dive, the Equity team got ahold of three founders from the recent Y Combinator batch (more here, and here) to chat through their experiences with a remote accelerator. TechCrunch was curious if the program lived up to founder expectations, how extreme timezone differentials were handled, and how easy it was to build camaraderie during a digital program. Oh, and how their demo day went.
Here's who is on the show:
- Benjamin Croc, a founder at BrioHR (TechCrunch coverage here)
- Trisha Bantigue, a founder at Queenly (TechCrunch coverage here)
- Adam Alpert, a founder at Pangea (TechCrunch coverage here)
The short version is that the founders were generally happy with Y Combinator being remote, and that the setup allowing them to stay in their normal location was plus. We also asked the founders for learnings regarding how to best handle remote accelerators in the future.
More from Equity on Friday, at which point we'll put Y Combinator aside for a good while.
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
This is Equity Monday, our weekly kickoff that tracks the latest private market news, talks about the coming week, digs into some recent funding rounds and mulls over a larger theme or narrative from the private markets. You can follow the show on Twitter here and myself here.
This morning was a fun mix of news, including some early-stage and late-stage startups entries, along with the latest from the public markets and the great IPO game. Here's the rundown:
- ServiceTitan's vertical SaaS success was enshrined in its recent funding round and valuation. Both of which were predicated on its revenue growth. The software market is just gigantic. It's kinda crazy.
- Deliveroo's IPO has hit market chop as it looks to price. Governance and how it treats workers were among the concerns that investors have raised.
- And then Chinese company BiliBili struggled during its Hong Kong IPO, while Chinese company Zhihu fell after debuting in the United States -- could the public markets bet ratcheting back their interest in tech stocks?
- On the funding round side of things, Ajaib extended its Series A, Singular announced its fund, and Cazoo is going public via a SPAC.
It was a lot, but when have we started the week anything less than fully behind? Chat Wednesday!
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
Natasha and Danny and Alex and Grace were all here to chat through the week’s biggest tech happenings. News was right back up to a dull roar this week, so we did our best to trim and hone and just bring you the most important things.
Here's the rundown:
- David Dobrik stepped down from Dispo, the photo-sharing app he co-created, this past week after allegations came out about him. We talked about the venture capital angle, since early-stage investors in the app reactively distanced from their investments. Could this set precedent or have a chilling effect on celebrity-startups?
- Robinhood filed privately to go public! So, it's happening everyone. At long last, one of Silicon Valley's hottest companies is kicking off its IPO process. We're hype, you're hype, and we had some jokes.
- And in other mega-unicorn news, it appears that Microsoft is tempted to plonk down $10 billion for Discord. Why, you ask? Well why not. It's just $10 billion from Microsoft's $1,780 billion valuation. Or around half a percent.
- Sticking to the $10 billion-and-greater category, Plaid could be raising $600 million at a valuation of $10 billion to $15 billion. That's a lot of money. Danny, however, has some doubts.
- Also, Plaid has announced the inaugural cohort of its FinRise accelerator, a program focused on helping fintech startups led by underrepresented founders.
- And then there were a few rounds to chat about. Namely the intensely interesting Bevy deal, and Ro raising $500 million at a $5 billion valuation.
- And to wrap, Natasha and Alex shared their favs from TechCrunch's massive Y Combinator demo day coverage. Which you can read here, and here.
Let's all get some rest!
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
For this week’s deep dive, the Equity team brought on Gumroad CEO Sahil Lavingia and Hustle Fund General Partner Elizabeth Yin to talk about equity crowdfunding. It’s been about a week since the SEC increased the equity crowdfunding cap from $1.07 million to $5 million, creating the perfect opportunity to go beyond the dollar amount and understand how the change impacts founders, venture capitalists, retail investors, and future fund managers.
Here’s a brief rundown of the show:
- We talk about the basics of this new SEC regulation, and understand which platforms might be leading the pack for these bootstrapped campaigns. Indiegogo’s founder wrote an op-ed grading the new regulations on the site.
- Some banter on Gumroad’s 12-hour campaign that led to a successfully crowdsourced $5 million for the company. Lavingia talks about his decision to crowdfund a round in his company, why it made sense for the company, and what it will take to make this raise mainstream.
- Of course, Yin shared a ton of helpful nuggets around crowdfunding, providing a venture capital perspective that was still bullish on growing the amount of check-writers in the ecosystem. Some recent equity crowdfunding campaigns have shown that there are thousands of individuals willing to fund the enterprises they want to see succeed. Juked.gg is one such example.
- There are also notes on the Testing the Waters dynamic that could usher some wiggle room to early-stage founders thinking about this.
- Will equity crowdfunding supplant venture capital, or will it merely augment it? Our discussion leads us to ponder both possibilities. What seems clear is that equity crowdfunding could widen the band of companies that are "backable," if not the band of companies that traditional venture capital players find enticing.
- And we end with a whole bunch of meta debates, from the role of the platform in vetting campaigns. As with every innovation, including crowdfunding itself, there will be fraud and failure. But if there will be enough bad news to limit consumer interest is far from certain.
This is one of those nerdy topics that gets us really excited about the future of dollar allocation and startup creation. We hope you love the show and leave with a better understanding of what’s ahead.
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
This is Equity Monday, our weekly kickoff that tracks the latest private market news, talks about the coming week, digs into some recent funding rounds and mulls over a larger theme or narrative from the private markets. You can follow the show on Twitter here and myself here.
If you are paying attention to Y Combinator's demo day this week, our primer is here. And our Friday news roundup is here. With that, let's get into the news:
- Ironsource is going public via a SPAC. It's worth even more than eToro, which is also going public via a SPAC. It's a big quarter for Israeli tech.
- Sivo is a hot startup that you're going to hear more about. Also a lesson here for founders, if you want attention, share numbers.
- Deliveroo has a price for its IPO, and the company could be worth as much as £8.8 billion. Even more, the European delivery giant has seen huge demand gains thus far in 2021.
- On the month front, Nuvemshop has raised $90 million, M Capital Management has raised $30.85 million for a new fund, and Aldea Ventures has raised a €60 million investment vehicle.
- Remember Dispo? The hot photo-taking service? Read this.
- And finally. Happify Health has raised a $73 million Series D, while Clarify Health has put together a $115 million round of its own.
Coming Wednesday we are digging into equity crowdfunding. Which is going to be hot shit. Get ready.
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
Natasha and Danny and Alex and Grace were all here to chat through the week’s biggest tech happenings. This time around we had whatever passes for a quiet week as far as news volume. But that still meant we had to cut stuff and move the rest around. But, once we got done editing the notes doc down, here's what was leftover:
- Snap acquires Fit Analytics, a fitting technology startup: A far-past TechCrunch Disrupt alone has found a new home inside of the LA's social leader. No price on this one, but a fun thing to talk about all the same.
- eToro is going public via a SPAC (cool), and as it competes with Robinhood it gave us a chance to dig into the market. And frankly there's a lot to like about eToro. And thus Robinhood? Probably.
- The co-founder of Siri and a scientist have teamed up to create Riva Health, a software solution that hopes to turn your phone into a blood pressure monitor accurate enough for clinical use.
- Copy.ai raised $2.9 million, a round that Alex would not shut up about because of GPT-3. More on that tech here.
- The future of cannabis is in the hands of retail shops, or at least thats what Dutchie, a Bend, Oregon-based startup, believes. The cannabis management startup raised $200 million at a $1.7 billion valuation this past week.
- Airtable raised another round. A huge one. Again. This time it was $270 million at a $5.77 billion valuation. How much more money could it need? Who knows!
- Squarespace, everyone's favorite podcast sponsor, has raised $300 million at a steep, $10 billion valuation. The news broke nearly two months since Squarespace filed confidentially for IPO.
- And we closed on how unequal the venture capital world really is. It's super embarrassing to report on, but knowing the numbers is better than not. So we wrote about it.
The show wraps with a teaser for next week that we won't spoil here.
This is our Wednesday show, where we niche down and focus on a single topic, or theme. This is our sweet spot: going beyond definitions and into the dirty and deep impact of how a phenomenon could impact startups and tech. We are hoping to explore more than answer, and debate more than agree.
This week we're riffing on the impending Y Combinator demo day class, all hailing from the Winter 2021 cohort. As we stated on the show, we're not saying that these are the only startups worth looking at. They're simply the startups from the batch that TechCrunch has already covered, and some other favs from our eyes and those of a few investors.
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
This is Equity Monday, our weekly kickoff that tracks the latest private market news, talks about the coming week, digs into some recent funding rounds and mulls over a larger theme or narrative from the private markets. You can follow the show on Twitter here and myself here — and make sure to check out Friday's news-roundup with Danny and Natasha that included some neat notes on search startups. And their chances against Google.
So, what did we chat about this morning? Here's the rough rundown:
- Stripe! Stripe raised new money at a new price and both were rather large. Would you believe that Stripe is still not public? It isn't! But it should be. Perhaps this is the last time it will raise before listing.
- Also from the recent past, Megvii filed to go public, and Nimble Robotics raised.
- The Deliveroo IPO is happening, and the £1 billion raise could value the company at £5 billion, Reuters reckons.
- Oh, and TechCrunch has the most recent WeWork numbers.
- DeepSee.ai raised a Series A, and we have questions about its product -- and hopes.
- Centrical also raised for its hybrid working software, which could come in demand after COVID ends.
Extra Crunch Live this week is Emmalyn Shaw from Flourish Ventures and Adam Roseman from Steady. That's March 17th at 12 p.m. PDT and 3 p.m. EDT. See you there!
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
Natasha and Danny and Alex and Grace were all here to chat through the week’s biggest tech happenings. Like every week, we had to leave a lot of great stuff on the cutting-room floor. But, we did get to touch on a bunch of news that we feel really matters.
Also we do wind up talking about a few Extra Crunch pieces, which is where our deeper analysis on news items lives. If the paywall is a bother, you can get access while saving 50% with the code "EQUITY."
Here's what we got into:
- Crypto-art and the NFT boom continue. Check out what Beeple just did. Danny has an opinion on the matter.
- The Roblox direct-listing does very little actually solve the IPO pricing issue. That said, well done Bloxburg.
- We talked about the Coursera S-1, which gave us the first financial peek into an education company revitalized by the pandemic.
- The numbers needed context, so our follow up coverage gives readers 5 takeaways from the Coursera IPO.
- Language learning has a market, and it's big. We talked about Preply's $35 million raise and why tutoring marketplaces make sense.
- Dropbox is buying DocSend, which makes pretty good sense. Even if the exit price won't matter much for bigger funds. We're still witnessing Dropbox and Box add more features to their product via acquisitions. Let's see how it impacts their revenue growth.
- Zapier buys Makerpad. We struggled to pronounce Zapier, but did have some notes on the deal and what it might mean for the no-code space.
- Sticking the acquisition theme, PayPal bought Curv. If you were looking for more evidence that big companies are taking crypto seriously, well, here it is.
- And to close we nerded out about Neeva. Can a Google-competitor take on Google if it was founded by ex-Googlers?
The show is back Monday morning. Stay cool!
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
This is our Wednesday show, where we niche down and focus on a single topic, or theme. This is our sweet spot: going beyond definitions and into the dirty and deep impact of how a phenomenon could impact startups and tech. We are hoping to explore more than answer, and debate more than agree.
NFTs, or non-fungible tokens, is this week's topic! This is something that you have nearly certainly heard of in the past few weeks but probably don't understand with perfect clarity. While we've all seen the Twitter threads of basic definitions, consider this episode the appetizer to your aperitif understanding.
The Equity team put on our research caps, dug in, and found quite a lot to like. But we did not tread alone: our EIC Matthew Panzarino joined Chris and Alex and Danny and Natasha to help us out. Panzer was early to the NFT world and has contributed some of TechCrunch’s reporting on the matter.
So, what did we get into? More than a little:
We spent a few minutes on the NFT basics, including historical examples and how NFTs are minted, as well as some examples of how they have been used recently.
From there we riffed on use-cases more broadly, and where we might find NFTs in the wild. Sure, we talked about visual art, but also music, tickets and sports moments. The NFT world has the possibility of a large remit if it plays its, ahem, tokens correctly.
Then we talked culture. What could it mean that NFTs are in the market? Could residual incomes from the reselling of NFTs constitute a material revenue base for future artists, and how broad can the value-experiment go? Depending on which side of the NFT hype-cynicism divide you land, there’s plenty of room for discussion. A point made by Panzer:
NFT's and the architecture of smart contracts and the way that social tokens work, these are all opportunities for the creators and originators of culture, to finally take part and participate in their rewards of the platforms of that culture -- you know, that hosts that culture. Because we've seen it over and over again: Artist blows up on TikTok, and you know, somebody does a dance to them, and then that video blows up. What does the artist get out of it? Sometimes they get a recording deal. Many times they get nothing. Right? In Vine, famously built on Black creators and brown creators and Latino creators and Latino creators. You know, TikTok, very much the same. Black Twitter one of the early driving forces of engagement on Twitter and culture on Twitter -- how many of them were actually able to participate in the economic rewards of Twitter as a platform selling advertising and making millions of dollars and their stock going bonkers? Besides, of course, you know, maybe they were able to purchase stock, right? So the, the remapping of how creators can participate in that economy directly by saying, “Hey, I've created something of value, and I'd love to connect directly with the people that enjoy that and they can provide me value back” -- that’s what’s so exciting about this.
And we chatted just a minute about the weight, or carbon footprint, of different blockchains. There’s real nuance to this point of argument, but it was also something we couldn’t avoid. Panzer again:
And this is probably the biggest negative blowback on Ethereum and NFTs is that Ethereum is by nature a very heavy chain, which means that it takes a lot of work to prove that a block has been written to the chain. Not quite as heavy as Bitcoin, but it's up there. And that energy usage that was used to mine that Ethereum that's being spent on the chain to confirm a new transaction is being sort of credited forwards in-- for lack of a better term to the artists minting on it. I don't think that's absolutely fair. But it's absolutely fair to acknowledge that it does have an ecological impact.
Every week Equity will bring you something special on Wednesdays, adding to our regular Monday (weekly kickoff!) and Friday (news roundup!) shows. The world of tech is large, diverse, and variously dangerous and delightful. We're excited to keep talking through it with you.
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
This is Equity Monday, our weekly kickoff that tracks the latest private market news, talks about the coming week, digs into some recent funding rounds and mulls over a larger theme or narrative from the private markets. You can follow the show on Twitter here and myself here — and make sure to check out our Friday show that featured the Square-Tidal deal, some recent IPOs, and some super-neat rounds.
Much like today's show, if I am being honest. Here's the rundown:
- Coursera filed to go public, which could help set the tone for edtech founders and startups regarding their own valuations and fundraising prospects.
- Bay Area startups did not leave.
- And the world of AI venture-capital funding shows that while there's plenty of capital, the number of startups being founded in the space is dipping.
- Starling raised a huge new round in the fintech space, and Deliveroo dropped some financial numbers on its path to going public in short-order.
- Postscript raised $35 million for its Shopify-SMS service; Praava Health raised $10.6 million to bring better healthcare to Bangladesh.
A packed kickoff to what promises to be a packed week!
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
Natasha and Danny and Alex and Grace were all here to chat through the week’s biggest tech happenings. It was yet another crazy week, but did our best to get through as much of it as we could. Here's the rundown, in case you are reading along with us!
- Square is buying Tidal in a deal that some are skeptical of, but one about which we found quite a lot to like.
- How capital-as-a-service can get you your first check in 2021, and a nod to Indie.VC, a pioneer in alternative financing for startups that announced it is shutting down net new investments this year.
- Oscar Health priced its IPO above its raised range, which was good for it in terms of fundraising. However, since its debut the company has lost pricing altitude. Its declines mimic those of other public neo-insurance proivders in what could be a new trend.
- And sticking to the insurtech beat, Hippo is going public via a SPAC. Because everyone else is?
- Compass filed its S-1, which triggered a debate on how its different than OpenDoor.
- Coupang's IPO is also coming, replete with huge growth, an improving profitability picture, and a massive valuation. This is one to watch.
- There was also a whole global news circuit around grocery delivery startups, with Instacart raising at a $39 billion valuation.
- And we wrapped with the Surreal seed round that we found to be more than a little spicy. As it turns out, commercialized deepfakes are not merely on the way; they are here.
And with that we are back on Monday. Have a rocking weekend!
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the number behind the headlines.
This is our Wednesday show, where we niche down and focus on a single topic, or theme. This week we're talking agtech, a surprisingly cool bit of the technology startup world. But Chris and Danny and Natasha and Alex were not alone in their quest to take a look into agtech, we brought alone TechCrunch climate editor Jon Shieber for the ride.
With his help we got through a number of pretty damn interesting things, including:
- SESO Labor raising $4.5 million to help farms secure the labor they need, and navigate the American immigration system.
- Future Acres looking to raise $3 million for its farming robots. And Farmwise, which last raised $14.5 million and has an idea regarding how to rent robot labor to farms.
- We also chatted about Anuvia's epic $103 million raise that could help boost farm yields while cutting carbon emissions.
- And Better Origin, which wants to help farmers raise flies to feed to chickens. Which we had a few ideas about.
And that's that! We're back on Friday with our long-form, newsy episode. Thanks to everyone checking out our newest show. Oh, and don't forget about TechCrunch Early Stage and TechCrunch Justice. They are going to rock.
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
This is Equity Monday, our weekly kickoff that tracks the latest private market news, talks about the coming week, digs into some recent funding rounds and mulls over a larger theme or narrative from the private markets. You can follow the show on Twitter here and myself here — and be sure to check out our most recent Friday episode, which featured news on Finix and Coinbase and Reddit, among others.
(Also don't forget that Equity is growing! And TechCrunch events are about to kick off and kick some butt.)
Here's what we got into this fine Monday morning:
- Skydio raises $170 million, a huge sum for the drone company. Will its market prove large enough, quickly enough for the company to stay VC-ready?
- The UK government is putting together a venture fund of sorts? That's mostly cool.
- Klarna raises lots of money at a new, bigger valuation. More here on its industry.
- Space SPAC one, space SPAC two
- And then on the funding round side of things, here's Axonius' very interesting round, and this fun pre-seed deal from Europe!
- And finally we chat Oscar Health, a company whose IPO is all sorts of confusing.
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
Natasha and Danny and Alex and Grace were all here to chat through the week’s biggest tech happenings. Before we get into this week's show, make sure to check out all the news here about how Equity is expanding, and becoming even more of a thing in 2021! We are beyond hyped about it.
Coming on the back of such a wild news week, we had to cut and cut from the notes doc to get the show to size. So, here's what made the cut:
- Coinbase filed to go public. Alex wrote about its S-1 filing here, and Danny riffed on a fascinating nuance regarding its cap table here.
- Hopin is raising more money, at an even larger valuation. Every time we cover the latest version of this story, we think it must be the last time. And then it happens again. So, check back here in October for when Hopin raises again.
- Reddit also picked up more money. Again. Our take is that the capital must mean that Reddit is a better business than we anticipated.
- Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian backed a new community tool proving the monetary value of the community. That led us into a conversation about a professional network for independent workers, and a collaborative workspace for interior design fans.
- Toast is said to be on the road to an IPO, and so we riffed on what Olo's IPO can tell us about the Boston-based unicorn.
- Shippo raised more money after a big 2020; can the company double again in 2021?
- Finix raised $3 million through an SPV filled with over 80 Black and LatinX investors.
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
This is our first-ever Wednesday episode. If you want to learn more about the latest edition of the podcast, head here for more. This week we talked about space, an increasingly active part of the global economy, and a place where we're seeing more and more young tech companies place their focus.
We were lucky to have TechCrunch's Darrell Etherington join us for the show. He's our resident expert, so we had to have him on to chat about the space startup ecosystem. Here's the rundown:
- SpaceX has raised a bunch more money, at a far higher valuation. We chat about why it didn't raise more, and how much capital there is available for the famous rocket company.
- Starlink came up as well, as the satellite array just put another 60 units into orbit. What is it good for? We have a few ideas.
- The second crew member of first all-civilian SpaceX mission revealed, and of course there is an IPO and startup angle involved.
- Which brought us to a side conversation on which one of us are most interested in going to space commercially. It's the raised hands feature no one asked for, but take your guesses on who wants to go first and see if you're right.
- Regardless, Axiom Space raises $130 million for its commercial space station ambitions
- And then there was the Astra SPAC. You can read its deck here. What matters is that we get a look into how fast it plans to ramp future launches. And the answer is fast.
As we get more comfortable in our Wednesday episodes, we'll tinker with the format and the like. As we do, we're always taking feedback at equitypod@techcrunch.com, or over on Twitter. Hit us up, we're having a lot of fun but are always looking for ways to sharpen the show!
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
This is Equity Monday, our weekly kickoff that tracks the latest private market news, talks about the coming week, digs into some recent funding rounds and mulls over a larger theme or narrative from the private markets. You can follow the show on Twitter here and myself here — and be sure to check out our last main ep, in which Natasha coins a slogan for a16z that I both hate, and became the headline of the show!
But enough of all of that, we have a lot to get through this morning. Here's what we talked about:
- The Weekend: Coinbase at $100 billion? More on that to come. Toast is going public! Probably! Wait Toast the company that laid off staff last year? Yep that Toast! It's not toast! And new rules on online lending in China.
- This Morning: Oscar Health put together an IPO price range that is interesting, and Apex Clearing is going public via a SPAC.
- Funding Rounds: Gophr raises money! Ageras Group raises money! Promise raises money! It was hard to pick just three, but each of those rounds has something notable about it. Enjoy!
- Deeper Dive/Riff: If the public markets will float even the most leaden of startup via a SPAC-balloon, any late-stage startup that doesn't take the ride out of the private markets must either be perfect or too heavy to lift. And if it's the second, we can write it off? Maybe?
And, finally, this is precisely what I feel like this Monday morning. Chat soon and stay safe!
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
Natasha and Danny and Alex and Grace were all here to chat through the week’s biggest tech happenings. In very good Show News™, Chris is back! He's working on the next iteration of the show, something that you will be able to see starting Very Soon. Get hype!
Today though, we had a delectable dish of dynamic doings, namely news items of the following persuasion:
- Bitcoin broke the $50,000 barrier, something that we wanted to talk about. Especially in light of Coinbase's $77 billion valuation. Natasha walked us through some growth metrics, and Alex was sad that he isn't already retired. Danny remains a full-on crypto bull.
- And on the blockchain thing, Blockchain.com raised $120 million, proving that there is huge amounts of capital available for the guts-and-bolts tooling of the bitcoin world.
- Li Jin, who coined the term 'passion economy', has closed her debut $13 million fund for startups within the same category. She joined other investors in our latest survey on the creator economy's changing tides.
- Off of $1 million in ARR, Circle has brought on $4 million in funding at a valuation north of $40 million.
- A16z invested in Stir, which helps creators manage and view their various income streams. The funding total was not disclosed, but is reportedly valuing the company, still in beta, at $100 million.
- TalkShopLive brought on new cash for live video shopping.
- Pipe17 closed an $8 million round that caught our eye. By building a service to help smaller ecommerce operations connect their tooling to one another, the company is betting on smaller ecommerce needing pipes to link up their various software services. This reminded us of Alloy, another neat company in ecommerce automation that also recently raised money.
- From there we riffed on the software market itself, its size, and the potential for investors to loosen their rules of intra-portfolio competition.
- Public raised $220 million, OutSystems raised $150 million, and Ally.io raised $50 million.
- Finally, a wave of edtech startups is over Zoom University and hopes to create much, much better. alternative.
And that's our show! We are back early Monday morning for a packed week. So keep your podcast app warm, we're coming for it.
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
This is Equity Monday, our weekly kickoff that tracks the latest private market news, talks about the coming week, digs into some recent funding rounds and mulls over a larger theme or narrative from the private markets. You can follow the show on Twitter here and myself here — and be sure to check out our riff on whether SoftBank has another 20 DoorDashes waiting in the wings.
This morning was a more relaxed Monday than I can recall in months, thanks to a holiday in many parts of the world. But that didn't stop us from parsing the news:
- The Weekend: This investigation into Clubhouse's data security is getting results, while over the weekend Dispo got huge in a hurry, and the Apple-Facebook dynamic got a better explaining. Increasingly the tech giant world feels like ad engines (Facebook, Alphabet) in opposition to software-and-hardware shops (Microsoft, Apple).
- This morning: GM has new electric cars, TechCrunch reports. VW isn't worried about Apple. And every EV company in the world is going public via a SPAC. Who will win? You can place your own bets. And India is loosening some tech regulation. The American stock market is closed.
- Funding Rounds: We chatted about the recent Libeo round, and the latest on Nymbus, both of which are more than cool.
And, finally, read this if you want feel let down by American VCs. (American media, to be clear, has similar issues.)
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
Natasha and Danny and Alex and Grace were all here to chat through the week’s biggest tech happenings. This week felt oddly comforting from a tech news perspective: Facebook is copying something, early-stage startup data is flawed enough to talk about, and sweet DoorDash is buying robots for undisclosed sums.
So, here's a rundown of the tech news we got into (as always, jokes aren't previewed so you'll have to listen to the actual show to get our critique and Award Winning Analysis*):
- Ethena raising $2 million more for corporate training that is not awful, and Zeta raising $1.5 million for couples' banking. Natasha has been killing the early-stage beat lately.
- How Seed data could be getting harder and harder to parse from Alex's desk, and why VC data in general is dicey, from Danny's. We discuss if directional data is useful, and why the limited numbers could have a cultural impact on signal.
- Reddit raises $250 million, but doesn't tell us who the investors are and what the money is precisely going to. Still, the company has had quite a year so far so the capital comes at an interesting time.
- Justo, an online grocery based in Mexico, raises $65 million as the pandemic continues to shake up the way we live and shop.
- DoorDash buys a salad robot, which brings Natasha nostalgia and Danny anger.
- The inverted SoftBank J-Curve thesis is a must-listen and read.
- And from the world of dating, a big M&A deal that caught our attention, and the latest from the Bumble IPO.
In good news, long-time Equity producer Chris Gates is back starting next week, which means we'll have our biggest crew ever helping get the show put together. And, in other good news, there's going to be more Equity than ever for you to hear. Coming soon.
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
Natasha and Danny and Alex and Grace noticed last week that we had a bevy of software-as-a-service (SaaS) stories that we wanted to chat about. So we decided to break them out into their own episode.
What came out of the conversation is a mix of optimism, sarcasm, and healthy doubt regarding what's next for SaaS. SaaS matters as it is an incredibly popular business model for startups, a way to generate high-margin recurring incomes. Indeed, it's almost the default method for revenue generation amongst startups today.
But precisely what SaaS is, and how it works, appear to be moving targets.
This piece by our own Danny Crichton, for example, digs into a trend that he has noticed in the broader software space, namely startups taking a single task, or feature, and providing it in a manner that ascribes to best practices. For example, online checkout tech has been around since the dawn of the Internet. And yet Rapyd and Fast and Checkout.com and others are raising oceans of capital to provide checkout solutions to other companies. Why? They offer best practices-like services.
From there we talked about the inclusion of humans into software, which isn't a radical concept but has new weight considering the information overload world we live in. The whole concept of having an Airtable hotline to answer each and every random question we have seems like music to our ears, what about yours?
And finally we discussed the growing use of on-demand pricing over traditional SaaS. Danny asked if this is really something new, which we discussed. Perhaps we're seeing more on-demand pricing in modern software companies thanks to not only the success of companies like Snowflake, but also growing ranks of API-delivered startups.
Overall it was fun to niche down to a single theme, something we rarely get to do on the main show. Expect more of this from us in the following months!
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
This is Equity Monday, our weekly kickoff that tracks the latest private market news, talks about the coming week, digs into some recent funding rounds and mulls over a larger theme or narrative from the private markets. You can follow the show on Twitter here and myself here — and be sure to check out last week's main ep that dug into Robinhood, Miami, and a host of other topics.
This morning we had a pile of news to get through. Here's the rundown:
- Pony.ai raised another $100 million, which underscores our growing thesis that there is no amount of money yet that will produce the tech required for self-driving cars to work. Perhaps we will get there, but it is going to cost a pretty penny or two.
- Sticking to cars, the Apple-Kia tieup is kaput, which we should have known the moment it became known. Apple previously bought startup Drive.ai back in 2019, of course.
- Vroom, a 2020 IPO, bought a Super Bowl ad. Who would have expected that? Its shares are up, however, after the ad.
- Still on the car beat, Tesla bought $1.50 billion in bitcoin, and may accept the stuff as tender to buy its vehicles in the future. The move sent the price of bitcoin higher.
- Clubhouse got banned in China.
- Phable raised $12 million, Nexthink raised $180 million, and Bumble is targeting a higher share price in its impending IPO.
- And we may have figured out the ∆ between what investors are saying about the Seed market, and what data has largely said.
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture-capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
Natasha and Danny and Alex and Grace were all here to chat through the week's biggest tech happenings. The good news is that we managed to fit it all into a single episode this week. The bad news is that that means the show is pretty long. Sorry about that!
So, what took us so much time to get through? All of this:
- Robinhood raised $3.4 billion after its trading hiccups, and we also chatted over what we know about the company's Q4 2020 numbers. In short, the company is growing nicely.
- RPA is big and UiPath is cashing in on the trend, raising $750 million at a $35 billion valuation. That's a lot of cash for very little dilution.
- Databricks raised $1 billion at a $28 billion valuation, after reaching $425 million in ARR. The company's growth is hot, but its valuation may be even hotter.
- Bumble is going public, so we chatted about its results, and how founder- and venture-friendly the dating market may be in the future.
- In a big exit for the Boston startup ecosystem, alcohol delivery platform Drizly has sold to Uber for $1.1 billion.
- Sticking to the alcohol beat, Danny talked us through the Vivino news, describing himself as a wine sophisticate with a distaste for sommeliers, which is just about the most Danny thing he has ever said. But the company really is neat.
- Divvy homes raised a $110 million Series C to make it easier to buy a home, after financing five times as many homes in 2020 as it did in pre-pandemic times.
- And then there were some neat early-stage rounds to chat about: Balance raising $5.5 million to bring B2B payments to the modern world, Alloy Automation raising $4 million for ecommerce automation, and Beam raising $9.5 million to build a new browser.
- Make sure to read Natasha's profile of the new Expectul CEO here.
- And, we closed on some Miami news.
And somehow we still have another entire day before the weeks is up! So much for 2021 calming down after 2020's storms.
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
This is Equity Monday, our weekly kickoff that tracks the latest private market news, talks about the coming week, digs into some recent funding rounds and mulls over a larger theme or narrative from the private markets. You can follow the show on Twitter here and myself here — and make sure to check out last week’s main episode and companion chat about Robinhood.
This morning we ran into quite a lot of the same material, with Robinhood back in the news and the stock market looming large. Here's what we talked about:
- American stocks are set to rise, bitcoin is flat, and meme-stocks are mixed.
- In India, news is out that a new law could ban bitcoin (whatever that means), and this morning India forced Twitter to take down some accounts that had been critical of government policy. That's a pretty bad look. And it comes as we see a coup in Myanmar leading to a decline in internet connectivity; there is a clear link between authoritarianism and a desire for Internet control.
- Robinhood's CEO went on Clubhouse, where he was interviewed by Elon Musk about last week's mess; it turns out the National Securities Clearing Corporation, or NSCC, had asked Robinhood for $3 billion in deposit requirements. That number was reduced to $700 million, with Robinhood limiting some consumer behavior, allowing the company to open Friday morning.
- This morning the key news stories include the mess that is Facebook Groups, and the EU is appealing a tax decision that could impact tech company structure for years to come.
- Ben raised $2.5 million
- Phocas Software raised $34 million
- DesignCrowd raised $7.6 million
- And, finally, we are heading into earnings season, so strap in and get ready for a deluge of results.
All that and we are back Thursday, if not before. Hugs and hellos from the Equity crew!
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
Natasha and Danny and Alex and Grace hopped online for our weekly show, sans Gamestop news (which you can find here) to talk about all the other busy news happening in startup world right now.
Here's a taste of what we got into:
- Qualtrics IPO pricing, and the future of major acquisition pricing schemes. This company's path to the public markets has been a long-time coming, so we had plenty to say.
- How Atlanta's Calendly turned a scheduling nightmare into a $3 billion company. This story was not only neat, but also operated as a sort of palate cleanser for the team.
- Rhino's interesting insurtech play, and how it is pre-IPO pretty damn early. Revenue questions, the power of insurtech, and public markets impacting startups? This story had it all!
- Alex talks about how Fast is raising fast money ($102 million to be exact). Even more, the Fast story fits into a broader narrative of online checkout startups raising a zillion dollars in recent weeks.
- A boom in food delivery and restaurant startups, and why Danny is bearish on a plastic-free play. Natasha is in favor. Alex gets a company's model mixed up with Spoon Rocket.
- Natasha explains how Clubhouse isn't the first company to raise millions off of millions of users with no known near-term monetization plan. Her piece on ClassDojo illustrates how a quiet edtech giant finally turned its 51 million users into a profitable base. There's also an investor survey for you to check out (Discount code: EQUITY).
- TCV's record fund, and a female-focused angel fund coming out of Africa.
As always, it was a ton to get through because there is just so much going on. More Monday morning, until then stay cool!
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
This week the team — Natasha and Danny and Alex and Grace — recorded a bonus Equity Shot to help our listeners make sense out of the Gamestop trading bonanza happening all over the internet. The story is fast-moving, and news continues to break (twice during our recording, in fact) about how trading apps such as Robinhood are responding to the tear. Still, this type of story is worth a temperature check and timestamp because it feels like it's a pivotal moment in many ways.
Here's our coverage on the site so far for people playing catch up:
- How Trading Apps are responding to the Gamestop fustercluck - This piece from yesterday started our coverage of the response from trading apps concerning GameStop
- Gamestop, meme stocks, and the revenge of the retail trader - This piece dug into what the initial story was about, with some jokes
- Could meme stocks like gamestop kill bitcoin’s rise? - This piece looks at what the other side of the stonk coin could be
- Robinhood restricts trading in GameStop after retail brouhaha shakes markets - This piece looked into Robinhood's moves from this morning, as the larger story went from huge to tectonic
- And, we gave a shout out to a good post by The Margins, which gave perspective on how the unescapable Gamestop stock crash will have tough, and not meme-y consequences.
Back later in the day with our usual weekly episode, which will not include any of the following phrases: stonks, retail traders, Robinhood, and r/Wallstreetbets. We promise. Talk soon!
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
This is Equity Monday, our weekly kickoff that tracks the latest private market news, talks about the coming week, digs into some recent funding rounds and mulls over a larger theme or narrative from the private markets. You can follow the show on Twitter here and myself here — and make sure to check out last week’s main ep, which was super-packed and a real treat.
This morning the news was heavy, so here's your rundown to get you into the show:
- New funds for Clubhouse! TechCrunch has the story here, but I wonder why the app needs more money this soon. You can lay your own bets on how it performs, but at least it's fun to see consumer stuff get funded.
- Postmates staff are heading for the exits, and there's an IPO coming up that is both huge and under your radar.
- Chamath is doing the SPAC thing again. Again. And Taboola is also going public via a SPAC.
- IMVU raised $35 million
- Pula raised $6 million
- Wolt raised $530 million
- And the hungry SPAC market is only going to get more busy in the coming months. Brace yourself, we are merely a boat on the waves of the news. And this is the latest squall.
Hugs, and we are back Thursday, if not before. Stay safe!
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture-capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
This week we — Natasha and Danny and Alex and Grace -- had more than a little to noodle over, but not so much that we blocked out a second episode. We try to stick to our current format, but, may do more shows in the future. Have a thought about that? equitypod@techcrunch.com is your friend and we are listening.
Now! We took a broad approach this week, so there is a little of something for everything down below. Enjoy!
- Hims is going to SPAC itself onto the public markets, which should prove interesting for other D2C startups eyeing the same move.
- The final quarter of 2020 and the full year brought an ocean of capital to bear on US startups, something that we delighted in chewing on. Fintech is also hot as all heck.
- Plaid is building a fintech accelerator, which we thought was cool.
- An edtech startup based in Nigeria raised a $7.5 million Series A on the back of a really neat distribution model. The march of live, tech-powered tutoring lives on!
- TripActions raised a pallet of new capital despite having had a somewhat rough 2020 due to the pandemic. It's a fascinating wager, and one that we will track as it earns out.
- There was lots of news in the movement space, including Microsoft helping put $2 billion into self-driving startup Cruise, electric vehicle startup Rivian raising $2.65 billion from Amazon and others, and Bolt Mobility expanding to new markets.
- Danny's GPS story.
- Wattpad exits for $600 million, leading to Alex detailing his love of science fiction.
- a16z is doubling-down on its in-house media project, and Forbes is building out a paid newsletter service that we think is very neat.
Like we said, it's a lot, but all of it worth getting into before the weekend. Hugs from the team, we are back early Monday.
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
This is Equity (Monday) Tuesday, our weekly kickoff that tracks the latest private market news, talks about the coming week, digs into some recent funding rounds and mulls over a larger theme or narrative from the private markets. You can follow the show on Twitter here and myself here — and make sure to check out last week's two episodes, covering all the news sans ecommerce, and then all the ecommerce news.
We're here on a Tuesday due to an American holiday, but that short break did not mean that the world's news volume slowed down in the slightest. Here's the rundown:
- From the weekend: The story of a fired GitHub employee ended as you expected it would, with a small twist; the Microsoft company's head of HR is leaving. Not sure from this remove is this is a firing, or merely finding someone to axe over the error, but the fact that they are leaving stood out.
- Auto1 Group is going public, and Sequoia wants a piece.
- In more news from German, Personio has put together a $125 million round at a $1.7 billion valuation.
- And Grab, the Southeast Asian food delivery and ride-hailing goliath could raise $2 billion in a 2021 US IPO.
- Turning to this morning: The WhatsApp-India saga continues, Citrix is buying Wrike for $2.25 billion, and American stocks are looking up this morning.
- On the funding round front: LeoCare raised €15 million from Felix Capital, Ventech and Daphni. PPRO raised $180 million at a valuation of more than $1 billion. And Darwinbox raised from Salesforce Ventures, something that we did not know that the American corporate VC did.
- Finally, read this crypto piece.
And that's that for today, we are back in short order on Thursday afternoon!
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture-capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines. We’re back on this lovely Saturday with a bonus episode!
Again!
There is enough going on that to avoid failing to bring you stuff that we think matters, we are back yet again for more. This time around we are not talking Roblox, we're talking about ecommerce, and a number of rounds -- big and small -- that have been raised in the space. Honest question: do y'all plan to release news on the same week? Are trends a social construct?
From Natasha, Grace, Danny, and your humble servant, here's your run-down:
- Webflow raised $140 million in a round that it says it did not need. This is not a new thing. Some startups are doing well, and don't burn much. So investors offer them more at a nice price. In this case $2.1 billion. (Webflow does no-code
- Checkout.com raised $450 million. The rich really do get richer. In this case the founders of Checkout.com, whose company is now worth around $15 billion Checkout.com does, you guessed, online checkout work. Which as Danny explains is complicated and critical.
- We also talked about this Bolt round, for context.
- And sticking to the ecommerce theme, Rapyd raised $300 million at around a $2.5 billion valuation. There is infinte money available for late-stage fintech.
- Early stage as well, it turns out, with Tradeswell raising $15.5 million to help businesses improve their net margins.
- Finally, ending with a chat on infrastructure, Nacelle closed an $18 million Series A.
And now we're going back to bed.
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture-capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
This week we -- Natasha and Danny and Alex and Grace -- had a lot to get through, as the news volume in early 2021 has been rapid, and serious. Sadly this means that some early-stage rounds missed the cut, though we did make sure to have some Series A material in the show.
So, what did we the assembled crew get to? Here's your cheat-sheet:
- The demise of the Plaid-Visa deal, our chat with the CEO of the fintech unicorn, and what the failed transaction could mean for startup valuations more broady.
- Why the $1.4 billion Nuvia exit to Qualcomm is impressive in scale, and puzzling. This topic also gave Danny a chance to talk about chips, his favorite thing.
- Auto-insurance rates can often depend on highly variable demographic data like marital status, income, and education. Loop is a new seed-stage startup that wants to make the process more equitable. It landed millions this week, underscoring a broader insurtech wave.
- SuperCharger Ventures pivoted its fintech accelerator into an edtech accelerator! We discuss why the shift and its surprising focus on B2B makes a ton of sense.
- Crypto's going up and down, ahead of the anticipated Coinbase IPO and the known Bakkt SPAC. More on that here.
- Sticking to the SPAC front, SoFi joined the list of companies using black-check companies to approach the public markets.
- As is Talkspace, the tele-therapy startup that you've heard of.
- And then there was SoftBank, of course, which has its own SPAC in the market now, confirming earlier reports. Which makes perfect sense.
There are so many SPACs and bits of IPO news and funding rounds to pick through and cover that we're already straining the time limits of the show to even cover half of the material. This week that meant that we excised a chunk of the show to a forthcoming Saturday episode that is focused on e-commerce.
So, we will talk to you again soon!
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
This is Equity Monday, our weekly kickoff that tracks the latest private market news, talks about the coming week, digs into some recent funding rounds and mulls over a larger theme or narrative from the private markets. You can follow the show on Twitter here and myself here —and don't forget to check out the extra episode we dropped on Saturday, as there was just too much to talk about last week.
So, what's on the docket for today? A great host of things:
- Trump was broadly deplatformed, which is controversial not only amongst his political allies and acolytes, but also amongst those worried that fringe-yet-not-wrong views could suffer in the future.
- Parler, a Twitter clone that tried to claim the mantle of free speech -- despite having posting rules -- was cut off by major tech companies over its inability to censor calls for violence. It had recently hit #1 in the App Store.
- Bitcoin and other cryptos are in correction, as the stock market preps to give back some recent gains. All this while the electric car market keeps getting hotter and hotter as Chinese tech companies link up with auto makers to get their own vehicles into the market.
- On the funding round front, Ajaib Group raised $25 million as the low-cost trading boom grows around the world. And, Keep, a Chinese fitness app, raised a megaround.
Closing, I am befuddled by how dissonant the global economy feels, with seemingly two different eras going on at once. It's not clear if I have finally become the softy I have always threatened to become, or merely that the inequality of outcomes in the 2020-2021 economy are merely as heartbreaking as I imagine them to be.
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture-capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines. We're back on this lovely Saturday with a bonus episode!
The normal crew assembled, including Alex, Natasha, Danny, and Chris, to chatter about a chunk of creator and gamer news. And some big numbers, the sorts that we always find fun to chat about.
A sneak peek at what we discussed during this second-ever Equity Leftovers:
- Roblox's epic pre-IPO raise, and its decision to go public through direct listing instead of the IPO that it had previously planned.
- Niantic buying a gaming platform with an esports-focus.
- Nintendo buying a gaming studio, leading the crew to declare that the famous company is the Disney of video games.
- Cameo, which allows fans to pay celebrities for personalized messages, is on a hiring spree after bringing in $100 million in transactions last year. The Information says that the company is seeking funding, which isn't entirely surprising. Axios reports that it has brought in a couple high-profile hires, as well.
Back to our regular schedule Monday! Chat then!
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture-capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines. Happy 2021, or as our own Danny Crichton aptly names it, December 38, 2020.
Equity crew is back to start the new year in full force, with Alex, Natasha, and Danny on the mics and Chris behind the scenes. The reunion led to extreme Dad joke energy from all of us, which helped get through the mountain of tech news that we had in front of us.
In fact, there was so much to talk about that we have a bonus episode coming out Saturday dealing with Roblox and the gaming environment. Stay tuned.
For now, here's what's in today's episode:
- The remote work space is rushing to cure your Zoom fatigue, or at least give you new ways to handle it. This week, we saw GitHub alumni raise millions for a video repository tool, and Teamflow raise more for a virtual platform meant to mimic the serendipity (and productivity) of your currently-shuttered office.
- WeLink raised a $185 million Series A round and, while we could have made financial nomenclature jokes, there was much to unpack on the opportunity of 5G and wireless.
- Divvy locked down $165 million, making itself a unicorn in the process. Consider this one another win for Utah, and a big moment for the company itself, which is working in a very competitive space.
- We also noted a series of new VC funds that closed in the final days of 2020, including One Way, USV, Learn Capital, and Madrona.
- Hopin went shoppin', picking up StreamYard for a quarter-billion because they thought it was boppin'. Please forgive our attempt at poetry. Regardless, Hopin spent $250 million for StreamYard, a livestreaming technology platform that it intends to operate independently. The combined company has around $65 million in annual recurring revenue, with the purchased-entity bringing $30 million of that on its own. A big deal.
- Twitter is also out in the market with a checkbook, picking up a podcasting app and a design studio.
- And on the podcast front, Amazon is also in the market. This brings up the question, what really is Amazon Prime, anyways?
- Finally, we had few words on why P&G backing off from buying Billie impacts DTC startups everywhere.
As you can tell by our laughs and jokes this week, it is really good to be back. Enjoy the show, and don't forget the Saturday extra!
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
This is Equity Monday, our weekly kickoff that tracks the latest private market news, talks about the coming week, digs into some recent funding rounds and mulls over a larger theme or narrative from the private markets. You can follow the show on Twitter here and myself here — and don’t forget to check out the second of our two holiday eps, the most recent looking at what we think might happen this year.
What did we get into today? A great question. Here's the rundown:
- Tesla reported pretty strong deliveries, as did smaller electric vehicle companies. What the strong figures could mean for startups, however, remains to be seen.
- Bitcoin had a pretty good end to the year, which could bolster Coinbase's impending IPO.
- Hundreds of workers at Alphabet want to unionize.
- Didi could go public this year, which means we could see a third ride-hailing company provide us access to its numbers. Please!
- CRED raised $81 million in a huge Series C. Our reporting indicates that the company is now worth more than $800 million.
- Disco, a legaltech startup, has raised $40 million in debt to cap off a $100 million round.
- And here's the Seed link, as promised.
Mostly we're still making sure that our brains still work and that the return of work really is here. Taking a break was nice. Now the news is coming back, so we are as well. Hugs, and chat Thursday.
What could go wrong?
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture-capital-focused podcast (now on Twitter!), where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines. As you can see, this is our yearly predictions episode. Our behind-the-scenes guru Chris Gates joins us on the mic, we take shots at our prior prognostications, and nosh on what we feel is positively persaged.
As always, this episode is in good fun. If you don't agree with we think is up ahead, that's fine. You're probably right. But we're nothing if not up for a challenge, so we kept the tradition alive this year.
This is the last Equity episode of 2020. And while we can't tell you yet what our plans are for 2021, we can say -- nay, project -- that there are a lot of fun and big things coming for Equity. We're planning our busiest year ever, by far.
And with that, we're out of here. Thanks for several million downloads this year, our biggest annum to date.
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
This is Equity Monday, our weekly kickoff that tracks the latest private market news, talks about the coming week, digs into some recent funding rounds and mulls over a larger theme or narrative from the private markets. You can follow the show on Twitter here and myself here — and don’t forget to check out the first of our two holiday eps, the last one talking to VCs about what surprised them in 2020.
Anyhoo, from vacation, here's what Chris and I got up to:
- A report looking at how ecommerce changed during 2020.
- The epic carnage surrounding the Chinese government's clamping down on its tech sector (more here, and here from TechCrunch).
- Lalamove raised $515 million in a Series E.
- Yuanfudao raised another $300 million.
- Indian startups did not have the strongest year of venture fundraising, which felt a bit surprising.
- And it doesn't appear that Japan did either.
- But here in the United States, holy shit things were bonkers.
Tune in Thursday for one more fun episode, and then we're back to regular programming the week after!
Equity drops every Monday at 7:00 a.m. PST and Thursday afternoon as fast as we can get it out, so subscribe to us on
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture-capital-focused podcast (now on Twitter!), where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
Today is our holiday look-back at the year, bringing not only our own Danny and Natasha and Chris and Alex into the mix, but also five venture capitalists who we got to leave us their notes as well. The goal for this episode was to reflect on a year that no one could have ever predicted, but with a specific angle, as always, on venture capital and startups.
We asked about the biggest surprise, non-portfolio companies to watch, and trends they got wrong and right. There was also banter on Zoom investing (Alex came up with Zesting, but taking suggestions if anyone come up with a better moniker), and startup pricing.
Here's who we asked to call into our super Fancy Equity Hotline:
- Sarah Kunst, Cleo Capital
- Turner Novak, Gelt
- Lolita Taub, The Community Fund
- Garry Tan, Initialized
- Iris Choi, Floodgate
Thanks to them all for participating, and of course you, our dear Equity listeners, for a blockbuster year for the podcast.
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
This is Equity Monday, our weekly kickoff that tracks the latest private market news, talks about the coming week, digs into some recent funding rounds, and mulls over a larger theme or narrative from the private markets. You can follow the show on Twitter here and myself here — and don’t forget to check out our latest main episode, which spent a good bit of time talking about OnlyFans.
The weekend was busy, as always, so there was a lot of chew over this morning. Here's a partial list:
- SoftBank is going to put together a number of SPACs.
- Indian fintech Pine Labs has raised $75 million to $100 million at a valuation of around $2 billion
- RealPage is selling to private equity for $9.6 billion
- Zoom is under fresh scrutiny here in the US
- Bolt has raised $75 million more in a Series C1. We talk about why that's fun, and its current competition.
- Group14 has raised a $17 million Series B that has us thinking about the future.
- And WorkWhile wants to help hourly workers and employers get along better.
Closing, here's the Owen Thomas piece that I mentioned at the very end of the show.
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast (now on Twitter!), where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
For the first time in donkey's years, we didn't have our full crew this week. Instead, we had just Natasha and Chris and myself -- we had to survive without Danny while he took the week "off" to "relax."
But our depleted ranks did not mean that news was waiting for us to reassemble. Indeed, there was a mass of stuff to get through:
- Atlanta-based Presso raised $1.6 million for its in-unit dry cleaning tech, which we thought was neat.
- OpenSensors raised $4 million for its air-monitoring tech after a history of bootstrapping.
- Lantern, which helps folks plan for their death, is having a big year. It raised $1.4 million.
- Public raised $65 million, the same week that Robinhood came under fire by the Massachusetts securities group, and the SEC. Robinhood will pay $65 million to settle the SEC's charges without admitting wrongdoing.
- And then in the world of product, we chatted about Substack's new Reader service, which we seem like. (We also chatted about this Taylor Lorenz piece.)
- It was also prime season to chat a little about what's new in the bitcoin world, and take a peek at the stock market's recent over-success. Roblox, see you in 2021.
And for everyone who made it to the end, here are the pieces from Axios and The Information that we mentioned.
Before we say goodbye, our very own Natasha is taking on Startups Weekly, a long-time TechCrunch Newsletter. Subscribe to it for her debut issue, and while you're at it, check out Alex's The Exchange which goes out the same day and means the Equity conversation can continue well into your weekends.
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
This is Equity Monday, our weekly kickoff that tracks the latest big news, chats about the coming week, digs into some recent funding rounds, and mulls over a larger theme or narrative from the private markets. You can follow the show on Twitter here and myself here — and don’t forget to check out last Thursday’s episode that dug into the impact of celebrity endorsement, and investment.
This morning we had a lot to get through, so here are the headlines:
- Stocks are set to rise as the COVID-19 vaccine is initially rolled out.
- Vista Equity Partners will purchase Pluralsight for $3.5 billion. Good news for edtech? Kinda.
- Reddit is buying Dubsmash, causing us to ask just what the message board unicorn is building.
- EA is buying Codemasters.
- Appboxo has raised $1.1 million, IntellectoKids has raised $3 million, and Cledara has raised $3.4 million.
- We were also in love with this startup's funding news.
- And, finally, in light of the Roblox IPO delay, we wonder who else might be on track to cut loose their 2020 plans for an early 2021 re-jigger. Not that such a delay is really that bad, but with 2021 expected to be a hot year for debuts, kicking off with delays and pricing worries would be a real bummer.
We didn't get to the Google story or the huge hack news. So, there's more to read if you are so inclined.
And that is the show! Hugs and good vibes from the Equity crew!
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast (now on Twitter!), where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
What a week, yeah? Instead of the news cycle slowing as the year races to a close, things are still as hot as ever. We have funding rounds big and small, IPOs, first-day extravaganza and more.
Luckily we had the whole crew around -- Chris and Danny and Natasha and I. Here’s the rundown:
- Career Karma raised $10 million, and we have thoughts and concerns.
- Skyflow raised $17.5 million in an effort to try to get the Equity team to understand the nuances of different encryption types.
- Calm raised $75 million, which felt pretty reasonable given reports and its fundraising history.
- Squire tripled its valuation in a new round that included $45 million in equity capital along with some debt.'
- We also talked about the DoorDash and C3.ai IPO pops, where Airbnb priced, and who is coming next
- And we rounded off with what's up with TikTok stars investing in tech startups. Danny was not a fan.
And that's that! If you aren't tired, have you even been paying attention?
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
This is Equity Monday, our weekly kickoff that tracks the latest big news, chats about the coming week, digs into some recent funding rounds and mulls over a larger theme or narrative from the private markets. You can follow the show on Twitter here and myself here — and don’t forget to check out last Thursday's epic run of early-stage rounds.
It was busy this morning. So, in blocs, here's what the show got to:
- This COVID news made me smile, even if the markets are set to open lower this morning after a big end to last week. So much for bad labor data mattering, I suppose.
- Airbnb's IPO range is set to rise, boosting the company's valuation to as much as $36 billion, and $41.8 billion on a fully-diluted basis.
- Bloomberg got its hands on some Sequoia returns data. Shockingly the data is good. Who could have imagined.
- Sourcegraph raised even more capital, raising both our eyebrows and its valuation.
- Luko added $60 million to its coffers, showing that the insurtech boom is not merely a United States-phenomenon.
- And in short-form: Highland Europe has a new fund, and Wonder raised.
- Here's the Extra Crunch piece that I helped write with Danny and Natasha.
And that was our show. Hugs from here, and chat Thursday at the latest.
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast (now on Twitter!), where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
We're back with not an Equity Shot or Dive of Monday, this is just the regular show! So, we got back to our roots by looking at a huge number of early stage rounds. And a few other things that we were just too excited about to not mention.
So from Chris and Danny and Natasha and I, here's the rundown:
- A hacker house aimed at college-age women and non-binary individuals.
- What Sketchy is and why it just raised north of $30 million.
- AgentSync's rapid-fire funding news, and what we can discern from it.
- Pave's round, Welcome's second this year, and what's up with helping startup employees navigate equity compensation.
- What Heru is building in Mexico with its new round.
- How BuildBuddy managed to raise double what it had originally targeted.
- Then we touched on AI: The new Scale AI round, what happened to Element AI, and Danny's take on some big news from the technology itself.
- Finally, Lightspeed bought Upserve, Facebook bought Kustomer, Vista bought Gainsight, and Amazon wants to get into paid podcasting.
That was a lot, but how could we leave any of it out? We're back Monday with more!
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
Welcome to an Equity Shot all about the huge, and hugely interesting Salesforce-Slack deal, in which the enterprise social company will be subsumed for the mere price of $27.7 billion.
TechCrunch has notes on the deal here, and on what Salesforce expects the acquisition will do for its growth rate here.
Some of the drama, we admit, was removed when the deal was presaged several days ago, but that didn't stop the Equity crew from having a lot to say on the matter. Here are some of the topics we discuss:
- How big is this deal, both literally and figuratively?
- We talk about the market reception and if the rumors correctly valued the deal
- Does Slack deserve snaps or just a simple pat on the back?
- What does the deal tells us about vertical SaaS tools?
- The COVID-19 effect on remote tools
- What does SoftBank have to do with this (and why does SoftBank always have something to do with everything)?
- And whole lot of conversation and discussion on Microsoft and its competitor
We are back in two days' time, so don't wander too far. Chat soon!
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
This is Equity Monday, our weekly kickoff that tracks the latest big news, chats about the coming week, digs into some recent funding rounds and mulls over a larger theme or narrative from the private markets. You can follow the show on Twitter here and myself here — and don’t forget to check out last Thursday's edtech deep dive from our own Natasha Mascarenhas.
Right, now through the first of America's national Q4 feast days, it's time to get back to business. Namely, the business of VC and startups. Here's what we got into this morning:
- It's Cyber Monday, which means that the Internet is going to be annoying today, but the fake-holiday is boosting ecommerce players like Etsy. That should be good news for payments processors incumbent and startup, as well as other ecommerce businesses, again large, small, and even platform-focused.
- Zappos founder Tony Hsieh passed away this weekend. It was a surprise. He was loved.
- The UK is banning China's Huawei 5G gear next year as Australia condemns China over a different matter. So if you are keeping tally of countries where Chinese tech may no longer be welcome, the list is certainly longer than merely India, which has banned all popular China-built apps from its mobile phones.
- These broader tensions are changing where VCs are investing their money, notably.
- Primer, the fintech helping merchants consolidate the payments stack, raises £14M Series A
- HungryPanda raises $70M for a food delivery app aimed at overseas Chinese consumers
- Firstminute Capital launches second $111M fund, featuring a who’s-who of founders as LPs
- And finally, we are heading into a deluge of IPOs over the next few weeks. So strap in, it's going to be messy and fun.
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast (now on Twitter!), where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
This week, we're doing a first-ever for the show and taking a deep dive into one specific sector: Edtech.
Natasha Mascarenhas has covered education technology since Stanford first closed down classes in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic. In the wake of the historic shuttering of much of the United States' traditional institutions of education, the sector has formed new unicorns, attracted record-breaking venture capital totals, and most of all, enjoyed time in a long-overdue spotlight.
For this Equity Dive, we zero into one part of that conversation: Edtech's impact on higher education. We brought together Udacity co-founder and Kitty Hawk CEO Sebastian Thrun, Eschaton founder and college drop-out Ian Dilick, and Cowboy Ventures investor Jomayra Herrera to answer our biggest questions.
Here's what we got into:
- How the state of remote school is leading to gap years among students
- A framework for how to think of higher education's main three products (including which is most defensible over time)
- What learnings we can take from this COVID-19 experiment on remote schooling to apply to the future
- Why ed-tech is flocking to the notion of life-long learning
- And the reality of who self-paced learning serves -- and who it leaves out
And much, much more. If you celebrate, thank you for spending part of your Thanksgiving with the Equity crew. We're so thankful to have this platform and audience, and it means a ton that y'all tune in each week.
Finally, if you liked this format and want to see more, feel free to tweet us your thoughts or leave us a review on Apple Podcasts. Talk soon!
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
This is Equity Monday, our weekly kickoff that tracks the latest big news, chats about the coming week, digs into some recent funding rounds and mulls over a larger theme or narrative from the private markets. You can follow the show on Twitter here and myself here — and don’t forget to check out last Thursday's main ep, and our bonus episode that went out on Saturday.
If you like Equity, your cup runeth over.
So, what did we get into this morning? A grip of things, which I've listed below in order:
- American Thanksgiving is this week, so news may slow as we move towards Thursday.
- New, good vaccine news is boosting stocks and hopes that the pandemic could be brought under control next year.
- Bitcoin is racing towards new records.
- LA-based Credit Key raises $33 million for its business-to-business payments platform -- in light of the Affirm IPO this round is no surprise.
- Digital freight forwarder Forto raises another $50M in round led by Inven Capital -- the pandemic is messing around with supply chains, perhaps leaving room for startups in the space to aggressively grow.
- Digital electricity supplier Tibber closes $65M Series B led by Eight Roads, Balderton -- of our three rounds, this one took me the longest to understand.
- This essay from Tomasz Tunguz, which is good.
Please stay safe this week, America. Do something boring and unfun, so that we can keep more of us alive into next year.
Equity drops every Monday at 7:00 a.m. PDT and Thursday afternoon as fast as we can get it out, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts.
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast (now on Twitter!), where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
This is an all-time first for the show, it's an Equity Leftovers. Which means that we're not focusing on a single topic like we would in an Equity Shot. This is just, well, more Equity.
Danny and I and Chris got together to chat about a few things that we could not leave out:
- Our piece looking at which venture capital firms are expected to make the most bank from the recent IPO deluge.
- Roblox's IPO filing, and our take on its impending debut.
- All things Wish IPO, including what's up with its revenue costs, and the broader ecommerce market.
- DoorDash's epic financials, and how COVID helped propel the food delivery giant into the business hall of fame.
- The exit of one of Robinhood's co-CEOs from the role.
- The HuffPo-Buzzfeed tie-up. And what is up with media companies in general.
And with this, our fourth episode in six days, we shall pause until Monday. Hugs from the Equity crew.
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast (now on Twitter!), where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
This week wound being incredibly busy. What else would a week that included both the Airbnb and Affirm IPO filings, a host of mega-rounds for new unicorns, some fascinating smaller funding events, and some new funds?
So we had a lot to get through, but with Chris and Danny and Natasha and your humble servant, we dove in headfirst:
- Affirm has filed to go public! The fintech unicorn is big, growing, and losing less money over time. We were pretty impressed in our first look. Then, with a bit more time, we dug deeper and found a weakness or two. Still, Affirm is heading public and not in poor shape.
- Airbnb filed, and we jumped into an Equity Shot as fast as we could on Tuesday to get our minds around the news. Since then, Danny dug through the venture capital winners circle -- a surprisingly small subset of firms! -- and we also got into some questions that I had about the company's finances.
- Robinhood is said to have an IPO in the books, so we talked a bit about what we know concerning its Q3 growth.
- And then there was edtech, as always. This week we talked about Tencent backing Udemy, Duolingo raising again, and Transfr picking up a Series A that we thought was super interesting.
- Danny wanted to talk about the Trust & Will Series A. We tried to not make that many jokes.
- ZenBusiness raised $55 million as well, in an outsized Series B.
- Financial Venture Studio put together a new fund to cut small checks into Seed-stage fintech startups. We think that's great. Especially given what we know about what is going on in the fintech venture world.
- And Natasha walked us through her latest deep-dive, a look into the world of virtual headquarters. This led to the worst joke of the show.
What a week! Three episodes, some new records, and a very tired us after all the action. More on Monday!
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
Today we have an Equity Shot for you about Airbnb's S-1 filing, as it looks to go public before the year is out.
- First we get into Airbnb's macro performance, which shows a stable picture historical revenue growth. There is a ton of numbers to get to so get ready for a quick dive into net revenue, gross margins, and losses.
- Then we discuss the dramatic drop in bookings, the promising comeback, and if short-term travel is Airbnb's future.
- There's a weird quarter of profitability that you should all know about, and a heads up on what to look for in Q4 numbers.
- Finally, we talk about the bullish and bearish case on Airbnb, which poetically filed the same day that Moderna announced a promising vaccine trial.
All that, and our trusty other host Danny Crichton was busy filing a post about the winners and losers of the Airbnb IPO. Ownership, you quiet, billionaire beast. There's more coming from TechCrunch on the company's IPO, and from the Equity crew on everything else we ferret out on Thursday. Stay tuned!
https://techcrunch.com/2020/11/16/airbnb-files-to-go-public/
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
This is Equity Monday, our weekly kickoff that tracks the latest big news, chats about the coming week, digs into some recent funding rounds and mulls over a larger theme or narrative from the private markets. You can follow the show on Twitter here and myself here — and don’t forget to check out last Friday’s episode that we wound up titling “Th O’s r ptinal, th dllrs r mndtry," a joke that if we observe the weekend's podcast analytics, was a mistake.
Lesson learned!
But in better news there was lots to get to this morning, so here's a digest of what we talked about:
- More good vaccine news is scrambling the stock market yet again, dinging tech stocks and bolstering non-tech shares. This also happened last Monday, but was swallowed up by terrible COVID-19 numbers by Friday.
- ProfitWell data on SaaS and the pandemic proves to be largely good news.
- C3.AI filed to go public, more on that shortly on the main site.
- UIPath could go public early next year at a $20 billion valuation.
- SpaceX pulled off its latest rocket launch, sending four humans into space.
- Parler is partially living off ultraconservative cash.
- MindTickle raised $100 million from the second Vision Fund. Its revenue growth is impressive, at 170%.
- Thoughtexchange wrapped its Series B at a total size of $34 million.
- Pharmapacks raised $250 million from Carlyle. That's a big check.
- Catch up on our DoorDash IPO coverage, if you need to. Here's our overview, here's the VC winners' list, and here's what COVID-19 did for the delivery company.
Do not sleep on the fact that our own Chris Gates is posting Equity videos from every main episode over on YouTube. He does a great job and it’s fun to be on video, as well as audio platforms.
We hope you are rested and ready to go for the rest of the week. Chat as soon as Airbnb files.
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast (now on Twitter!), where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
The full Equity crew was on hand to debate the current venture capital market, curious about how risk-on, or risk-off things really are today. Danny, Natasha and I framed the conversation around a number of news items from the week, including:
- Wrkfrce has launched, and we wanted to chat more about the future of niche media, bringing The Juggernaut's own recent round, and the Quartz shakeup into the conversation.
- And on the media front -- always a risky venture capital investing domain -- Spotify has snapped up another podcasting company, this time paying $235 for Megaphone. Our take? A string of small exits probably won't encourage VCs to take on more risk in the space (Hunter Walk said the same thing here.)
- Turning to risk more generally, I asked Natasha to weigh in on the earlier-stages of the venture market, and Danny on its later tranches. There's still lots of money, but it appears more focused on chasing winners than bolstering or supporting less-obvious startups.
- That market is not slowing a risk-on move towards more venture capital players, as the Spearhead news showed a new focus for the firm to invest in emerging fund managers.
- And there's still plenty of risk tolerance in remote-work solutions like Hopin, which just raised $125 million at a $2+ billion valuation. We're torn on the round, but Danny likes it and he's a former VC.
- And we wrapped with a chat about upcoming IPOs, and the recent SoftBank results. If DoorDash, Airbnb and others are going to go this year, they need to go soon. So far, no dice.
It was a busy week, despite the month. Expect more of the same next week.
https://techcrunch.com/2020/11/12/how-softbanks-vision-fund-turned-losses-into-gold-this-summer/
Finally, don't forget that our own Chris Gates is cutting Equity videos out of every episode that you can find over on YouTube. He does a great job and it's great to be on video, as well as audio platforms.
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
This is Equity Monday, our weekly kickoff that tracks the latest big news, chats about the coming week, digs into some recent funding rounds and mulls over a larger theme or narrative from the private markets. You can follow the show on Twitter here and myself here — and don’t forget to check out last Friday’s episode that we wound up titling "Fortnite is actually a SaaS company."
It makes sense in context, I promise.
Anyway, here's what's on today's show:
- Joe Biden was elected President and the stock market is not mad about divided government.
- Positive vaccine news sent many stocks sharply higher this morning, but not all. Some pandemic-favored tech companies instantly dropped double-digit percentage points of value.
- Esign raised $151 million, showing strength in the Chinese startup market, and the esignature space.
- And this neat Series B for Cellwize caught our attention this morning.
- Finally, a warning. The stuff that is changing lately may begin to change a bit less. We've lived in the pandemic economy long enough now that it's hard to recall what life was like before. But, we'd best start remembering as there's a lot that is going to change in the next few quarters.
This has been a wild to start the week, but with good news.
I suppose a vaccine was always going to eventually make it to this step, but, that said, the United States is seeing record COVID-19 cases today. So mask up and let's get as many of us across the line as we can.
Equity drops every Monday at 7:00 a.m. PDT and Thursday afternoon as fast as we can get it out, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts.
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast (now on Twitter!), where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
What a week from us here in the United States, where the election is still being tabulated and precisely zero people are stressed at all. But, no matter what, the wheels of Equity spin on and so Danny and Natasha and Alex and Chris got together once again to chat all things startups and venture capital.
- Up top there was breaking news aplenty, including a suit from the US government to try and block the huge Plaid-Visa deal. And, it was reported that Airbnb will drop its public S-1 filing early next week. That IPO is a go.
- Next we turned to the gaming world, riffing off of this piece digging into the venture mechanics of making and selling video games. Our hosting crew had a few differences of opinion, but were able to agree that Doom 3 was a masterpiece before moving on.
- Then it was time to talk Ant, and what the hell happened to its IPO. Luckily with Danny on deck we were in good hands. What a mess.
- Prop 22 was passed, which effectively allows Uber, Instacart, and Lyft to keep their gig workers labeled as independent contractors, instead of employees. As a result, Uber and Lyft stocks soared, while gig worker collectives said that the fight is still on.
- Natasha scooped a series of Election Day filings from venture capital firms. In the mix: Precursor Ventures Fund III, Hustle Fund II, and Insight Partner's first Opportunity Fund.
- And finally, despite Election Day turning into an entire week, the public markets are rallying. Will we see a boom of IPOs?
And, as a special treat, we didn't even mention Maricopa county for the entire episode. Take care all!
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
This is Equity Monday, our weekly kickoff that tracks the latest big news, chats about the coming week, digs into some recent funding rounds and mulls over a larger theme or narrative from the private markets. You can follow the show on Twitter here and myself here — and don’t forget to check out last Friday’s episode that was honestly very good fun.
This morning was a somewhat odd episode of our Monday show, in that the American election is tomorrow. Still, some things happened. So, here they are:
- Match, Uber, Alibaba, Square, Dropbox, EA, and Roku are expected to report earnings this week.
- The UK's venture capital industry is even less focused on investing in diverse founders than you thought, with our own Natasha Lomas reporting that "all-ethnic teams received an average of just 1.7% of the venture capital investments made at seed, early and late stage" between 2009 and 2019.
- The edtech boom is lifting all boats, it seems, not just those that belong to startups. Chegg's growth is picking up media attention.
- Marshmallow raised $30 million for its auto-insurtech product. The insurtech market is super hot these days, after the Lemonade and Root IPOs.
- Tencent led $50 million into Zego, another company that wants to provide video communications services to other companies.
- Warren raised $1.4 million to help regional cloud providers sell globally.
The American election reaches its zenith tomorrow, before a period of vote counting begins. It's going to blot out the sun this week, news-wise. But then it will be over.
Equity drops every Monday at 7:00 a.m. PT and Thursday afternoon as fast as we can get it out, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts.
https://techcrunch.com/2020/10/31/equity-shot-boo-its-the-halloween-earnings-special/
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast (now on Twitter!), where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
As promised, the whole gang is back, this time to chew on the biggest, baddest, worstest, and most troubling earnings reports from the current cycle. This week saw Amazon and Alphabet and Microsoft and Apple and Facebook report, along with a host of smaller companies.
Spoiler alert: there were more tricks than treats.
- Danny, Natasha and Alex wanted to get to the bottom of the big tech results, asking what really mattered from each of them?
- Then it was time to dig into themes. We saw plan price increases coming from Netflix and Spotify, advertising getting a boo-st from politics and 2020's overall meltdown, and boo-ming billions of consumer interest in...desktops.
- After that, a dive into the results of smaller SaaS and cloud companies, picking out trends that might help us see around the corner a bit; is the tech boom slowing, or is corporate growth merely failing to keep up with inflated investor expectations?
- This week felt like a shudder ran through the spine of our economy. The earnings paint a neutral picture, which isn't exactly an exhale to rejoice over. The coronavirus continues to be a threat that poses a risk to public businesses. For startups, that could mean a less frothy exit market nad lower valuations. And for the public, it means that the uncertain is still ahead of us. So wear a mask.
And with that, the show is back Monday morning. Have a good weekend, everyone.
Equity drops every Monday at 7:00 a.m. PDT and Thursday afternoon as fast as we can get it out, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts.
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast (now on Twitter!), where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
A few notes before we get into this. One, we have a bonus episode coming this Saturday focused on this week's earnings reports. And, second, we did not record video this week. So, if you like watching the show on YouTube, this is not the week for that!
Right, here's what Natasha, Danny, and your humble servant got into this week:
- The huge COVID-related hit that public markets took this week, with tech getting hit extra hard.
- An antitrust brouhaha! As the Vista-Plaid deal and others gets a hard look, we wondered what it could all mean for startups were a bit more suited for M&A than an IPO.
- Up next we dug into how founders are raising money before they even quit their jobs, a trend that Natasha is digging into.
- From there it was a Danny segment, riffing on his 2020s piece, and dive into where he sees the most ripe chances for startups to truly change the world. We just hope the capital follows the opportunities.
- Then it was time to talk accelerators, with Natasha detailing on the Indie Bio class, and my taking of the show through some recent Techstars companies.
- VCs raised too, with the three of us talking about The Engine and Impact America raising fresh new funds.
- And then we chatted about the Yuanfudao round, and a Series B that The Wanderlust Group just put together.
We capped off with the latest from R2c, and then got the hell off the mics. Catch you all Saturday, and then back to regular programming on Monday morning.
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
This is Equity Monday, our weekly kickoff that tracks the latest big news, chats about the coming week, digs into some recent funding rounds and mulls over a larger theme or narrative from the private markets. You can follow the show on Twitter here and myself here — and don’t forget to check out last Friday’s episode that includes some high-quality Quibi jokes, if I recall correctly.
This was a busy morning, with lots to talk about it. Here's what we got into:
- Headlines this morning that caught our eye included falling global stock markets in the wake of rising COVID-19 cases; SAP torched tens of billions of market cap by missing earnings expectations and cutting its forecast; and Ant Group will raise a bajillion dollars in its impending IPO.
- In unicorn news, Databricks is prepping an IPO that we already know a lot about. And Airbnb's shares are splitting ahead of its own IPO, a deal that we are expecting any day now.
- The PrimaryBid round was super cool, with TechCrunch covering the $50 million deal. I spoke with the company's CEO last week about the deal, sharing some of those notes on the show. And VSPN raised nearly $100 million in an esports round that was more than cool.
- On the SAP front, here's the question: Is the earnings miss and forecast miss a one-off, or something that a number of tech companies are going to suffer from? If the former, it's not that big of a deal. If the latter, SAP could be the harbinger of a reset in tech valuations.
Shoutout Lewis Hamilton and that G2 series. Ok, chat Thursday!
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast (now on Twitter!), where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
Myself, along with Danny and Natasha had a lot to get through, and more to say than expected. A big thanks to Chris for cutting the show down to size.
Now, what did we get to? Aside from a little of everything, we ran through:
- The fall of Quibi, and who lost money in the mix. TechCrunch has a bit more on the video service's downfall here.
- The Netflix quarter, and why its shares lost ground after its report. The Quibi-Netflix stories show that it's not smooth sailing in the market for online video.
- If Netflix stumbled, Snap soared with stronger-than-expected growth. The company still loses lots of money, but it's getting closer to reasonable results, and has lots of cash.
- Then we turned to a few media startups that raised, including $4 million for Stir and $2.5 million for Quake. Quake the podcasting company, mind, not the excellent FPS.
- Next was a handful of housing rounds, including the very neat Abodu and the somewhat controversial RVshare, which split the three of us about whether or not it was going to work out.
- Then we had some great reporting from Natasha to parse through, including her piece on startup hacker houses, and her report on a new women-focused accelerator class.
Whew! It was a lot, but also very good fun. Look for clips on YouTube if you'd like, and we'll chat you all next Monday.
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
It's a big day in tech because the US Federal Government is going after Google on anti-competitive grounds. Sure, the timing appears crassly political and the case is not picking up huge plaudits thus far for its air-tightness, but that doesn't mean we can ignore it.
So Danny and I got on the horn to chat it up for about 10 minutes to fill you in. For reference, you can read the full filing here, in case you want to get your nails in. It's not a complicated read. Get in there.
As a pair we dug into what stood out from the suit, what we think about the historical context, and also noodled at the end about what the whole situation could mean for startups; it's not all good news, but adding lots of competitive space to the market would be a net-good for upstart tech companies in the long-run.
And consumers. Competition is good.
You can read TechCrunch's early coverage of the suit here, and our look at the market's reaction here. Let's go!
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
This is Equity Monday, our weekly kickoff that tracks the latest big news, chats about the coming week, digs into some recent funding rounds and mulls over a larger theme or narrative from the private markets. You can follow the show on Twitter here and myself here — and don’t forget to check out last Friday’s episode.
- American equities are set to rise, which is good news for the startup-VC world as it means that the current up-cycle will continue. But the good public market is not landing evenly, as Europe sees its VC-backed IPO tally lag the rest of the world.
- The biggest recent news stories in tech and venture were Alibaba's enormous Sun Art deal that echoes the Amazon-Whole Foods deal at first blush, and SpaceX's latest success. The quiet weekend could herald the return of a slower, holiday news cycle as we close in on November.
On the funding front, we found three super cool startups:
- AiFi raised $14.5 million in a round that Crunchbase News covered. Autonomous, checkout-free stores? Count us in.
- Lawmatics raised a $2.5 million Seed round. The startup does vertical SaaS (CRM, marketing) for lawyers. That just sounds lucrative.
- And then there was Chiper, which put together a $12 million round to help build out its ecommerce service in Latin America. Investors Monashees, Kaszek Ventures, and WIND Ventures put the money up.
And to close we took a look at some Q3 2020 data from CBInsights and Crunchbase News.
That's all we got. The show is back in just a few days. Hugs!
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast (now on Twitter!), where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
The whole crew was back today, with Natasha and Danny and I gathered to parse over what was really a blast of news. Lots of startups are raising. Lots of VCs are raising. And some unicorns are shooting to go public. It's a lot to get through, but we're here to catch you up.
Here's what we got into:
- A Media Roundup: The Juggernaut raised $2 million in a round that we found to be both cool and timely. The news of a media startup raising money was paired with rumors of an exit for email media darling Morning Brew for a price-tag of up to $75 million. Undergirding each story was recent reporting concerning the revenue success that Axios is enjoying. It's nice to report on some media news that isn't fresh layoffs.
- A cluster of wellness startups raising capital: If you like to work out your mind and body, it was a good week of news for you. Calm is looking for new funds at a frewh, higher valuation. TechCrunch has coverage here. Coa did raise, adding $3 million to its coffers for mental health group classes. And Playbook put together $9.3 million for its fitness instructor platform.
- VCs raised lots: It's a hot time for VCs themselves to raise money, with OpenView, Canaan, True Ventures, Lead Edge Capital, First Round, and Khosla either closing rounds or announcing new fundraises.
- Also on the VC beat: Terri Burns was made an investing partner at GV.
- Finally, we got into the recent GetAround funding and turnaround story, which segued us into Airbnb's own recovery. TechCrunch has more here.
And with that, we're off until Monday morning. Chat soon, and stay safe.
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
This is Equity Monday, our weekly kickoff that tracks the latest big news, chats about the coming week, digs into some recent funding rounds and mulls over a larger theme or narrative from the private markets. You can follow the show on Twitter here and myself here — and don’t forget to check out last Friday’s episode.
So, what was on our minds this morning?
- Headlines: The Twilio-Segment deal is real, happening, and is priced about where we expected. Big names in the ex-China Internet want to make encryption worse. And, how the United States government would break up Google is becoming clearer by the week.
- On the Twilio Segment deal, as TechCrunch and Forbes anticipated, the transaction came in around $3.2 billion, forming something of a API monster from their combined form. As we noted on the show, a lot of investors made a mint from the transaction.
- Airkit has raised $28 million while in stealth since 2017. What does it do? Per Forbes, it's a "low-code platform" that wants to "improve customer engagement." That's notably similar to what Segment does.
- Flash Express raised $200 million, as the on-demand and delivery spaces stay hot.
- And Razorpay raised $100 million at a valuation of $1 billion, meaning that we have just witnessed the birth of yet another fintech unicorn.
- And, finally, warm public markets mean that the startup and VC game will stay afoot, even if we see a pre-election dip in IPOs.
We hope that you are well and warm and fully of good spirits. Back soon!
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast (now on Twitter!), where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
This week Natasha was on vacation, so Danny and your humble servant had to endeavour alone. She's back next week, so we'll be back to full strength as a collective soon enough.
But even with a depleted hosting crew, we had a mountain of news to get through. And to joke about, as Danny was in the mood for a laugh. Here's the rundown:
- Reddit Co-founder Alexis Ohanian’s New Venture Fund Invests in Disposable Camera App: Danny and I are arbiters of what is cool, so we were the perfect pair to discuss influencers and new social applications. This one is actually neat, and Ohanian's inclusion in the investment viz his new fund was noteworthy.
- Zira raises $3.1M for its shift-scheduling service that helps manage hourly workers: This is a round that I covered, looking into Zira.ai and its product. Our take? It's neat, but operates in a competitive market.
- Shogun raises $35M to help brands take on Amazon with faster and better sites of their own: This is a similar story. A neat company with a neat product in a space where the is proven demand (TAM, in other words), and competition.
- Unqork's $207M Series C underscores growing enterprise demand for no-code apps: Another round worth mentioning is the Unqork deal. Unqork is a no-code service that helps other businesses create apps for their companies. It's growing like a weed, and is thus something worth knowing a bit about.
- Mmhmm, Five-Month-Old Video Startup Making Virtual Meetings More Fun, Raises $31 Million Pre-Launch: Yes, mmhmm has raised more money, and, we're excited to learn, could be launching this very month.
- Remotion raises $13M to create a workplace video platform for short, spontaneous conversations: Following the Slack news, this round stood out to us. Who will build the remote work comms platform of the future that people like to use?
- And then there was a host of other stuff to get through, like the FirstMark SPAC news, Root's impending IPO, and more on Airbnb's impending public offering.
That was a lot. We did our best. Hugs and chat with you next week!
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
This is Equity Monday, our weekly kickoff that tracks the latest big news, chats about the coming week, digs into some recent funding rounds and mulls over a larger theme or narrative from the private markets. You can follow the show on Twitter here and myself here — and don’t forget to check out last Friday’s episode.
Starting the day American stocks are set to rise despite the country's president spending the weekend in a military hospital to combat his COVID-19 infection. The weekend itself was marked with national turmoil as information was incomplete, and shifting when it came to the health of the current administration.
Over the weekend a few stories caught our eyes:
- The Ola-London dustup that shows what regulatory risk remains for ride-hailing companies.
- This DappRadar report on the boom in DeFi that is boosting ethereum.
- Facebook's leaked plan to combat a push by government to break it up into smaller pieces.
And there were a number of interesting funding rounds to look into. We selected two for your pleasure this morning:
- Einride raised $10 million for its autonomous freight system. The company has a big reveal coming on the 8th.
- Cooler Screens raised $80 million for a technology that I already hate.
What else was on our mind? We're getting mentally ready for Q3 earnings. Now that it is Q4 that's what's coming up. What will the cycle bring? A clearer image of what happened in the quarter to companies that are not COVID-accelerated. What has happened to them, and can their results match investor expectations? The v-shaped recovery is actually a k-shaped recovery and, in time, it's going to show. So, buckle up for one hell of an earnings cycle.
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s VC-focused podcast (now on Twitter!), where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
This week, Alex is on a much deserved vacation (but not from Twitter, it seems) so Danny Crichton and I chatted through the news and happenings of the week. Somehow we winded our way through the latest tech controversies, gave Chris Wallace a shout out, and ended with some funding rounds. I'll be out next week so don't miss me too much, but expect the entire Equity team to be back full-speed in mid-October. Thanks, as always, to our producer Chris Gates for his patience and diligence.
Now, onto a sneak peak of what we got into:
- Moderation continues to be the root of all problems. We got into the the anti-semitic comments that were spewed on Clubhouse, and what that means for the future of the audio-only platform. As Danny so eloquently put it: if Clubhouse is having moderation problems even with an exclusive invite-only user base, the problem will grow.
- We also talked about Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong's blog post, which triggered a debate between us on whether tech companies can even choose to not be political. For the record, Black Lives Matter is not a political statement. It's a human statement. Read this op-ed for more.
- I wrote a piece about how a new program wants to be the Y Combinator for emerging fund managers. The whole "YC for X" model usually makes me roll my eyes, but listen to hear why I'm actually optimistic and bullish on programs like these taking off within tech.
- Silver Lake added a $2 billion 'long-term' hedge fund backed by Abu Dhabi to its tech finance toolkit. The strategy is a signal to privately-backed startups, and potentially a slap in the face to SoftBank.
- For a quick edtech note, I caught up with Duolingo's CEO this week in one of his rare press interviews. Luis Von Ahn explained the app's surge in bookings, and there's one key metric we pull out to noodle over.
- Danny explained Gusto's latest product launch with, wait for it, Gusto. In all seriousness, he brings up interesting points about the future of fin-tech feeling more full-suite, and free.
- Funding round chatter continued when we unpacked Lee Fixel's latest investment in India's Inshorts
- Finally, we ended with LiquidDeath, which is not the name of a drinking game, but instead the name of a startup that has succesfully attracted millions in venture capital for mountain water.
And with that, we will be back next week. Vote like your life depends on it, because it does.
Two direct listings in one day. Lots to talk about.
Asana started trading just a bit after noon Eastern today, quickly zooming to roughly about $29 a share in early trading this afternoon. Meanwhile, Palantir is running like a herd of bulls straight out of the gate, jumping to almost $11 a share in the first trades — a first day jump of nearly 50%.
Asana’s reference price was revealed yesterday by the NYSE, and it was set for $21 a share. The company had roughly 150 million shares of stock outstanding on a fully diluted basis, which gave it a pre-market reference value of $3.2 billion. Palantir for its part was assigned a reference price of $7.25 a share, giving it a $16 billion implied valuation. At its current share price, Asana is valued at roughly $4.4 billion, and Palantir comes out to about $24 billion give or take.
The two companies trade on the NYSE, with Asana under ticker ASAN and Palantir under the ticker PLTR. Early trading is heavy according to Yahoo Finance, with 156 million shares of Palantir and nearly 32 million shares of Asana already changing hands.
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
This is Equity Monday, our weekly kickoff that tracks the latest big news, chats about the coming week, digs into some recent funding rounds and mulls over a larger theme or narrative from the private markets. I subbed in for Alex this week, so send your love over to the show on Twitter here and fan mail to me right here. Also, don’t forget to check out last Friday’s episode.
This week, we couldn't help but weigh into the latest TikTok drama, but we got into why it's worth following these budgets and moves (and a whole host of other fascinating news):
- Reminder that life makes 0% sense right now, so give yourself grace if you don't feel 10/10 every single day always.
- TikTok's latest is that it's not (yet) getting banned in the States.
- The New York Times has published data on Donald Trump's tax returns.
- Register to vote.
- Alexis Ohanian has filed paperwork for his new fund, 776, eyeing a $150 million close. The name is fun to noodle over.
- Poshmark confidentially filed its S-1.
- Bill Gurley fans can put their party pants on because Palantir and Asana are direct listing this week, both potentially with a Wednesday debut.
- Chinese fitness tech startup Fiture got a $65 million Series A, Philippines payment processing API startup PayMongo landed $12 million, and another API startup, Noyo, raised the same plus $500,000 to focus on healthcare.
All that, and we didn't even get to make fun of LinkedIn stories.
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast (now on Twitter!), where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
This week Natasha Mascarenhas, Danny Crichton and your humble servant gathered to chat through a host of rounds and venture capital news for your enjoyment. As a programming note, I am off next week effectively, so look for Natasha to lead on Equity Monday and the both her and Danny to rock the Thursday show. I will miss everyone.
But onto the show itself, here's what we got into:
- Zoom's earliest investors are betting millions on a better Zoom for schools: Built on Natasha's reporting, we took a look at a neat company that wants to make Zoom better for the educational environments where it had suddenly taken the center stage. Teachers need more.
- The first rule of BookClub? No boring book clubs. Another Natasha story this week, this time about a startup that we somewhat like but can't decide how its market will be. Still, the biblophiles in your life should read this piece and get hype about rising access to authors.
- Robinhood raised $460 million more, extending its preceding $200 million Series G to a $660 million total investment. Chime also added $485 million at a new, $14.5 billion valuation. We dug into what's up with the pair and why they are raising so much money.
- The short answer is hella growth, leading us to a question and this week's headline: Why isn't Robinhood a verb yet?
- Willow, the startup making the wearable breast pump, raises $55 million: Natasha talked us through some of the issues with the phrase femtech, before Danny explained to us the need for what Willow offers. Here's to more tech being used to help more folks at more stages of life.
- Then we turned to VC media, namely our notes on a new venture capital gameshow, and, a16z launching a podcast network. We also worked what Casey Newton is up to into the same conversation.
Bon voyage for a week, please stay safe and don't forget to register to vote.
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
This is Equity Monday, our weekly kickoff that tracks the latest big news, chats about the coming week, digs into some recent funding rounds and mulls over a larger theme or narrative from the private markets. You can follow the show on Twitter here and myself here — and don’t forget to check out last Friday’s episode.
What a busy morning. We had to cover TikTok. We had to talk VC rounds. So, this is what we got up to:
- US tech stocks are poised to sell off further this morning.
- The Oracle-TikTok-Walmart-ByteDance deal is either coming into focus, or a period of even less clarity. It's hard to tell.
- Nikola founder Trevor Milton is leaving the board of his own company in the wake of fraud allegations. Shares of the company are sharply lower in pre-market trading.
- Turning to TikTok, this primer represents the best over-the-weekend roundup that we could find. But, of course, things are still breaking as we come to print.
- Since recording, Oracle has said that "upon creation of TikTok Global, Oracle/Walmart will make their investment and the TikTok Global shares will be distributed to their owners, Americans will be the majority and ByteDance will have no ownership in TikTok Global." And, President Trump said this morning that China has to give up control of TikTok or the deal is off. ByteDance has said that it will retain control. You figure that out.
- But there was some good stuff to chat about. Including the super-neat Mobile Premier League round worth $90 million, growth news from EU-based Babbel, a new London-based Seed fund that got raised, and a Swedish healthtech Series B.
- As you guessed from today's title, it was fun to see such a concentration of EU VC activity.
- Finally, will the Nikola mess discourage more SPACs from taking companies public? If the rest of the stock market wasn't selling off, we would have said no. But today? Is the answer maybe?
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast (now on Twitter!), where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
This week Natasha Mascarenhas, Danny Crichton and myself hosted a live taping at Disrupt for a digital reception. It was good fun, though of course we're looking forward to bringing the live show back to the conference next year, vaccine allowing.
Thankfully we had Chris Gates behind the scenes tweaking the dials, Alexandra Ames fitting us into the program, and some folks to watch live.
What did we talk about? All of this (and some very, very bad jokes):
- The Great American SPAC-Off: As both Opendoor and Desktop Metal approach the public markets on the wings of SPACs, we ask why. And why we have to keep talking about SPACs, which we do not want to do.
- But the public markets are hot and active, with companies like JFrog and Snowflake going public to great effect. JFrog had a great IPO. Snowflake had an insane IPO.
- But there was a lot of action from the private markets as well, including Airtable raising $185 million, ApplyBoard raised a $55 million extension, and Tonal raised $110 million, because connected fitness is hotter than SaaS at the moment.
- We also riffed on Natasha's venture trends' piece, digging into how to get to conviction in a remote-only world. As it turns out, we have notes on video games.
- And there were two new funds, including one from the Chainsmokers (hot, fun, great) and another from Greylock (traditional, Victorian, and huge). In more serious commentary, the Greylock raise continues the mega-fund era.
And then we tried to play a game that may or may not make it into the final cut. Either way, it was great to have Equity back at Disrupt. More to come. Hugs from us!
Equity drops every Monday at 7:00 a.m. PT and Thursday afternoon as fast as we can get it out, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts.
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
This is Equity Monday, our weekly kickoff that tracks the latest big news, chats about the coming week, digs into some recent funding rounds and mulls over a larger theme or narrative from the private markets. You can follow the show on Twitter here and myself here — and don’t forget to check out last Friday’s episode.
What a weekend behind us, and what a week ahead. Disrupt kicks off today, so the TechCrunch crew is busy as heck getting all the final touches put on. Snag a ticket here and we will see you soon.
On the podcast this morning:
- Stocks are set to open sharply higher as we hit record, a good and welcome comeback for investors in both private and public tech companies.
- The NVIDIA-ARM deal is finally a go, so we can put the entire saga to rest at last.
- All things TikTok: Microsoft losing the deal, Oracle possibly winning the deal, the Chinese government saying no to the whole affair, and the Chinese government only saying no to part of the deal? What is clear is that the deal is under pressure to happen and not to happen. We'll know more soon.
- Descartes Underwriting raised $18.5 million for its insurtech solution, while Xometry raised $75 million in a Series E for offshore manufacturing in factories with spare capacity.
- GoJek and Grab may merge.
- And, finally, the CBP is a huge mess and an embarrassment.
Ok, that's all we have time for today. See you at Disrupt in a few hours!
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast (now on Twitter!), where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
The whole crew was back, with Natasha Mascarenhas and Danny Crichton and myself chattering, and Chris Gates behind the scenes tweaking the dials as always. This week was a real team effort as we are heading into the maw of Disrupt -- more here, see you there -- but there was a lot of news all the same.
So, here's what we got to:
- AngelList is doubling down on rolling funds, driving that SaaS revenue into the firm that is also investing in the rolling funds. So that's neat. (Really!)
- Edtech stayed hot this week with Byju's raising $500 million from Silver Lake. Founded back in 2011, Byju's is the highest-valued edtech company that we can think of, now worth $10.8 billion.
- And speaking of Silver Lake, the group just poured $1 billion into a part of the Reliance empire, this time Reliance Retail. And we talked about JioMart, which is taking on both Flipkart and Amazon in the country.
- Next there were two companies with names that start with "S" that raised $100 million in the last week, namely Snyk -- more here -- and Sprinklr -- more here.
- Sticking to our "S" theme, Slack's earnings were incredibly interesting. The company's quarter didn't get plaudits from investors, and it did note some negative COVID impacts that could impact startups as well.
- And, one more S-company to get through: Snowflake. We were all a-twitter about the company's new valuation range and fact that fucking Berkshire Hathaway is going to invest in it. That's wild! What a thing!
- Finally on the IPO front, we did a quick Palantir update. Danny has all the latest here.
We wrapped with whatever this is, which was at least good for a laugh. We are back next week at Disrupt, so see you all there!
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
This is Equity Monday, our weekly kickoff that tracks the latest big news, chats about the coming week, digs into some recent funding rounds and mulls over a larger theme or narrative from the private markets. You can follow the show on Twitter here, and myself here, and don’t forget to check out last Friday’s episode.
- Headline roundup: TikTok's parent will pay an irregular bonus to staff, a move that is causing ripples as Bytedance's social service finds itself an international political football. Reed Hastings is not big on working from home. And China's fight with Australia is escalating, again showing how willing China is to become an ostracized internationally; in business terms this makes the India market more important to tech companies.
- New IPO filings are out from both JFrog and Sumo Logic. We're going for a dive soon, but the short riff is that JFrog wants up to $37 per share, valuing it at more than $3 billion while Sumo Logic wants $21 per share, valuing it at more than $2 billion. (More here on Sumo Logic and here on JFrog.)
- Big rounds: Byju has put together a half-billion dollars at a $10.8 billion valuation, while Mollie has stacked on $106 million at a valuation that makes it a unicorn.
- Small rounds: Fashionphile has raised $38.5 million, Cloudentity raised $13 million, and Sarbacane has raised $27 million.
- And as we recorded, tech shares were set to sell off yet again.
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast (now on Twitter!), where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
The whole crew was back, with Natasha Mascarenhas and Danny Crichton and myself chattering with Chris Gates behind the scenes making it all work. An extra shoutout to Natasha this week as we spent a lot of time talking about edtech, a category that she spearheads for us and has brought to the show. It's a big deal!
We're on YouTube now, don't forget, and with that, let's get into the news:
- Climax Foods raised $7.5 million to help fuel its work to develop alt-foods that are not animal-based. The Equity crew votes that this is a tasty deal. And, Capchase has raised $4.6 million to help cash-out SaaS contracts ahead of their real revenue accrual. Our read is that more financing options for SaaS companies will lead to lower costs of capital for those startups that want it. And, the Envision Accelerator made it through batch one and is on to batch two.
- Then we chatted about edtech, with Natasha talking us through Owl Ventures raising huge new funds, Course Hero extending its Series B, Juni hitting $10M ARR and raising about as much, and Unacademy raising tons of cash from Vision Fund 2.
- Next up, Patreon also got a new check, which means that it eventually has to go public at some point given that it is now a fancy unicorn.
- And speaking of IPOs, Bumble is thinking about going public in 2021, Wish has filed, albeit privately, and GoodRX is going public as well. And it makes money.
- What else? This a16z post on IPOs that we fangirl/fanboy'd over as it is good. And we forgot to mention this Fred Wilson post, but it is also good.
And with that, we are nearly at the weekend which is a long one thanks to a holiday, so expect Equity Monday to be, in fact, Equity Tuesday next week. Hugs and good vibes from the Equity Crew!
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
This is Equity Monday, our weekly kickoff that tracks the latest big news, chats about the coming week, digs into some recent funding rounds and mulls over a larger theme or narrative from the private markets. You can follow the show on Twitter here, and myself here, and don’t forget to check out last Friday’s episode.
This weekend was a welcome reprieve from last week's insane news cycle inside the world of technology and money. If you are still catching your breath from the Great IPO Wave of last Monday, we feel you. Here's what we got into this morning:
- The TikTok sale could be in trouble, this time due to China changing its rules on sales of tech firms that have certain algorithms. TikTok parent company Bytedance intends to comply with the rules, but what impact the news could have the sale of the social service is unclear as of yet, though the developments are not good if you were in favor of a deal.
- American tech shares are set to rise once again after setting records last week.
- Equity is back on YouTube, hell yeah!
- From the weekend: Medium's growth in both traffic (pageviews) and income (paying subscribers) is super impressive according to its latest reporting. And the publishing platform and media company is doubling-down on product to fend off upstarts like the popular Substack. Per a Bloomberg report, tech IPO fundraising could set a record in 2020. And, to ground us in a macro-economic sense, Chinese banks are being forced to take a profit hit to support other companies.
- In the funding round domain, Semalytix raised €4.3 million in Series A funding according to TechCrunch for its pharmaceutical-AI service. And India-based Eruditus raised $113 million for its executive-focused education service. That's a lot of money, but like we've been saying, edtech is hot.
- And, finally, will there be enough horns for all these hot SaaS rounds that are getting done in a blur today? What if SaaS revenue multiples slip by 20%? Then what? When deals go so fast that due diligence suffers, the hangover can last a bit.
And that is the week's Monday ep, thanks for sticking with through our super-busy week last week. Whew!
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast (now on Twitter!), where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
This is the fourth episode of the week, pushing our production calendar to the test. Happily we've managed to hold it together amidst the news deluge that the last few days have brought. It was a good week for our scheduling change, with the main episode of the show coming to you on Thursday afternoon versus Friday morning.
Change is good.
But unchanging this time around was our hosting lineup, with Natasha Mascarenhas and Danny Crichton and myself yammering with Chris Gates on the mix. Here's what we got into:
- The CEO of TikTok is out, bids are swirling, and whom will wind up owning a piece of all of TikTok's global operations is not clear. Walmart is in the mix, apparently, which feels very 2020.
- The New York Stock Exchange has gotten approval from the SEC for a new type of direct listing, one in which the company going public can sell a bloc of shares during the normal price discovery process. This means that all the banker-faff of setting a price and roadshowing to various investor groups could be going the way of the buffalo.
- About time, maybe? That was our take after reading this Bill Gurley note and the latest SEC news.
- But while the direct listing world is getting more interesting, the SPAC world is taking flight. Desktop Metal is going public via a SPAC which is all sorts of fascinating. A younger, Boston-based unicorn going public in this manner is eye catching!
- And then two funding rounds, the first from Finix, which can't stop adding to its Series B. And Mural, which raised the largest Series B we can recall.
And with that, we're all going to bed. We're tired. No more news, thanks!
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast (now on Twitter!), where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
Yep, it's another Equity Shot. We're back. And then we're going to be back on Friday. Because we can't stop talking about the biggest news week in the world of startups and venture capital in some time.
Before we start, shoutout to the NBA for the growing, wildcat strike to protest racist police violence in America.
Ok, back to our regularly scheduled programming. This time 'round Natasha and your humble servant were joined by Lucas Matney, a member of the TechCrunch reporting team and a first-timer on Equity. Where's he been all this time? Covering all sorts of things, including VR startups for the publication. He was also a big part of our coverage of both days of Demo Day, making him a perfect fit for this episode.
Danny was given a break to sit at home, play board games, and iron his favorite sweatshirt. He's back Friday morning.
In case you've missed the words, here's what we wrote this week on the subject:
- All the Day One Y Combinator startups
- Our favorite Day One Y Combinator startups
- All the Day Two Y Combinator startups
- Our favorite Day Two Y Combinator startups
Those entries should be pretty exhaustive, so dig into them when you can.
And make sure to read Natasha's great piece on a super-hot startup from the batch, which comes up in the show. Peep that we are back on YouTube and we'll be right back. Stay cool!
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast (now on Twitter!), where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
We're back out of sequence, because literally every company you can name (well, almost) dropped an S-1 yesterday so we had to sit down and parse them out a bit. That so many filings dropped during the same two days when we had Y Combinator's two-day Demo Day at the same time meant that we were all a bit punchdrunk, but we rallied.
Natasha and Danny and Chris and myself all piled back onto the mics to dig through all the numbers. Here's a rundown of the companies we went through:
- Palantir, which filed its formal S-1 during our recording session. Danny covered most of the news last Friday, but the public doc is now live, so happy sleuthing.
- Unity's huge IPO that shows how big gaming is. Natasha connected it to the broader Apple-Epic dustup, and we all reviled in its growth results.
- Snowflake had Danny so excited he was conjuring scripted segues, and we were all impressed at its historical growth. Sure, it lost a lot of money last year, but, hey, Snowflake has dialed that back as well.
- And then there was Asana, a company I've covered quite a lot over the years. Our general take is that the company's growth has been good, if it is losing more money than we anticipated. Still, Asana could set a neat new precedent of raising debt ahead of a direct listing. This is one to watch.
- And then we spent a little time on JFrog and Sumo Logic (more here), because we are nothing if not completionists.
Got all of that? It was a lot of facts to get through, but we did our best and we hope this helps. More tomorrow as we talk Y Combinator with a special guest host. Chat tomorrow!
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
This is Equity Monday, our weekly kickoff that tracks the latest big news, chats about the coming week, digs into some recent funding rounds and mulls over a larger theme or narrative from the private markets. You can follow the show on Twitter here, and myself here, and don’t forget to check out last Friday’s episode.
What was on the docket this morning? All sorts of good stuff, though the Sumo Logic S-1 did drop just after we wrapped. Here's today's rundown:
- YC Demo day is this week, so make sure to stick around TechCrunch and Extra Crunch for all our coverage.
- SPACs continue, with more automotive companies looking at alt-routes to the public markets. This time it's Luminar. And, here's the Bill Gurley post that we promised to link to.
- E-commerce and on-demand are booming in China after we saw similar results via Uber and domestic e-commerce players.
- The Fortnite-Apple brouhaha continues with more filings and even Microsoft weighing in. At the same time TikTok v. The United States appears set to go to court. (Zuck is behind some anti-TikTok Washington sentiment, it appears.)
- The Palantir S-1 has gone missing. Where is it? Give it to us!
- Dataiku has raised $100 million for its enterprise AI platform. Forbes has more.
- Datasembly has raised $10.3 million in new capital for its IRL store data service. TechCrunch has more.
- The Anti-Antitrust Club is live and you can read it here. We're trying to find out who is taking on the biggest names in tech on purpose. Who would be so garishly bold? The Anti-Antitrust club!
Whew, with YC and Palantir this week and a chat with Twilio's CEO it's going to be an active few days. Ready?
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast (now on Twitter!), where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
What happens when the entire podcast crew is a bit tired from, you know, everything, and does its very best? This episode, apparently. A big thanks to Chris Gates for helping us trim the fat and make something good for you.
Before we get into the topics of the week, don't forget that Equity is not back on YouTube most weeks, so if you wanted to see us do the talking with some fun extra from the production team, you can do so here. More to come once I get my new external camera to work.
That done, here's what Natasha and Danny and I got into this week:
- The public markets are afire these days with Apple reaching $2 trillion in market cap, and Tesla's stock doing all sorts of odd things. In short, stocks have only gone up for a while and that means that there's warm, nigh-stuffy temperatures around assets of all types.
- This is leading to a surge in liquidity, unsurprisingly, as asset managers of all types look to take advantage of the times. So, Asana is prepping a direct listing, Airbnb has filed privately, And ThredUp is eyeing an early-2021 IPO. Around the same time as Coinbase, we'd reckon.
- Airbnb banned parties as well, which wound up being the title of the show.
- And SPACs are still happening in rapid-fire fashion. The Equity crew is not super impressed about the whole affair, but I'll say that with Paul "Fucking" Ryan involved, it's probably a sign of the top.
- And capping the liquidity chat, Natasha ran us through what Chamath is up to now, and Danny rabbited on about Kabbage.
- Funding rounds! Welcome raised a $1.4 million check that I covered, Labster raised $9 million that Natasha wrote about, Carrot Fertility picked up $24 million that we all thought was pretty smart, and our friends at Crunchbase News wrote about PadSplit, which is honestly neat but we ran low on time after spending too much time on SPACs. Check them out here.
Whew! We're doing a lot over at TechCrunch.com, so, stay tuned and know that if we were a bit frazzled this week it's because we're working our backends off to bring you neat things. You will dig 'em.
Ok, chat Monday, a show that we're already planning. Stay cool!
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
This is Equity Monday, our weekly kickoff that tracks the latest big news, chats about the coming week, digs into some recent funding rounds and mulls over a larger theme or narrative from the private markets. You can follow the show on Twitter here, and myself here, and don’t forget to check out last Friday’s episode.
This morning we had a bit of a detour, wandering into the world of BigTech to wonder what is going on with those megacorps. Too big for their own good, or too big to be good, here's what's up with the incumbents:
- Germany is taking on Amazon at the very same time that Canada is taking on Amazon, meaning that the Seattle giant is taking shots from two key markets at the same time.
- Google is having a war of words with Australia, after a ruling in the country didn't go its way.
- Walled gardens are seeing their walls come under heavy fire, which means that Apple and Google are fighting both sides of their marketplaces (producers, consumers) at once at the moment, which isn't great.
- And Microsoft might buy TikTok.
All told it seems that the biggest tech companies are busy defending their market position instead of re-earning it with great products. A good time for startups? I think so. When incumbents are busy fighting with governments, themselves, and each other, it's a great time to show up, steal a march, and build neat products that take away their momentum.
On the funding front, we peeked at the neat Help Lightning round, the Agiloft investment, and the Vertafore exit.
And then there was this report concerning Asana, which is growing nicely for a company of its size and could actually be cheap at its current price? Anyway, we want the company to get on with getting public so that we can read its S-1 filing. Give it to us!
All that and we had some fun, chat soon!
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast (now on Twitter!), where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
This week we had the full crew around once again, Natasha Mascarenhas, Danny Crichton, Chris Gates, and myself. And as always, it was key to have the full crew as there was an ocean of news to get through. Before we get into the show, make sure you've checked out Danny's latest work on the TechCrunch List and let's get into it:
- The TikTok saga continues: This week we spent a few minutes discussing why bankers are incentivized to make the proposed TikTok-Microsoft deal as competitive as possible. Or at least make it look as competitive as possible. And, there's some data from inside Microsoft about how the deal is being viewed.
- Airbnb could file to go public this month! It might go public before the year is out! That's way better than we expected. (Bloomberg got its Q2 finances.)
- Palantir could file for a direct listing next month! That's great. We wanted to know what Palantir really is, namely a consultancy or a tech company. And then we played valuation bingo so that we can look back later and mock ourselves.
- I was very excited about the Duck Creek IPO. Few of my friends joined me in being excited.
- The three of us also took a minute to riff on the latest Pinterest news, namely that it's poorly run and is sexist per its now-former COO. We'd love to stop covering these stories, but they keep happening so, on we go.
- Danny had some neat SPAC data to share, helping illustrate that SPACs are not merely a meme, they are a real, driving force of public company action this year. As was Tesla's announced stock split, which led us to ask why a few times.
- Next up, Natasha walked us through her latest work digging into how GenZ is shaking up the funding world. We framed the changes in some historical context, and decided that really in the end the kids are alright.
- Danny brought us to a close, with a note on Conduit (connecting founders and early-stage investors) and Circle (creator software). Both are worth your time.
And that was our show! We are back Monday morning. Stay cool!
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
This is Equity Monday, our weekly kickoff that tracks the latest big news, chats about the coming week, digs into some recent funding rounds and mulls over a larger theme or narrative from the private markets. You can follow the show on Twitter here, and myself here, and don’t forget to check out last Friday’s episode.
This morning was a bit of a grab-bag of news, but of course we had to start off with the biggest story from the past few weeks:
- It's TikTok around the clock: News broke recently that Twitter could be interested in TikTok after Apple came and somewhat went as a possible suitor. What matters is that Microsoft is not a full-lock on TikTok's exit. No word lately on whether the Trump administration's decision to try to extort a chunk of the sale price will go through. (It won't.)
- TikTok may sue the Trump administration as early as this week over its possible forced sale.
- Do startup culture, venture capital, and mental health mix well?
- Amazon is talking about turning some malls into fulfillment centers, TechCrunch has more.
- The huge wealth of major tech companies is only growing, meaning that a rising share of the public market run is based on a handful of big-tech results.
- Flipkart is building an accelerator.
- Expert System has raised $29.4 million, while Palmetto has raised $29 million, and Silverfort put together a $30 million round. How's that for three rounds of the same size?
All that and earnings season is largely behind us, leaving tech companies generally unscathed. So, the good times will persist for a while yet. Have a great week!
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast (now on Twitter!), where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
As ever I was joined by TechCrunch managing editor Danny Crichton and our early-stage venture capital reporter Natasha Mascarenhas. We had Chris on the dials and a pile of news to get through, so we were pretty hype heading into the show.
But before we could truly get started we had to discuss Cincinnati, and TikTok. Pleasantries and extortion out of the way, we got busy:
- Ecommerce and fintech stay hot as Square reported big earnings, Shopify and Etsy do well, and more. We tied this to recent VC results in the fintech space, which saw a record number of $100 million rounds in Q2. There were some signs of weakness elsewhere, but the general state of things in tech is surprisingly hot, given the pandemic and recession.
- Gumroad founder Sahil Lavingia has a new seed fund that he built in collaboration with AngelList.
- D2C women's-health startup Stix raised a $1.3 million Seed round.
- Quantum-computing startup Rigetti raised a $79 million Series C.
- Rippling raised $145 million at an eye-popping $1.35 billion valuation; the company's last value, set a year ago, was $270 million.
- AgentSync put together a $4.4 million Seed round to help bring APIs to insurtech.
- Turning away from funding to some neat product news, India-based Statiq is building a bootstrapped EV-charging network.
- And as we wrapped, the Byju-WhiteHat Jr. deal was neat, JIO is soaking up a huge amount of Indian VC, and Natasha's latest piece on learning pods had us arguing about what things are worth.
It was another fun week! As always we appreciate you sticking with and supporting the show!
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
This is Equity Monday, our weekly kickoff that tracks the latest big news, chats about the coming week, digs into some recent funding rounds and mulls over a larger theme or narrative from the private markets. You can follow the show on Twitter here, and myself here, and don’t forget to check out last Friday’s episode.
As you probably expected, we had a lot to say about the TikTok-Microsoft tie-up that is somehow still afoot. Other things happened too, don't worry. Here's the rundown:
- The TikTok-Microsoft deal is back on.
- Lordstown Motors is looking to go public via a SPAC. To which we have to say that the EV boom and SPAC crush are going to fuse and lose some people a lot of money. Not this deal, necessarily, mind.
- Google is dumping money into ADT as part of a Nest deal.
- And Zoom's latest move regarding the Chinese market feels like a harbinger of times to come.
- On the TikTok front, Microsoft never really fully abandoned consumer hardware and software, it just pruned deeply under its current CEO Satya Nadella. Windows Phone? Gone. Surface? Bigger than ever. Mixer? No. Bing? Yep. That sort of thing. And Microsoft, like any modern super-platform, doesn't just want to own your time when you are at work. It wants to burn your eyes out around the clock.
- For a host of ByteDance backers like Yuri Milner, Sequoia Capital China, General Atlantic, SoftBank, and Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, the deal could be rather lucrative, we presume.
- Rounds for Wejo (coverage here), Lezzoo (coverage here), and Feather (coverage here).
- Finally, why does Microsoft want to buy TikTok? We had a number of ideas that all sort of summed to maybe, but when we ran through the big tech companies that were possible suitors -- ports in the Trump storm -- maybe Microsoft makes more sense than we would have guessed?
Whatever the case, we can't wait until Satya announces the deal by dancing and pointing at text on a screen while wearing something silly.
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast (now on Twitter!), where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
We had the full team this week: Myself, Danny, and Natasha on the mics, with Chris running skipper as always.
Sadly this week we had to kick off with a correction as I am 1. Dumb, and, 2. See point one. But after we got past SPAC nuances (shoutout David Ethridge), we had a full show of good stuff, including:
- Y Combinator Demo Day is going virtual, as before, and its coming iteration will also be live. The Equity crew all agree that this is the right thing to do, and probably more fun to boot. And now the founders can sweat a live event, too! What fun.
- Speaking of live events going digital, Disrupt is coming up. And it is going to be great. Read more here.
- A group of Stanford business school students are putting together and investment vehicle to invest money into themselves, which is a good idea and something that is highly risible. Luckily, Danny and Natasha had good things to say about the effort.
- Ro raised $200 million, and any jokes that were inappropriate are Danny's fault. The company's $200 million valuation makes the news that its competitor Hims could go public via a SPAC all the more exciting.
- I covered a neat round: $20 million for Instrumental, a super neat startup that has me hype.
- Facebook is still hunting up ways to get a better look into growing startups -- this time via investments in venture capital funds.
- And, finally, there were some hearings this week, you might have heard. We're working on something neat that you are going to love on just that topic, so stay tuned.
And that's Equity for this week. We are back Monday morning early, so make sure you are keeping tabs on our socials. Hugs, talk soon!
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
After the morning show went out, the Equity crew could not shut up about the Qualtrics-SAP deal, so we had no choice but to jump back into recording mode for an off-the-cuff Equity Shot. As always, Shots are short-form Equity episodes that focus on a single, news topic.
https://techcrunch.com/2020/07/27/why-is-sap-spinning-qualtrics-out-via-an-ipo/
Building off of Danny's SAP knowledge, Natasha's curiosity about the future Qualtrics S-1, and my own recent dive into the SAP and Qualtrics numbers, we managed to cover quite a lot of ground. So, if you wanted to know:
- Why did SAP have to pay so much for Qualtrics back in the day?
- Why is SAP willing to part with Qualtrics so soon after buying it?
- How much might Qualtrics be worth?
- And, of course, did the Equity team expect to see this news in 2020?
Then you are probably going to like what we have in store for you.
Spoiler on that last as the answer is a firm no, but, all the same, what fun. That's about it for this Equity Shot, hit play, have fun, and we are back Friday morning unless something else happens, like a Palantir S-1.
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
This is Equity Monday, our weekly kickoff that tracks the latest big news, chats about the coming week, digs into some recent funding rounds and mulls over a larger theme or narrative from the private markets. You can follow the show on Twitter here, and myself here, and don’t forget to check out last Friday’s episode.
Here's what we talked about today:
- Headlines: SAP is spinning out part of Qualtrics, Dave leaked customer data, Asian markets were mixed while US shared opened green. Cryptos and gold are up at the same time, marking the moment as a melt-up.
- The Qualtrics news was the loudest note from the weekend's jam, coming a few years after SAP bought the Utah-based tech giant. SAP will retain a majority stake even after the debut, but the plan should give Qualtrics more freedom, and SAP a better valuation for the piece of the smaller company that it retains. That's if the spin-out goes well, of course.
- Dave's leak looks bad, and will test what happens to more nascent fintech properties when they endure this sort of breach.
- Looking ahead, this is a huge earnings week. We'll see results from Amazon, Apple, Alphabet, Facebook, and others.
- And, finally, rounds from StashAway, cargo.one, and Blueheart.
Closing, we're in exciting territory on the public markets given that high share prices are giving big companies more ammunition than ever. Let's see what they can get done with it before the window closes.
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast (now on Twitter!), where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
Up top the crew this week was the regular contingent: Danny Crichton, Natasha Mascarenhas, and myself. As a tiny programming note, we're going back to posting some videos on YouTube in a few weeks, so make sure to peep the TechCrunch channel if that's your jam. And we did a special episode on the SPAC boom, if you are into financial arcana. For more on SPAC's --> here
The Equity crew tried something new this week, namely centering our main conversation around a theme that we're keeping tabs on: The resilience of tech during the current pandemic-led recession.
Starting with the recent economic news, it's surprising that tech's layoffs have slowed to a crawl. And, as we've recently seen, there's still plenty of money flowing into startups, even if there are some dips present on a year-over-year basis. Why are things still pretty good for startups, and pretty good for major tech companies? We have a few ideas, like the acceleration of the digital transformation (more here, and here), and software eating the world. The latter concept, of course, is related to the former.
After that it was time to go through some neat funding rounds from the week, including:
- Dumpling raising $6.5 million to help individual shoppers build their own Instacart;
- Kibbo's shot at making the #vanlife happen for more folks, something that we think is a good fit for the pandemic and the mobile professional.
- Sora's $5.3 million raise for no-code HR connective tissue, something that I was rather bullish on but drew some chat about no-code itself, and if the trend is more hype than substance.
All that and I have a newsletter launching this weekend that if you read, you will automatically be 100% cooler. It's called the TechCrunch Exchange, and you can snag it for free here.
Hello everyone, it's a busy week with TechCrunch Early Stage underway and a slew of tech earnings to parse through. But that didn't stop the Equity crew from sitting down to chat about the recent wave of SPAC commentary
Danny and I wanted to talk about what a SPAC is -- the acronym stands for special purpose acquisition company -- and why everyone seems to be chatting them up.
Why do you care? Here's some context, in simple bullet-point format:
- Yesterday, after raising its IPO price range, Jamf priced at $26 per share, selling more shares than it had previously anticipated.
- Today it opened trading around $48, and is currently worth $40.18 per share, far above its IPO price.
- Recent first-day gains, like Jamf's own, have peeved elements of the venture classes who think that the gap between an IPO price and where a company first trades is money that Wall Street bankers, and the IPO process itself, have stolen.
Enter SPACs, which could offer a way for unicorns and other venture-backed companies to go public through a different pricing mechanism. If that alternative method of pricing the company would be better is not clear, but we tried to talk it through.
Equity is back Friday morning, of course. And please bear in mind that when I referred to "Robinhood dipshits," I was talking about all retail investors as a cohort, not merely the folks at any one particular trading platform. Thanks to the in-market prestige of Robinhood, however, I did use it as short-hand for retail investors more broadly.
Oh, and follow the show on Twitter.
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
This is Equity Monday, our weekly kickoff that tracks the latest big news, chats about the coming week, digs into some recent funding rounds, and mulls over a larger theme or narrative from the private markets. You can follow the show on Twitter here, and myself here, and don’t forget to check out last Friday’s episode.
Got all that? Great, let's talk about what we went over today:
- Chinese stocks were up, Ant is going public in both Hong Kong and Shanghai, and eBay is looking to offload its classified-ads unit for $8 billion.
- The efforts to make TikTok appear apolitical are struggling after its parent company does something very political.
- Xpeng, a Chinese EV company, added $500 million to its Series C round.
- Coming up: TechCrunch Early Stage, which is going to rule, and a host of earnings results from companies like Microsoft, Snap, Intel, among others.
- Funding rounds from Vestr, Mori, Soterea, and Burn To Give. More notes on the Vestr round here, Mori here, Soterea here, and Burn To Give here.
And we closed the show with a short thought-bubble on manias. What constitutes a bubble? I don't know precisely, but the electric car (EV) industry has certainly seen its fair share of ups and downs. China's EV market has see its booms and busts, with the IPO of Nio operating as a good example of enthusiasm (its IPO), declining faith (its later cratering share price), and the rebirth of optimism (its recent return-to-form) in its industry.
Xpeng's huge new Series C+ round and the huge valuation that Tesla has managed as a public company in recent months add currency to the idea that the EV market has once again swung towards too much optimism. We'll see.
llo and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
This week was full of news of all sorts, but as we recorded both Danny and Natasha were still locked out of their Twitter accounts after a proletariat revolution on the social platform saw the ruling Blue Checkmark Class forced into silence. That's not really what happened, but it sounds better than actually went down at Big Social.
Anyway, Twitter accounts or not, the three of us gathered to parse through a wave of news:
- The new TechCrunch List that Danny spent a very long time compiling has arrived! It's live! You can find it here. It is good.
- And, if you want to know which VCs were even more fêted by founders, head here. (If you are irked that you did not make either list, please email Danny, not the show!)
- Moving on, Google is putting billions into Reliance Jio after every other company in the world did the same. Google is buying a bit less of the Indian telecom than the search giant, but between the two of them it's been more than $10 billion in dealmaking. Perhaps Reliance Jio is done raising money? At last?
- Udemy is hunting up more capital at a higher valuation, reports say, providing Natasha with the perfect moment to let us know what is going with edtech.
- Turning to funding rounds, I was hype about the Macro round that TechCrunch covered this week, Danny wanted to chat about The Browser Company's similarly-sized $5 million round, and Natasha talked us through LiteBoxer's combined $6 million in new capital.
- Closing, we talked about IPOs for a hot second. The IPO window is open, and now that nCino and GoHealth have gone public, we want to know who is next.
It was a lovely time and there is a bit of show news. Namely that Equity is coming back to YouTube either this week or the next. So if you want to see us talk, soon you will be able to! Again!
Oh, and follow the show on Twitter. If you can, that is.
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
This is Equity Monday, our week-starting primer in which we go over the latest news, dig into the week ahead, talk about some neat funding rounds and dive into the latest big news from the startup world. (You can follow the show on Twitter here, and myself here, if you are so inclined! Don’t forget to check out last Friday’s episode as well. All the cool kids are doing it.)
Some weekends are slow. This weekend was not. Here's the round-up of news that we had to talk about:
- Qualcomm pours capital into India's Reliance Jio, which has now raised $15.7 billion in the past three months.
- Google intends to invest $10 billion into India over the next five to seven years, looking to put capital to work in through a mix of "a mix of equity investments, partnerships, and operational, infrastructure and ecosystem investments" via a new "Google for India Digitization Fund."
- And, Google has education plans in India. India! It's a big deal!
- WeWork might turn cash flow positive in 2021. That's still a ways from now, but it does go to show that deep under the flesh of whatever WeWork claimed to be during its 2019 IPO process, there was a real company somewhere in its bones. How large a company is not clear.
- UIPath raised $225 million in a Series E that values it at over $10 billion. The company's ARR has quadrupled to $400 million in the past few years.
- Finally, US tech's response to the Hong Kong "security" law that isn't.
Up ahead we have a fascinating earnings season, one that the media doesn't expect to go very well. Stocks were up as we wrote the show, so it appears that Wall Street is more bullish than worried. We'll see. Netflix reports later this week. Then, next week, we really get underway with Snap, IBM, Microsoft, and others.
We also touched on three funding rounds: More money for cancer-focusedAI startup Paige, $6.3 million for FitXR to keep working on its fitness VR work, and this small round from Russia, which reminded us that you can build a startup even in a failing democracy.
https://techcrunch.com/2020/07/10/what-do-investors-bidding-up-tech-shares-know-that-the-rest-of-us-dont/
Wrapping, this earnings season is a big deal. Lots of tech investors are betting that an accelerated digital transformation is going to push most tech shops into a growth curve that makes their equity attractive, even at elevated prices. Quite a lot of capital has been sunk in this idea. We'll see what happens when the numbers come in.
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
We wound up having more to talk about than we had time for but we packed as much as we could into 34 minutes. So, climb aboard with Danny, Natasha, and myself for another episode of Equity.
Before we get into topics, a reminder that if you are signing up for Extra Crunch and want to save some money, the code "equity" is your friend. Alright, let's get into it:
- Robinhood is back in the news this week after a New York Times piece dug into its history, product decisions, and more. Tidbits galore are to be had, but the Equity crew wanted to debate the morality of providing exotic financial tooling to less-experienced users.
- We followed that debate with a dive into immigration, the latest news from the government, and our takes on the matter. TechCrunch has covered the recent news, and provided some context on the broader concept. Our takeaway is that doing self-defeating things for no reason isn't brilliant for the country as a whole.
- Postmates has a home! After winding up somewhere in the middle of the pack of the on-demand cohort a few years back, the rise of DoorDash put Postmates in a pickle. Happily, Uber was on hand to de-brine the unicorn for $2.65 billion in stock. That's a bit more money than Postmates' last valuation. What we want to know next is how the sale price impacted common stockholders. Email us if you know.
- Palantir has filed to go public, but privately, so that's really all there is to say about that. Unless you need a history lesson.
- Finally, funding rounds. We had three this week: MonkeyLearn raising $2.2 million for no-code AI, Quaestor raising $5.8 million for startup financial tooling, and $4.5 million for Mmhmm which is both timely and neat.
Whew! Past all that we had some fun, and, hopefully, were of some use. Hugs and chat Monday!
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
This is Equity Monday, our week-starting primer in which we go over the latest news, dig into the week ahead, talk about some neat funding rounds, and dive into the latest big news from the startup world. (You can follow the show on Twitter here, and myself here, if you are so inclined! Don't forget to check out last Friday's episode as well. All the cool kids are doing it.)
What a weekend! After some quiet, somewhat dull off-week periods, this weekend brought us twists and turns that were good fun. Most dealt with a possible Uber-Postmates tie up, so we wrote the show to talk about the transaction's unconfirmed nature.
Then, it got confirmed. So, here's the second edition of today's Equity Monday, recast due to the deal's official nature:
- Uber will buy Postmates for $2.65 billion in an all-stock transaction. Uber shares were up this morning ahead of the open on the wings of the rumor -- wings that beat even harder after the deal was confirmed. Uber investors seem pleased, for now, that after losing out on GrubHub their company has managed to buy a smaller player. Doing so may give Uber more leverage over restaurants and drivers, and boost Uber's H2 2020 revenue numbers that will still be impacted by COVID-19 and its resulting economic impacts.
- Q3 earnings don't kick off for tech and other VC-backed companies for a bit, and heading into the week the public markets are up. Despite all the bad news. The inverse correlation between bad news (short-term, economic), and stock market gains is slowly moving from joke to sordid reality.
- This week we're keeping tabs on US and Chinese economic data, the geopolitical situation in Hong Kong and the India-China border, and Q2 VC data as it comes out.
- We also dug into three funding rounds this morning, detailing Scalefast raising $22 million, DigniFi raising $14 million, and AirVet raising $14 million as well. More international rounds to come, we promise.
We wrapped this morning wondering if Postmates can provide a narrative boost to Uber, a company that isn't going to have the best Q2 numbers in its history. With Postmates tucked under its arm going into the earnings call, Uber can double-down on its Uber Eats narrative, flash Postmates around the room, and promise that Rides data will get better as well.
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
Before we dive in, don't forget that the show is on Twitter now, so follow us there if you want to see discarded headline ideas, outtakes from the that got cut, and more. It's fun!
Back to task, listen, we're tired too. But we didn't let that stop us from packing this week's Equity to the very gills with news and notes and jokes and fun. Hopefully you can chuckle along with myself and Natasha and Danny and Chris on the dials as we riffed through all of this:
- Journalism, venture capitalists, and not being a colossal jerk: Listen in for more, but there's once again a brouhaha in the world of technology twitter and media twitter concerning whether journalists should write more positive things about tech companies (no), and if venture capitalists are a bit too thin-skinned for their net worth (yes).
- Lemonade's IPO went kaboom out of the gate, more than doubling in value. But the CEO isn't too worried. I spoke with him before we recorded and he was more interested in getting a bedrock of solid, long-term investors than extracting every possible dollar in their raise. And Lemonade had a bunch of money already, so it wasn't a huge concern.
- We also spent a minute on the possible Uber-Postmates deal, that could get announced early next week. That or Postmates really is serious about going public. We'll see.
- Next up we had to talk about Mirror, Lululemon, and what's up with home fitness. Is the trend here to stay? Natasha thinks so, and the rest of the crew are pretty bullish as well. Especially as it is not like we are going to get back to life anytime soon.
- After that it was time to get to a few funding rounds, including the latest from Neo.Tax, and a check-in on the early-stage Lessonbee, which sounds really cool.
- We also crammed in a quick word on Contrary Capital and startup mafias, the Envision accelerator, Discord's latest $100 million round, and we closed with the Final Luckin Letdown.
- Whew!
Right, that's our ep. Hugs from the team and have a lovely weekend. You are all tremendous and we appreciate you spending part of your day with the four of us.
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines. This is Equity Monday, our week-starting primer, in which we go over the latest, look to the week ahead, talk about some neat funding rounds, and dig into the latest on the health of the startup market.
Don't forget that you can follow Equity on Twitter, and, as explained in the show, you can sign up for Alex's new TechCrunch newsletter "The Exchange" here.
Ok, let's get into what we talked about this morning:
- The Rothenberg VC scandal is moving towards what feels like a conclusion, with the Department of Justice filing criminal charges against its founder. As TechCrunch reported, "the U.S. Department of Justice has brought two criminal wire fraud charges against him, charges that he made two false statements to a bank, and money laundering charges, all of which could result in a very long time in prison depending on how things play out."
- Q2 is coming to a close this week, and many American companies are taking Friday off. Expect news to slow into the end of the week.
- But, this week, South Korean gaming company DoubleDown Interactive is looking to raise $200 million by going public this week in the United States. That's going to be exciting to watch.
- Instead of picking individual funding rounds, we covered some notes on the Indian startup market. LiveMint, Times of India, and Entrackr all covered recent venture data, showing a booming India edtech market amidst a weaker VC landscape. If it turns out that rest of the world's VC scenes are in similar straits, we could be entering something similar to a VC recession.
- Finally, Bloomberg's Joe Weisenthal is writing about how the stock market actually is tracking the economy. This is counter to the cliche that the stock market isn't the economy. But his argument helps explain something about the startup market that has stuck out for a while, namely why did startup layoffs drop sharply and churn decline quickly in Q2? Well, maybe things got better?
And that's Equity for today. We're back Friday morning!
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
This week was a bit feisty, but that's only because Danny Crichton and Natasha Mascarenhas and I were all in pretty good spirits. It would have been hard to not be, given how much good stuff there was to chew over.
We kicked off with two funding rounds from companies that had received a headwind from COVID-19:
- Away raises new capital, reported to be $30 million to $40 million after revenue declines
- Sonder raises $170 million at a higher $1.3 billion valuation after seeing its hospitality business recover
Those two rounds, however, represented just one side of the COVID coin. There were also companies busy riding a COVID-tailwind to the tune of new funds:
- Hopin raised a $40 million Series A as its virtual events business accelerated
- DoNotPay raised an $18 million round at an $80 million valuation
But we had room for one more story. So, we talked a bit about Robinhood, its business model, and the recent suicide of one of its users. It's an awful moment for the family of the human we lost, but also a good moment for Robinhood to batten the hatches a bit on how its service works.
https://techcrunch.com/2020/06/23/amidst-robinhoods-planned-service-changes-a-tension-between-growth-and-safety/
How far the company will go, however, in limiting access to certain financial tooling, will be interesting to see. The company generates lots of revenue from its order-flow business, and options are a key part of those incomes. Robinhood is therefore balancing the need to protect its users, and make money from their actions. How they thread this needle will be quite interesting.
All that we had a lot of fun. Thanks for tuning in, and follow the show on Twitter!
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines. This is Equity Monday, our short-form week-starter in which we go over the weekend, look to the week ahead, talk about some neat funding rounds and dig into what is stuck on our minds.
This morning, here's what we talked about:
- Equity is on Twitter! You can follow us on @EquityPod
- The COVID-19 pandemic hit a new, worse milestone over the weekend. What is ahead for the global economy is not clear, but the horizon is not clear for startups big and small.
- Many tech firms in the US took Juneteenth off, limiting recent news, and with WWDC starting today there's going to be something akin to a Cupertino takeover for the next few days. If you don't care about Apple, you can just take some time off.
- Stocks are heading up this morning, with tech shares testing new records.
- Mexico's Heartbest raised a $2 million Series A to help develop plant-based dairy replacements, and San Francisco's Acquire raised a $6.4 million Series A to help with its customer success service. Blue Horizon Ventures and Base10 led the rounds, respectively.
- And, finally, the Hey-Apple drama reaches WWDC today. Apple has signaled that no changes are coming, but the company is in water that feels fractionally hotter with each passing day. What Apple can do to repair relations with developers who are more than a little worried about the megacorp isn't clear. But for startups, the final results of this scrap could really matter.
And that is that. Equity is back Friday with more. Have a great week!
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
Your humble Equity team is pretty tired but in good spirits, as there was a lot to talk about this week. But, first, three things to start us off:
- First: Read this piece from TechCrunch's Megan Rose Dickey about Juneteenth and tech companies. This podcast is going out on Juneteenth, so before you hit play, please take a minute to learn more about the day and its significance.
- Second: Danny and Arman from the TechCrunch team have finally launched TechCrunch List, a huge effort to determine which investors are really willing to write early checks. You can find out more here.
- Third: Equity is now on Twitter. Follow us here or understand that you are not cool.
All that said, here's what we talked about on the show:
- Epic Games is looking to raise a huge stack of cash (Bloomberg, VentureBeat) at a new, higher valuation. We were curious about how its lower-cut store could help it gain inroads with developers big and small. That part of the chat, the take-rate of the Fortnite parent company on the work of others was very cogent to the other main topic of the day:
- Apple vs. DHH. So Hey launched this week, and the new spin on email quickly overshadowed its product launch by getting into a spat with Apple about whether it needs to add the ability to sign up for the paid service on iOS, thus giving Apple a cut of its revenue. DHH and crew do not agree. Apple is under fire for anti-competitive practices at home and abroad -- of varying intensity, and from different sources -- making this all the more spicy.
- Upgrade raises $40 million for its credit-focused neobank.
- Degreed raises $32 million for its upskilling platform.
- And, at the end, our take on the current health of the startup market. There have been a sheaf of reports lately about what is going on in startup land. We gave our take.
And that's that. Have a lovely weekend and catch up on some sleep.
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines. This is Equity Monday, our short-form week-starter in which we go over the weekend, look to the week ahead, talk about some neat funding rounds, and dig into what is stuck on our minds.
So, by section then:
The Weekend:* The market narrative seems to have changed from optimism to pessimism, impacting stock prices and possibly closing the IPO window some, after it had unexpectedly opened. * Quibi news is out that isn't great: The mobile-first launch that came during a lockdown hasn't helped the hugely-funded service that had to convince the world that its content format was great. We calculate its effective cost-per-subscriber number and it isn't super great.
The Week Ahead:* Earnings from Groupon and Oracle. The former could tell us a little bit about the health of the consumer perhaps? And Oracle is a player in the cloud space, so its earnings might help us understand what's up in that world. See, not everything cloud-related comes from Seattle. * And we note the grip of tech conferences that were put on hold due to COVID-19, wondering what they might look like next year; do we ever go back to the way that things used to be?
Funding Rounds:* Duck Creed raises $230 million, which Bloomberg notes as a pre-IPO round. * Appfire, also from Boston, raises a $49 million round. We want to read this S-1, badly. * Tonik raises $21 million to launch a Southeast Asian digital bank.
What's On Our Minds: The Exchange* launches today, which you can learn more about over on TechCrunch.com. We'll add a link here in a bit, but check this archive to find the post!
Equity drops every Friday at 6:00 am PT, so subscribe to us onApple Podcasts,Overcast,Spotify and all the casts.
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
After a pretty busy week on the show we're here with our regular Friday episode, which means lots of venture rounds and new venture capital funds to dig into. Thankfully we had our full contingent on hand: Danny "Well, you see" Crichton, Natasha "Talk to me post-pandemic" Mascarenhas, Alex "Very shouty" Wilhelm, and behind the scenes, Chris "The Dad" Gates.
Make sure to check out our IPO-focused Equity Shot from earlier this week if you haven't yet, and let's get into today's topics:
- Instacart raises $225 million. This round, not unexpected, values the on-demand grocery delivery startup at $13.7 billion -- a huge sum, and one that should make it harder for the well-known company to sell itself to anyone but the public markets. Regardless, COVID-19 gave this company a huge updraft, and it capitalized on it.
- Pando raises $8.5 million. We often cover rounds on Equity that are a little obvious. SaaS, that sort of thing. Pando is not that. Instead, it's a company that wants to let small groups of individual pool their upside and allow for more equal outcomes in an economy that rewards outsized success.
- Ethena raises $2 million. Anti-harassment software is about as much fun as the dentist today, but perhaps that doesn't have to be the case. Natasha talked us through the company, and its pricing. I'm pretty bullish on Ethena, frankly. Homebrew, Village Global, and GSV took part in the financing event.
- Vendr raises $4 million. Vendr wants to help companies cut their SaaS bills, through its own SaaS-esque product. I tried to explain this, but may have butchered it a bit. It's cool, I promise.
- Facebook is getting into the CVC game. This should not be a surprise, but we were also not sure who was going to want Facebook money.
- And, finally, Collab Capital is raising a $50 million fund to invest in Black founders. Per our reporting, the company is on track to close on $10 million in August. How fast the fund can close its full target is something we're going to keep an eye on, considering it might get a lot harder a lot sooner.
And that is that, thanks for lending us your ears.
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
This time around we're recording what we call an Equity Shot, a single-topic show that we pull together whenever there's a news item of sufficient weight that it demands we break our regular cadence and record a little more.
So Danny and Tash and Alex got together to discuss the recent Vroom IPO and Lemonade filing to go public. These are topics that TechCrunch has covered quite a lot lately, so here's a chronology to help you keep it all straight:
- We dug into Vroom's economics detailed in its IPO filing
- TechCrunch covered hoped-for price range
- We reported on Vroom's raised IPO pricing range
- Lemonade filed to go public and we dig into its numbers
- A bit more on the Lemonade IPO filing and what we can learn from it
- And here's our coverage on Vroom's final IPO pricing
So you can catch up as you need to. What matters is that public investors have swooned over the Vroom IPO, pushing its pricing and, today, more than doubling its value as a public company. It's a huge debut, and that bodes well for other gross-margin light businesses -- unicorns, even -- that might want to go public.
The IPO window is pretty open, it appears. And best of all, we three disagreed quite a bit this week. It's a fun show,
Ok, that's enough from us We are back on Friday. Take care, and keep up the good fight.
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
Here at Equity Monday we look at what happened over the weekend, what's ahead, and a few recent funding rounds. As you'll hear, we're heading back into our normal cadence and topics, but if you do want to learn a bit more about what you can do to make your voice heard in opposition to racist policing, last week's ep is worth listening to.
This is what we got up to this morning:
- Alexis Ohanian announced that he's stepping down from the board of Reddit. He hopes to be replaced by a Black American.
- Airbnb local bookings are recovering, in a boon to the highly-valued unicorn. Airbnb had to cut staff earlier this year after the global travel market dried up.
- Reliance Jio sold another bit of itself for a huge sum. This time 1.16% for $750 million.
- Didi's ride-hailing volume is back to where it was a year ago. That's good news for domestic ride-hailing companies.
- Up ahead we have earnings from Chewy, Adobe, and Stitch Fix.
- Energysquare raised a €3 million Seed round, Germany-based NovaPump has raised what reports call a “Seven-Digit Financing Round,” and Inky, a cybersecurity startup based in Maryland here in the United States, has put together a $20 million Series B.
And, finally, we're curious about what's driving the bullish sentiment behind Vroom? It just raised its IPO price range, and we have questions.
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
This week, however, the Equity crew (Danny, Natasha, Chris, and Alex) agreed it felt silly to drum up false enthusiasm for funding rounds and startups. Instead, we talked about a more critical topic: systemic racism in the United States. Venture firms and tech executives across the country are pledging to be better following the brutal murder of George Floyd and police brutality.
Better is long overdue.
What follows are the resources we mentioned -- and a few more -- on the show itself. We'll be back. Now is the time for sustained momentum and change.
Donations* The NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund * Black Visions Collective * The Anti Police-Terror Project * Committee to Protect Journalists * The Marshall Project * Official George Floyd Memorial Fund
How to be a better ally* More resources on how to support Black Lives Matter * How to make this moment the turning point for real change * For those who can’t protest, here are ways to support the movement * Understand the model minority myth * The social contract * Resources fo Non-black individuals and people of color
Good morning and welcome back to TechCrunch’s Equity Monday, a brief jumpstart for your week.
A big thanks to start to the whole Equity crew for doing a stellar job last week with the show while I was on vacation, especially to Danny for taking on this particular installment of the podcast. Equity Monday is still pretty new, frankly, so him stepping up and into the role was a huge boon. Thanks, Danny.
Right, so, what did we talk about today?
- In the face of outrageous police action and systemic racism, most of tech -- both public and private, alike -- said something or did something in the last few days. We go over some of the latest statements and pledges from the VC and startup world in the episode, but do take a look for yourself and decide if what's been done and said is enough.
- For more, read this.
- Coming up this week: Zoom earnings. Zoom's earnings report matters a bit more than a regular digest of three-months' worth of corporate performance. The company is a key plank in the group of companies are have been buoyed by COVID-19 pandemic, meaning that investors that have made similar bets will have their eyes on the videochatting giant's results. And, SaaS and cloud stocks are trading at all-time highs. If Zoom can turn in good numbers, that run might be able to continue.
- Tia Health put together nearly $25 million for women-centric telehealth.
- Beam, a micromobility startup headquartered in Singapore, raised $26 million.
- And, finally, fintech layoffs. I was off last week but was a bit surprised at the number of fintech companies that were cutting staff. Why? Well, we have a guess or two on that count. (You can read more here, and here, from our own Natasha Mascarenhas for background).
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines. This week's show took a break from regularly scheduled programming. Our co-host Alex Wilhelm, who usually leads us through the show, was on some deserved vacation, so Danny Crichton and Natasha Mascarenhas took the reigns and invited Floodgate Capital's Iris Choi to join in on the fun. It's Choi's fourth time being on the podcast, which officially makes her our most tenured guest yet (in case the accomplished investor needs another bullet point on her bio page).
This week's docket features scrappiness, a seed round, and a Startup battlefield alumnus.
Here's what we chewed through:
- LeverEdge raised seed funding to get you and your friends a volume discount on student loans. Fintech has been booming for years now, and startups often crop up around the painful wolrd of student loans. Yet this startup still caught our eye, and it has a little something to do with its choice to use collective bargaining power as its modus operandi.
- Stackin' raises $12.6M Series B for a text-messaging service that connects millennials to money tips, and eventually other fintech apps. According to CEO Scott Grimes, Stackin' wants to be the "pipes that port people around fintech." We get into if the world needs a fintech app marketplace and how it targets younger users.
- D-ID, a Startup Battlefield alumnus, digitally de-identifies faces in videos and still images and just raised $13.5 million. We're all worried about our privacy concerns, so the funding news was a refreshing change of pace from the usual headlines we see around surveillance. Now the company just needs to find a successful use case beyond the goodness in people's hearts.
- ByteDance, the Chinese parent company that owns TikTok, hit $3 Billion in net profit last year, reports Bloomberg. TikTok also recently snagged former Disney executive Kevin Mayer for its CEO. This one, as you can expect, made for an interesting conversation around privacy and bandwidth. We even asked Choi to weigh in on Donald J. Trump's recent tweet threatening to regulate social media companies, since Floodgate was an early angel investor in Twitter.
- We ended with a round table of sorts on how the future of work will look and feel in our new world, from college campuses to offices. We get into the vulnerability that comes with being on Zoom, the ever-increasing stupidity of "manels", and how tech talent might be flocking to smaller cities but investors aren't just yet.
And that was the show! Thanks to our producer Chris Gates for helping us put to this together, thanks to you all for listening in on this quirky episode, and thanks to Iris Choi for always bringing a fresh, candid perspective. Talk next week.
Good morning and welcome back to TechCrunch’s Equity Monday, a brief jumpstart for your week.
This is a messed-up edition, because we are both hosting Equity Monday on Tuesday (because that makes sense) and our normal host Alex Wilhelm is on vacation, leaving (editor’s note: poor and massively underpaid) managing editor Danny Crichton to wake up early on the first day of the workweek to talk to himself in front of a microphone.
Here’s what we (okay I) talked about this morning:
- We talked about remote work and an article I wrote called “Work From Home is dead, long live Work From Anywhere”
- Remote worker payroll startup Deel’s A16Z funding round
- Facebook’s cost-of-living adjustment controversy and remote workforce initiatives
- An article I wrote on digital nomads a few years back called Digital nomads are hiring and firing their governments
- Run The World’s second fundraise in two months, this time from Founders Fund
- The big court decision for Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou tomorrow, who has been under house arrest in British Columbia since December 2018.
- The UK’s reversal of a decision to include Huawei in its 5G network plans, also referencing Scott Bade’s piece on Huawei and the West.
- And finally, getting ready to chat with Verizon CEO (and TechCrunch’s ultimate head honcho) Hans Vestberg later today at 2pm EDT / 11am PDT since we can’t get enough about telecommunications.
Equity will be back Friday morning with more. Welcome to the week!
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
First, a big thanks to everyone who took part in the Equity survey, we really appreciated your notes and thoughts. The crew is chewing over what you said now, and we'll roll up the best feedback into show tweaks in the future.
Today, though, we've gone Danny and Natasha and Chris and Alex back again for our regular news dive. This week we had to leave the Vroom IPO filing, Danny's group project on The Future of Work, and a handwashing startup (?) from Natasha to get to the very biggest stories:
- Brex's $150 million raise: Natasha covered the latest huge round from corporate charge-card behemoth Brex. The party's over in Silicon Valley for a little while, so Brex is turning down your favorite startup's credit limit while it stacks cash for the dowturn.
- Spruce raises a $29 Series B: Led by Scale Venture Partners, Spruce is taking on the world of real estate transactions with digital tooling and an API. As Danny notes, it's a huge market and one that could find a boost from the pandemic.
- Masterclass raises $100 million: Somewhere between education and entertainment, Masterclass has found its niche. The startup's $180 yearly subscription product appears to be performing well, given that the company just stacked nine-figures into its checking account. What's it worth? The company would only tell Natasha that it was more than $800 million.
- Clubhouse does, well, you know. Clubhouse happened. So we talked about it.
- SoftBank dropped its earnings lately, which gave Danny time to break out his pocket calculator and figure out how much money it spent daily, and Alex time to parse the comedy that its slideshow entailed. Here's our favorites from the mix. (Source materials are here.)
And at the end, we got Danny to explain what the flying frack is going on over at Luckin. It's somewhere between tragedy and farce, we reckon. That's it for today, more Tuesday after the holiday!
Good morning and welcome back to TechCrunch’s Equity Monday, a brief jumpstart for your week.
A few housekeeping notes. First, the main, long-from Equity episodes still drop every Friday, so if you are behind, check your podcast feed. Also, we're running a listener survey which you can find here, in the last ep's shownotes. And finally, I am off next week, so Danny Crichton will take over Equity Monday for us. I'll be right back.
All that behind us, here's what we talked about this morning:
- This essay from The Margins that was the best thing anyone talked about on Twitter this weekend
- SoftBank slides are out, and they are quite a lot
- Jack Ma quit SoftBank's board
- Looking ahead, Nvidia and HPE report earnings, Build is happening, and we're anticipating another week of COVID-19 news.
- Hello Customer raised €6 million according to Tech.EU, while Pennylane raised €4 million, also according to the Europe-focused technology publication.
- And this morning I was taken in by the news that Swiggy is cutting around one-seventh of its staff. News that the Indian food delivery was reducing headcount came Zomato, a local rival, was also cutting staff. Not a great trend. The Indian startup market has become important and large, making these layoffs all the more worrisome.
Equity will be back Friday morning with more. Welcome to the week!
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
Are you a regular Equity listener? Take our survey here! *_*https://forms.gle/QPU3sx3Hqv14Duuy9 _*We talk about it on the show, and it's embedded below in case you don't want to click a link.*
From home once again this week, Danny, Natasha, Alex, and Chris got together to pull the show together. But unlike last week's episode (catch up here if you are behind), this week's show features a game that actually worked. It's at the end, as you'll see.
But before that piece of the puzzle, there was a bunch of news to go over. We had to leave SaaS valuations, the Liftoff List, Brex, and FalconX on the floor, but there was still so much good stuff to cover:
- Slice raised $43 million from KKR, making us all rather hungry -- and curious. Where does Slice fit into the food-delivery market, and does its restaurant-friendly model give it enough room to grow revenue so that its new valuation makes sense?
- The Uber Eats-Grubhub deal was an unavoidable topic this week, given that it has the chance to remake the food delivery landscape. What room would be left in the market for Postmates? And would it pass regulatory scrutiny? We're curious.
- Sticking to the on-demand theme, Instacart has grown bonkers-quick in the last few months, even making some money in the process. We're impressed.
- It's not the only thing out there growing like hell -- Shopify is also putting up insane numbers, as reflected in its share price. TechCrunch took a look back through its history the other day.
- The secondary markets saw some consolidation this week, which brought back some fond memories.
- Quizlet raised $30 million at a $4 billion valuation, causing some consternation amongst the hosts. And Vise raised a more modest $14.5 million in a round that Danny covered.
Then we played our game. Please hold us to account. And if you have listened to the show for a while, take our survey! It's right after this next sentence.
The full interview here
Hunter Walk thinks your TAM slide is stupid.
That's one viewpoint that the seed-stage investor shared with TechCrunch that made us laugh during our recent conversation. Walk joined us for an Extra Crunch Live chat late last week that was a mix of advice and insight about what the seed-stage Homebrew partner looks for in founders and companies to invest in.
In the case of founders, "attitude matters as much as aptitude sometimes," Walk said, adding that "grit" and "resilience" are things he favors in entrepreneurs. Why do those qualities matter? Walk cited the Mike Tyson quip about everyone having a plan until they get punched in the face, saying that "building an early-stage startup, you get punched in the face almost daily."
Form one line, folks considering building a new company.
We also dug into fintech, where Walk and his Homebrew partner Satya Patel have made a number of investments that have turned out well, including Plaid, Finix, Chime and so on. According to Walk, his firm has made investments into the startup category across funds because it felt that two things were going to happen. First, that "a lot of data that had been siloed and unavailable was going to become available," citing Plaid as an example of the trend.
Second, that the top-down model of building tooling that made chiefs happier than front-line workers was going to flip in the financial world. New software was going to look quite different and focus on the individuals' needs. Chime, the American neobank, was his example of this trend bearing out in the market.
Good morning friends, and welcome back to TechCrunch’s Equity Monday, a short-form audio hit to kickstart your week.
Another weekend at home, another week's starting from the same spot. How are you holding up? Do you miss your commute yet? Just want to get some breakfast from a kitchen other than your own? I feel you.
But it is Monday all the same and that means it's time for Equity, so let's get to it. You can hit play above and following along with notes:
- Kingsoft Cloud's IPO went well. Very well, in fact. Far better than expected if we're being honest. The company was recently gross-margin negative and is now public? In this economy?
- Vroom has filed privately to go public, which is pretty wild given that the capital markets are theoretically closed.
- Earnings this week are pretty light but keep an eye out for Cisco, JD.com, Sony and Tencent.
- Over the weekend, bitcoin crashed around 10 or 12 percent, depending on how you do the math. Right before the halvening. Surprised? I was.
- Shiprocket raised $13 million and Ermetic raised $10 million in two neat early-stage rounds worth your time.
And finally, a call to arms. TechCrunch was once a dude in his backyard writing blogs and generally being mad online. It was great! Since then, blogs have grown up, sold out, been re-sold, and generally become part of the landscape if you are being generous (or part of the furniture if you aren't). Surely there's room for new, kickass media companies. Who is building one? They would be a real contrarian.
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
Every week we write this post with some opening line akin to wow, what a week, huh? This is yet another one of those weeks. Perhaps this is just life now, and every week will stretch before us, similar to what Gandalf said after killing that Balrog, that "every day was as long as the life age of the Earth."
Anyhoo, we recorded Equity to try and make a little sense of the week as there was a lot going on. So, Natasha, Danny, and Alex once again gathered to parse it all. Here's a rough digest of the topics from this episode:
- Techstars' virtual demo days. Natasha and Alex are listening in to as many Techstars virtual demo confabs as they can along with other TC staff, pulling out favorites as we go. Today we dug into what is working, and what isn't with virtual demo days.
- While VC Twitter might make it seem like every firm is open for business, that is not the reality. We talk about signaling risk, external signs a firm is investing, and throw pro rata chat around in between.
- Peanut, a social network for women, raised $12 million and that is the good news we needed this week. Think of it as a better, cleaner and more intimate version of your favorite Facebook group. About 1.6 million are on the platform.
- Every Mother raised a small sum to bring safety and community to pre and post natal workouts for mothers.
- Robinhood's Series F. The new Robinhood round values the company at around $8.3 billion, a huge number but one that wasn't as high as we might have expected, given how much its valuation used to grow between new funding events.
- Airbnb cut 1,900 people in a devastating round of layoffs for the travel and hospitality company. We discuss o-founder and CEO Brian Chesky's detailed blogpost about the cuts, and whether it is better to be a public or a private company during this pandemic.
- Uber cut staff this week, and pumped money into a massive Lime downround that may see it offload its own micromobility business onto the smaller company. Not a good week for Uber, not a good week for Lime.
We didn't get to chat API funding rounds or the unicorn retreat, or even really riff on earnings. There's so much going on! But, we'll be back Monday morning so sit tight.
Good morning and welcome back to TechCrunch’s Equity Monday, a jumpstart for your week.
Equity had a busy last few days, so to help you catch up: Friday's episode was a lot of fun (Duolingo, Figma, OMERS, and aquafaba), and we also dropped an Equity Shot on Saturday, digging into the first major technology earnings week.
But this morning we were busy digging through what's happened over the last few days, and what's to come. Here's the rundown:
- Silver Lake is following Facebook into Jio, at a higher price. Facebook's huge bet on the Indian mobile Internet giant raised eyebrows, especially as the deal could have some interesting net neutrality implications. Silver Lake's follow-on deal only makes Facebook's investment all the more fascinating.
- Intel wants to buy Moovit.
- And Uber is pulling out of some Eats markets that cost more than they were worth.
- It's another huge week of earnings. We expect to see Shopify, Roku, Uber, Beyond Meat, PayPal, Pinterest, Dropbox, Square, Peloton and Lyft. Each company should provide us with notes on how a slice of the startup market is performing.
- Two funding rounds that caught our eye: Classplus's $9 million Series A as edtech booms, and Oxwash's $1.7 million deal to make on-demand laundry better for the planet.
We wrapped asking that's going to come for companies that were still speculative businesses before the slowdown. They're going to vaporize, right?
Happy Saturday and welcome back to an Equity Shot, a short-form episode of Equity where we drill into one particular topic. There was so much news this week in our main areas of focus -- startup funding rounds, new venture funds, that sort of thing -- that we had to exclude earnings from the main show! (But really, check it out, as it was a good time.)
Sad, I know. Everyone surely noticed the loss, but we gathered once again on Friday afternoon to dig into the results all the same. A big thanks to Danny, Natasha and Chris for gathering 'round one more time to get through:
- SaaS and enterprise earnings: We dug into Microsoft's results (TechCrunch coverage here), along with notes on quarterly results from Atlassian, Zendesk and ServiceNow. The gist is that big corp SaaS did fine in Q1, but there are varying levels of concern regarding the future.
- Subscription content: Spotify is doing fine and Netflix smashed it, according to Danny (TechCrunch coverage here, and here, respectively). Spotify also managed to eke out the world's funniest net income result, while Netflix shot forward like a hare from a trap. In short, we may be listening to fewer podcasts, but we sure as hell aren't getting off the couch.
- Advertising shops: While the advertising world melts down in spectacular fashion, tech shops that are ad powered did kinda OK. Facebook did what it always does, wowing with results and this time telling investors that April was looking better than March. Snap grew like hell, surprising investors, even if its overall cost structure is broken when compared to its revenue. Twitter was the miss of the bunch, struggling the most after telling investors it was still seeing COVID-19 issues in April. And, finally, Alphabet did Google things, so its stock went up, COVID-19 be damned.
We avoided Tesla because who can be bothered, and managed the shortest note on Apple ever recorded on a business podcast. All that and we had some fun. Hugs from Equity; we'll be right back Monday morning!
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
What a week. Are you still standing? Did you make it? If you are upright and typing, congratulations, you're top-decile. If you're reading this from bed, that's fine too. We understand.
The week was so busy that we actually ran a bit long this week, with lots left on the cutting room floor. So, with the full team aboard this week (Danny, Natasha, Chris, Alex), we got into the following:
- Niche raised $35 million in a Series C for its one-stop shop for college searchers. We talk about the edtech company's growth, confusing past, and how its B2B strategy is especially attractive in our new normal.
- Duolingo raised $10 million from General Atlantic, a move that was more opportunistic than out of necessity for new cash, the company claims. It also is based in Pittsburgh, which had the whole trio excited.
- Bonsai, which has a fantastic name, raised $1.5 million for 1-on-1 peer tutoring. We talk about the small round, and why conservatism is a good thing in this sector.
- To cap off our edtech coverage, we're starting to see sector momentum turn into actual dollars and deals.
- Figma raised $50 million at a reported $2 billion valuation, a small figure compared to its new pricetag. a16z led the new investment, which came just over a year following Figma's Series C. That prior round valued the firm at around $440 million (post-money), so Figma just glowed up by about 4.5x between rounds. Not bad.
- Catalyst raised $25 million Series B led Spark, not long after it closed a Series A worth $15 million that Accel had led. The customer success industry is growing in importance as startups and larger companies double-down on selling more to existing clients as net-new logos become harder to scrape together.
- Stash raised $112 million led by LendingTree, adding to the wave of savings-and-investing-focused services that are seeing a boom in demand (and, therefore, investor interest) as the economy falters.
- Particle Health raised money to make healthcare data easier to access, because sharing (in some cases) is caring.
- Plantible made us talk about aquafaba, the liquid found in chickpea cans, for way too long.
- A host of new funds were locked down this week, including OMERS Ventures putting together $750 million, Kickstart closing $110 million, and Zetta Venture Partners snagging $180 million for AI-focused investing.
- Then there was the bad news. Layoffs at Lyft, possible layoffs at Uber, and cuts at TripAdvisor. But, as Natasha reported, some folks are working to undo some of the damage that the layoffs are causing.
We wrapped with a new Danny segment called "Luckin Watch" and will be back with a special ep on Saturday. Stay tuned!
Get the whole discussion with Charles Hudson HERE
Last week, we kicked off our Extra Crunch Live interview series with an interesting chat with Charles Hudson, the general partner of Precursor Ventures.
Charles Hudson founded Precursor Ventures to invest in pre-seed and seed-stage companies. Earlier this year, the firm filed paperwork to put together a $40 million third fund after previously raising two main funds and one $10 million “opportunity” fund.
Good morning and welcome back to TechCrunch’s Equity Monday, a jumpstart for your week.
Regular Equity episodes still drop each and every Friday morning, so if you’ve listened to the show over the years, don’t worry — we’re only adding to the mix. You can catch last week’s show with Danny Crichton and Natasha Mascarenhas right here if you haven't yet.
Unlike some weeks when the weekend's crop of news and thought runs fallow, our recent interlude was stuffed with things to talk about:
- Sequoia China and Starbucks are tying up, which is especially notable after the Luckin Coffee story came crashing back to Earth.
- A survey concerning UK startups showed cracks in the EU's largest startup market, measured by VC activity.
- It's earnings week, with everyone from Apple to Microsoft, Alphabet, Amazon, Facebook, Spotify and Tesla reporting. Strap in for the busy week. It's going to be a lot, but should help us figure out what has been going on in the stock market.
- Codota raised $12 million, and we think that its product is neat.
- A new pre-seed/seed fund has raised €50 million in fresh capital, which is notable given the global economic slowdown.
And then, finally, this essay from Founder’s Fund John Luttig, which I encourage you to read. It's something that everyone is reading, and thus you must even if you don't want to. We chat about it on the show, but read it yourself anyways. If it's right, we're in for a sea change in the startup world. For good, or at least until there's a new leap forward in tech or technology product distribution. (You can read more on the idea of a SaaS slowdown here.)
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
This week we had a choice of all sorts of news, but as we cut the show together as a group Danny pushed all the funding rounds up. So, when Alex and Natasha jumped into the show we had a bunch of good news to cover. We're avoiding COVID-19 news, but the pandemic is just a part of the broader stories we want to tell. For the foreseeable future, coronavirus will be always be part of our interviews. But the conversation can't start and stop there.
So what was on the docket? Three things: Accelerator news for the early-stage founders, funding rounds, of course, and some layoff news that was worth mentioning as it might trickle down beyond the unfortunate hosts.
Here's the rundown:
- Y Combinator moves its new accelerator class to a virtual setting. We want to know what the move will mean for global startups and Silicon Valley as the effective nexus of nerddom.
- Speaking of accelerators, Boston-area VC firm just launched one for the first time ever. It's opting for a different approach from YC and 500 Startups: no demo day, smaller cohort, and no promises to lead future rounds.
- Miro raises a $50 million Series B. The apparently profitable Miro had us curious once again about remote work, which startups are going to do the best in the coming recession, and the company competes with. Is it more contra-Notion? Contra-Mural? Neither?
- Confluent put together a $250 million round at a $4.5 billion valuation. This funding event proved that megarounds are not dead. Alex thinks the company is nearly IPO ready, but with the public offering window seemingly closed, we're not holding our breath for an S-1.
- Pepper raised money to make a bra that fits small-chested women better. For those of you reading this that can relate to the woes of ill-fitting bras, Jaclyn Fu wants to have a word for you.
- Human Capital raised $15 million for its engineer-focused talent agency. This one was a bit controversial, especially in the changing economic climate.
- In the media startup world, The Dipp launched to provide us (well, those of us that subscribe) TV and entertainment news. We'll always nerd out about new news companies, and the fact that this was founded by former Bustle colleagues caught our eye.
- And then there were the layoffs. Magic Leap cut 1,000 jobs, while coding school Lambda School and 2020 IPO Casper each made smaller cuts. It's a bummer of a topic, but expect cuts to remain on the agenda for a while yet.
We didn't get to talk through some Silicon Valley or European venture capital data, not to mention what we're seeing in Boston because we ran out of time! More soon.
Good morning and welcome back to TechCrunch’s Equity Monday, a brief jumpstart for your week. Regular Equity episodes still drop each and every Friday morning, so if you’ve listened to the show over the years, don’t worry — we’re only adding. In fact, last week's show (with Danny Crichton and Natasha Mascarenhas) was a blast, and you should check it out.
This morning, however, we had a lot to get through, so let's go over the show's rundown:
- Changes are afoot in Israel regarding employee comp and startup valuations.
- The UK is coming to the aid of its startups at a notable cost.
- Alibaba is dropping serious coin on new cloud infra, reminding us that there's more to the world than Washington state.
- Alan, a French insurtech startup, has raised $54.4 million.
- It's earnings week, with a number of major tech companies joining other large American companies in reporting results. Q1 2020 is whatever. What everyone wants to know is how bad the rest of the year is going to be.
And, finally, Marc's latest essay. I should probably write about it more broadly, but as we said this morning: "Aspirational construction of the future is a concept that many people associate with America," and demanding that we harken back to our halcyon days is no sin. That said, we’ll need to do work as a country to set the groundwork needed to make an explosion in entrepreneurship and building possible -- like providing healthcare to all citizens so that folks can quit their jobs without losing care, making room for new businesses to rise.
Still, it's good for Marc to get hyped up and mad at our current state, and he has the money to do something about it. So, let's see what he does about it.
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
This week the Key Three were back with Danny Crichton, Natasha Mascarenhas, and Alex Wilhelm taking on the news while Chris Gates kept everything perfect.
Alex apologizes for the math error you'll hear, naturally. 36 divided by four, is, of course, nine.
Turning to the show, as has been the case every single week since we cannot recall when, we had a hell of a packed agenda.; there were new funds to talk about, there were rounds aplenty. As the unicorn era hands the baton to the COVID-19 downturn, there still more than we can get through each week.
But we did manage all that follows:
- Lightspeed raised a host of new funds worth billions of dollars, including $1.83 billion in capital for later-stage deals and $1.5 billion to pour more capital into its international investments.
- Andreessen Horowitz wants to put together a second crypto-focused fund worth $450 million. That's more than last time, and we had questions.
- Corigin Ventures raised its first institutional fund at $36 million, effectively stepping out of complete control from its parent organization, Corigin Real Estate.
- Stripe raised $600 million more, at a flat valuation to its preceding round. The payments company is now worth around $36 billion. The news dropped out of nowhere, and probably means that the eventual Stripe IPO is far, far away.
- Robinhood is
- Carta, which helps manage equity for startups, laid off 16 percent of its staff as detailed in an emotional memo by the company's CEO Henry Ward. Then, the plot thickened when news broke that it's raising a new round of funding that would value it at $3 billion.
- Lucid and Everee, two Utah-based companies raised capital this week, right after we saw Podium raise the week before. $52 million for Lucid, makers of Lucidchart, and $10 million fo Everee, a payroll software startup with a fun twist.
- But we weren't done yet, as we had to talk about Airbnb's new debt work; Danny made the point that it's hardly cheap capital for the firm to raise, possibly adding pressure to Airbnb later on. This is another company that will not go public in 2020.
- Savi raised $6 million to help students pay student loans, while Frank raised $5 million to help students avoid racking them up.
- Despite tight school budgets, Labster landed a deal with the California Community Colleges which tells us a bit about how edtech optimism is turning into actual dollars.
And, breathing out, that was the show. Thanks for sticking with us through the pandemic and not having a commute. It's a treat to have you here.
Good morning friends, and welcome back to TechCrunch’s Equity Monday, a short-form audio hit to kickstart your week.
Before we jump into today’s show, don’t forget that the long-form Equity that started in the unicorn era and continue in today's changed world still drops on Friday. We had a blast last week, so make sure to catch up.
That said, there was a lot to go over this morning, so let's get into what we had to discuss:
- Global spend patterns are changing, helping some startups and slowing others. But notable in the mix is how well grocery delivery is doing; if the change will be enough to turn uncertain bets like Instacart into sure things, however, is not yet clear.
- Earnings are finally nearly here. We'll see the big names start to disclose results next week. In the next three weeks or so we'll hear from Apple, Microsoft, Facebook, Netflix and Spotify. The results will help us understand how the market is doing; and, by proxy, how startups are performing.
- Quoting from our script this morning: "Would it be great to know how startups are doing without resorting to our chronic use of public proxies? Yes. Any startup who wants to kick off that trend can send in reports of how their Q1 went and what they expect in Q2 and the other two quarters of 2020 to EquityPod@TechCrunch.com. That’s probably the easiest way to get your company on the show, so, please do write in with specifics."
- We took a look at the latest rounds from Kargoand Pangea.app.
- Finally, SoftBank's huge Vision Fund bill is coming due. I almost can't believe these numbers. What a mess.
And that's the show for today. Stay safe, and we'll be back Friday morning to cap off whatever this week winds up becoming.
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
The whole crew was present this week: Natasha, Danny and Alex, along with our intrepid producer Chris. And like the last few episodes it was good to have everyone around as there was so very much to get through. Even better there was a lot of good, non-COVID-19 news to cover. Yes, there were bad tidings and some COVID-19 material as well, but, hey, not everything can be fun.
We started with a look at Clearbanc and its runway extension not-a-loan program, which may help startups survive that are running low on cash. Natasha covered it for TechCrunch. Most of us know about Clearbanc's revenue-based financing model; this is a twist. But it's good to see companies work to adapt their products to help other startups survive.
Next we chatted about a few rounds that Danny covered, namely Sila's $7.7 million investment to help build technology that could take on the venerable and vulnerable ACH, and Cadence's $4 million raise to help with securitization. Even better, per Danny, they are both blockchain-using companies. And they are useful! Blockchain, while you were looking elsewhere, has done some cool stuff at last.
Sticking to our fintech theme -- the show wound up being super fintech-heavy, which was an accident -- we turned to SoFi's huge $1.2 billion deal to buy Galileo, a Utah-based payments company that helps power a big piece of UK-based fintech. SoFi is going into the B2B fintech world after first attacking the B2C realm; we reckon that if it can pull the move off, other financial technology companies might follow suit.
Tidying up all the fintech stories is this round up from Natasha and Alex, working to figure out who in fintech is doing poorly, who's hiding for now, and who is crushing it in the new economic reality.
Next we touched on layoffs generally, layoffs at Toast, AngelList, and not LinkedIn -- for now. Per their plans to not have plans to have layoffs. You figure that out.
And then at the end, we capped with good news from Thrive and Index. We didn't get to Shippo, sadly. Next time!
Equity drops every Monday at 7:00 AM PT and Friday at 6:00 am
Get the full interview https://techcrunch.com/2020/04/08/talking-venture-b2b-and-thesis-driven-investment-with-work-benchs-jon-lehr/
Earlier this week, the Equity crew caught up with Work-Bench investor Jon Lehr to get his take on the current market, and how his firm goes about making investment decisions.
The conversation was a treat, so we cut a piece of it off for everyone to listen to. The full audio and a loose transcript are also available after the jump.
What did Danny and Alex learn while talking to Lehr? A few things, including what Seed II-level investments need these days to be attractive (Hint: It's not a raw ARR threshold), and what's going on in SaaS today (deals slowing, but not for select founders; relationships are key to doing deals today), and why being a VC is actually work.
But what stood out the most was how Lehr thinks about finding investment opportunities. While some VCs like to cultivate images of being gut-investors, cutting checks based on first meetings and the like, Lehr told TechCrunch about how he researches the market to find pain-points, and then the startups that might solve those issues.
You can listen to that bit of the chat in the clip below:
Extra Crunch subscribers, the rest of the goodies are below. (A big thanks to Danny for cleaning up the written transcript.)
Good morning friends, and welcome back to TechCrunch’s Equity Monday, a short-form audio hit to kickstart your week.
Before we jump into today's show, don't forget that the long-form Equity that we've done for more than three years still drops on Friday. Last week's was a particular delight, so make sure you're caught up. Ready? Let's go.
This weekend was busy, with Quibi launching, folks in the UK attacking 5G towers and Skype trying to steal some of Zoom's thunder. News was dominated, as always, by COVID-19, this time leading to a stock market bump as some data from the disease appeared to take a short breather with -- depending on which tracker you favor -- fewer folks contracting the infection in the last 24 hours than the day prior; investors are hunting for any positive signal to trade on, and that appears to have been enough.
What's coming up this week? Not earnings, or at least not the sort of earnings reports that we care about. Instead, we're keeping eyes peeled for Q1 VC data and economic information from the United States. Here in the States Friday is off, remember, so this is a short week.
Next, two venture rounds:
- Valispace, a Germany-based startup that also has folks in Portugal, raised €2.2M recently led by JOIN Capital. The startup calls itself “Github for hardware,” which TechCrunch summarized as a “collaboration platform for engineers, allowing them to develop better satellites, planes, rockets, nuclear fusion reactors, cars and medical devices” with a browser-based app.
- And Vertical Future just raised £1.1M. It's doing vertical farming, a topic that I've read about every few years but now appears to really be a thing! That's exciting. Vertical Future raised a bigger round last year, and is generating food today in production sites.
Finally, we close with a question: How many more startups are going to die this year, compared to 2019, and what do their deaths mean for staff and investors alike? Will the end of so-called "tourist" money harm young companies or will it merely cull the silly?
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
How are you holding up? Are you keeping up? And most importantly, are you hydrating yourself? There's so much news lately that we're all falling a bit behind, but, hey, that's what Equity is for. So, Natasha, Danny, and Alex got together to go over a number of the biggest stories in the worlds of private companies.
A warning before we get into the list, however. We're going to be covering layoffs for a while. Don't read more into that beyond a note to this unfortunate situation. We try to talk about the most important news, not what brings delight or joy to our hearts (because if that was the case, we would be all over mega-rounds). That in mind, here's this week's rundown:
- The heart-stopping rise in American unemployment claims, underscoring the scale of the economic damage that the COVID-19 infection and its constituent shutdowns is causing the economy.
- Layoffs are a topic that we're writing about; you can find an overview of some cuts here, and a scoop on Modsy's cuts here.
- We got into two companies with similar growth (and eventual loss) profiles: Oyo's recent cuts, and WeWork's recent loss.
- The emerging fraud at Luckin Coffee, a recent IPO and famous unicorn that is apparently full of it; the firm's earnings since going public are suspect. We wanted to know if there are even more roaches hiding in the walls.
- Of course, we had to mention Zoom's growth, and the cracks that have started to emerge as its become a staple past 9 to 5 meetings.
- Notion rang up a $2 billion valuation for a shares sale of just $50 million. The productivity company's new price tag implies epic growth, and underscores how investors are valuing startups that don't lose money.
- And, to end on a forward looking note, we talked about two new funds from Arch Venture Partners and General Catalyst.
And that's what we got through. The Equity crew is doing its best to bring you the news, but make sure to let us know what you think. We're at equitypod@techcrunch.com every day of the week. And we're thankful for it. Take care of yourselves.
Good morning friends, and welcome back to TechCrunch’s Equity Monday, a short-form audio hit to kickstart your week.
If you missed Friday's main episode, it was a fun one so take the time if you have the minutes; we're settling into a new hosting lineup that is shaping up to be our best ever, so we're having a blast even if we have to record remotely instead of in the same room.
This morning was a bit of a mixed bag. The world is still in pretty bad shape as societies and governments work to combat COVID-19 and the private and public markets convulse. But there was still news to be found, so we hit on a few key news items, including: The return of HQ Trivia at a perfect time, Microsoft's booming cloud services demand and the return of tech layoffs.
Not all news was bad, however, as we looked at three early-stage funding events and three seed rounds from Indo, Kaizo, and Lanistar.
Looking ahead left us little joy other than to note that it is very nearly earnings season; Q1 2020 business results should prove to be the most interesting in memory given how much the world changed during the three-month period. Regardless of whether or not you care about the financial side of business or not, it's going to be a wild ride.
Wrapping today, unicorn layoffs are back in a big way. Bird, TripActions, ZipRecruiter, and others are cutting staff in big chunks. A lot of folks hired to help companies scale look pretty expensive when growth turns negative; layoffs suck and a struggling economy is crap for everyone, but the business cycle is real, so it's not a huge shock to find ourselves here today. We're going to cover the cuts, but only with a grimace and good thoughts for the laid off.
And that's it for this week. Other than that the new Trivium single is epic, we're out of here.
Equity drops every Monday at 7:00 AM PT and Friday at 6:00 am PT, so subscribe to us on
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
The three of us were back today -- Natasha, Danny and Alex -- to dig our way through a host of startup-focused topics. Sure, the world is stuffed full of COVID-19 news -- and, to be clear, the topic did come up some -- but Equity decided to circle back to its roots and talks startups and accelerators and how many pieces of luggage does an urban-living person really need?
The answer, as far as we can work it out, is either one piece or seven. Regardless, here's what we got through this week:
- Big news from 500 Startups, and our favorite companies from the accelerator's latest demo day. Y Combinator is not the only game in town, so TechCrunch spent part of the day peekin' at 500 and its latest batch of companies. We got into some of the startups that stuck out, tackling problems within the influencer market, trash pickup and esports.
- Plastiq raised $75 million to help people and businesses use their credit card anywhere they want. And no, it wasn't closed after the pandemic hit.
- We also talked through Fast's latest $20 million round led by Stripe. Stripe, as everyone recalls, was most recently a topic on the show thanks to a venture whoopsie in the form of a check from Sequoia to Finix.1 But all that's behind us. Fast is building a new login and checkout service for the internet that is supposed to be both speedy and independent.
- All the Stripe talk reminded us of one of the startups that launched so it could beat it out: Brex. The startup, which has amassed over $300 million in known venture capital to date, recently acquired three companies.
- We chatted through the highlights of our D2C venture survey, focused on rising CAC costs in select channels, the importance of solid gross margins and why Casper wasn't really a bellwether for its industry.
After that we had two quick hits, namely Natasha's look at how tech internships cancellations are impacting our future workforce, and the latest from Slack.
And that wraps up what felt like a refreshing show. We hope you think so too, and thank you for listening. Stay healthy, all.
Get the full interview here
As efforts to flatten the spread of COVID-19 pushes employees from their offices, remote work is undergoing a surge in popularity.
Well-known remote-work friendly companies like Zoom have seen a rise in usage, while Slack has already reported that it is successfully converting new users into paying customers, which is pushing up its growth rate.
The pandemic is creating economic and social upheaval, but for a specific cohort of software companies that help distributed teams work together, it’s proven useful in business terms. But even before the outbreak of the novel coronavirus, execs from a standout project management company swung by TechCrunch HQ to chat with the Equity crew about their business and growth: Monday.com.
What does an interview with Monday.com’s Eran Zinman (co-founder and CTO) and Roy Mann (CEO) have to do with COVID-19? Well, if remote-productivity-friendly services Slack and Zoom are seeing usage spikes amidst the changes, Monday.com is likely benefiting from similar gains. And during our chat with the company’s brass, the pair told TechCrunch that their company had crossed the $130 million annual recurring revenue (ARR) mark by mid-February. Add in a COVID-19 usage boost and perhaps Monday.com (which doesn’t have a free tier) is seeing its growth accelerate.
Previously, Monday.com announced that it had reached the $120 million ARR mark, and TechCrunch had inducted it into the $100 million ARR club earlier this year.
Revenue expansion was not our only topic. We also chatted with the pair of execs about customer acquisition costs and how to a run a SaaS business without terrifying burn. The Monday.com crew had more news up their sleeve, like when they expect the unicorn to become cash-flow positive.
We’ve excised a larger-than-usual chunk of the interview for sharing as there’s a lot to take in:
Good morning friends, and welcome back to TechCrunch’s Equity Monday, a short-form audio hit to kickstart your week.
Equity was busy last week, so catch up if you missed anything. We interviewed the CEO of Y Combinator, hosted a call with the TechCrunch staff digging into our favorite Demo Day companies, hosted Equity Monday on a Tuesday, held a call with Niko from General Catalyst, and hosted a guest -- remotely! -- on the regular Equity episode. It's been busy.
This morning, however, was very nearly a repeat. The things that were bad last week are still bad this week. Still, there were a few things to go over:
- SoftBank's epic plan to unlock value in itself, something that investors are cheering.
- Uber and Ola are halting rides in India's capital, a move that we expect to see in more markets over time.
- Cazoo, a used car sales portal, raised $116 million, a round that caught our eye as it was huge and seemingly incongruous to the news cycle.
In fact, that round was such an oddity that we ran a search of big rounds this morning on the show instead of looking at some Seed financings. We'll get back to Seed next week.
Looking ahead, there isn't much to celebrate. We are stuck between earnings cycles and every conference has been cancelled or moved online. Oh, and SaaS valuations are falling. That said, we still expect to be exhausted by the evening every day of the week.
So, let's stick together and do our best to help one another. I look forward to starting the week with a different topic for once; Equity Monday was effectively born on the doorstep of the COVID-19 world. But we won't get there without collective action. We can all help.
Equity drops every Monday at 7:00 AM PT and Friday at 6:00 am PT, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast,
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
This week's episode was a testament to making do, as we've had to cancel some trips, juggle a few guests, and get up and running as a podcast that have guests dial in without losing our stride. So, this week Danny and Natasha and Alex were joined by Unshackled VC's Manan Mehta.
And it went pretty ok, aside from a hiccup or two, expect Equity to still feature guests as often as it makes sense, even if we're currently locked out of our own studio. Anyhoo, a combo of local recording, remote video setups, and Chris handling the dials meant that we were able to talk over all the good stuff:
- Hashicorp raises $175 million at a $5 billion valuation. It was nice to see a round so large take place when the rest of the sky in tech was busy falling onto itself.
- Deepgram raises $12 million. Alex covered this company's funding, winding up pretty excited about the technology itself.
- Edtech startup Teachable exits after good GMV growth. Nice exit for this New York City-based startup, and we chatted about the early-stage edtech market, which was good fun.
- VC firms offer group therapy for founders due to the COVID-19 outbreak. It marks another data point in the small, but growing, cohort of venture capitalists thinking about mental health services beyond an investment opportunity.
- Remote Year, which helps you work while traveling the world, lays off 50% of staff. It's one of an incoming flurry of layoffs we're expecting to see from travel-related startups.
- Danny advised founders to announce their rounds now to reassure their employees and customers that they are ready for the coming recession
- And finally, what's up with Airbnb's direct listing timing? We tried to sort that out before we ran short of time.
All told there were some laughs, and we spent a good few minutes before mentioning COVID-19. It was good fun to have the crew on for a classic Equity episode, and a big thanks to Manan for coming aboard under less-than-optimal circumstances.
Good morning friends, and welcome back to TechCrunch’s Equity Monday, a short-form audio hit to kickstart your week. Regular Equity episodes still drop Friday morning, so if you’ve listened to the show over the years, don’t worry — we’re not changing the main show.
For folks hunting for our longer form work, here’s last week’s episode with Danny Crichton and Natasha Mascarenhas, and here's yesterday's interview with YC boss Michael Seibel.
Equity Monday is a day late this week as I was off yesterday, but it's here today and what a mess the world is at the moment. That was a key theme of the show, but not the only thing that we mentioned. Here are some other bits of news that caught our eye:
- GoJek raised $1.2 billion more, a stunning round for this time in the venture cycle.
- HashiCorp raised $175 million at a price of more than $5 billion, a huge round at an enormous price in any era, but even more so in today's market.
- AI startups are being snapped up at record rates, with a record-setting 231 deals in 2019. According to the same dataset, the Big Five were buy buying the most AI startups, along with Intel.
Looking ahead there's little to anticipate aside from Tencent earnings. So, instead, meet Hourly, a neat company that just raised $7.2 million.
HourlyHourly provides a software solution for labor tracking and payroll processing, noting industries like construction, service, and light industry on its website. If a company has a workforce that gets paid by the hour (the company's name is a tip-off), Hourly wants to help them keep tabs on the labor, and help them pay for it.
The startup charges for its tooling on a recurring basis, a regular setup for a modern software product delivered as a service. After paying some modest base prices, time tracking costs $8 per employee per month, while its payroll service costs a bit more at $10 per employee per month. According to Hourly CEO Tom Sagi, the company may bundle the two services in the future and offer a discount of perhaps 20% for companies that buy both.
Time tracking and payroll, however, aren't the only ways that Hourly generates revenue.
GrowthHourly also drives top line through its workers compensation insurance product, which it refers to as "powered by" itself and "backed by A rated carriers." According to Sagi, the company currently generates about half its revenue from workers comp commissions.
That means that Hourly has a two-part SaaS business and a technology-powered insurance business. (Sagi detailed to TechCrunch the ins and outs of worker comp payments, employee classification and more; it's reasonably complex, perhaps providing the startup with a moat of sorts.) If that sounds pretty impressive for a company that just put together $7.2 million, it is—at least compared to how much other startups seem to get done before a round of that size.
How did Hourly get so far with so little money? The firm bootstrapped, hiring engineers in Colombia -- the firm now has 10 staffers in that country, but is headquartered out of Palo Alto -- to reduce costs. Keeping its costs low let Hourly avoid outside capital—aside from things like family funding and credit cards—before today. And that means that for its external capital base, the company feels somewhat product mature.
That maturity is letting it bring on larger clients. According to Sagi, Hourly has been increasingly "appealing to larger companies," which he clarified to mean firms with 20 people or more. Larger customers means larger contract values, which can mean faster growth.
What else?Oh just the closing of the unicorn exit window for some time. Aside from distressed sales, what sort of company would want to exit in a time like this? More from the Equity crew soon, hang tight.
Get the full interview here: https://tcrn.ch/2Qg56Jx
Y Combinator’s Demo Day has historically drawn crowds of investors and journalists into a big warehouse to watch hundreds of startups come out to the public for the first time ever. Think two minute pitches, a big audience, and tons of networking opportunities after.
This year, citing COVID-19 concerns, the accelerator canceled its in-person Demo Day and moved it to online-only, and a week earlier than expected. You need to be pre-approved to access the list of companies, and over 1,200 investors RSVP’d.
So while there won’t be the usual flurry of live tweets and on the ground reporting, TechCrunch caught up with YC CEO Michael Seibel to get the behind-the-scenes on this year’s batch, nonetheless. It’s Seibel’s second equity appearance, so we skipped the housekeeping and got right into the good stuff.
Seibel got into how YC’s scrappiness led them to Demo Day’s new format, and how investors weighed in on changes within the incubator. Other topics we got into include his advice for what companies are thinking about applying, and what in the world a YC post-mortem is.
Seibel, recalling his early days in startupland in 2006, also hinted at a sector he thinks might be making a comeback soon: software.
“Once people realize that getting software up and running and getting customers is faster and cheaper than almost any other startup idea, they're going to rush to that. And so it's going to be really exciting to see what people do on their nights and weekends and what products people start working on,” he said.
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
Today was something a bit special. We'd originally hoped to have this episode in person, as a group, but the world isn't flying as much right now so we had to make do. Regardless, please say hello and welcome Natasha Mascarenhas to the Equity crew.
Natasha has worked for the Boston Globe, the SF Chronicle, and, most recently, covering venture capital for Crunchbase News. TechCrunch is lucky to have her, and the Equity team is stoked that she's coming aboard our hosting team. When she's not podcasting, she will be reporting on early stage startups and venture capital trends for TechCrunch and ExtraCrunch.
Don't worry, Danny and Alex aren't going anywhere. Equity is now, happily, back to its original three-part hosting crew. This means we can do a better job week in, and week out.
Alright! Enough of all that, let's talk news. Here's what we went over today:
- The 11 year bull market is over, and Uber and Lyft suffered from the fallout.
- What might be ahead for startups as the public markets fall apart.
- New funds from NEA and Felicis.
- How to raise money in the current remote-work climate.
- The Sequoia-Finix dustup.
Equity has been busy lately. We put together a huge interview with Jason Lemkin, and held a live chat this week. We're tinkering with new things as we try to do more, and better for you all. Chat you all Monday morning!
Equity drops every Monday at 7:00 AM PT and Friday at 6:00 am PT, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts,Overcast,Spotify and all the casts.
Click here to listen to the full interview with SasStr's Jason Lemkin https://tcrn.ch/2TPZ7vK
With the markets in turmoil and fear running rampant through the global economy, you might not think that it’s a great time to start a company. According to at least one well-known venture capitalist, however, it’s a great time to start up.
TechCrunch recently caught up with former founder and active venture capitalist Jason Lemkin to chat about the world of software-as-service companies, better known by their acronym moniker “SaaS.” Lemkin swung by TC HQ in San Francisco to spend some time with the Equity crew to discuss all things SaaS, markets, and startups.
Long-time Equity listeners will recall that this is not the first or even second time that we’ve had Lemkin on. He was, after all, our first guest, and a repeat for Episode 100. But as it’s Equity’s third birthday, and his SaaStr conference was just around the corner (now postponed), we had Lemkin back to dig deep into one of our favorite startup categories.
So let’s get nerdy about SaaS.
Is now a good time?After the jump you can listen to the full audio from our interview (it’s a little over 45 minutes, so feel free to download it and take it with you; there’s an excerpt in the main Equity feed as well). But I wanted to share my favorite portion of the chat with everyone, even if you’re not part of Extra Crunch.
When we spoke to Lemkin the stock market had taken lumps, albeit nothing quite like we’ve seen in the last week. Still, when we asked about the potential for a cloud slowdown, Lemkin was not convinced that a secular cloud slowdown (as SaaS’s penetration into enterprise IT spend, it’s growth rate will slow) would be bad for startups operating as part of the modern, subscription software movement.
Why? There’s so much spend left to build for that there’s lots to build. And, perhaps more importantly, incumbents SaaS firms are so large now that they can afford to let smaller companies get pretty damn big before they pay attention.
“All the SaaS leaders,” according to Lemkin, “are at a billion, two billion, [...] in ARR. The Zendesks, the Shopifys, the Hubspots. And they don’t have time” to bother with small companies. Before, in his telling, a $5 million ARR SaaS company would have raised competitive eyebrows from market leaders. Today that bar has been raised to as high as $100 million.
That’s good news for your local startup scene. Hit the clip if you’ve had a long, hard week and want some optimism:
As you can see, I initially missed his point about market size, and what the growing cloud pie means for startups. But by the end I’d come around: Because the big SaaS companies need to add $100 million, $200 million, or even $300 million in revenue each year, small software startups just don’t scan. Think of it as temporary invisibility for all SaaS startups until you’re probably too big to stop.
In the full interview we also went over Jason’s current venture fund, investing cadence, discussed vertical SaaS, his advice for the middle class of SaaS, how to think about venture debt, SaaS consolidation, software in India, and the Slack versus Microsoft scrap. It’s a lot of fun, so let’s get into it.
Good morning friends, and welcome back to TechCrunch’s Equity Monday, a short-form audio hit to kickstart your week. Regular Equity episodes still drop Friday morning, so if you’ve listened to the show over the years, don’t worry — we’re not changing the main show. (Here’s last week’s episode with Danny Crichton in which we took a look at the new Kleiner fund.)
This morning was more of the same. More COVID-19 bad news and stock market worry. But this weekend saw other, new issues, like a collapse in oil prices and record low yields in Treasuries. What happens when all U.S. government notes yield less than 1%? We're about to find out.
For us this morning what matters is that COVID-19 is still spreading, the global stock markets are still falling, and domestic equities are about to get hit hard, if pre-market trading is any indication. Currently stocks are flashing about 5% losses as we write to you.
Skipping the show's order, here's what on our minds this morning:
- What happens to private market valuations now as the public market continues to reprice? When does sentiment shift?
- What happens when startups pull back spend and hunt for slower, but more efficient growth?
- Finally, what happens to all the companies looking to go public? Like Asana (more here), Procore (notes here), Accolade (our coverage), not to mention Postmates, DoorDash (read this), and Airbnb (more here). Currently, it looks like we could jet into Q2 2020 with two venture-backed, non-biotech IPOs under our belts.
Finally on the show, we did get to mention Seed rounds for Airmeet, Sama, and Vivoo. Those, at least, brought a little bit of optimism to the day.
More soon, and stay informed this week. It's a good time to stay abreast of the news.
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
This week was packed with news, most of it pretty bad. But Zoom did well, so there's that. Happily we had our dynamic pairing, Alex "Have I Died" Wilhelm and Danny "Good Hair" Crichton on hand to parse through it all. (A reminder that Equity now hits your podcast app twice a week now, so peep us Monday mornings!)
So what was on the docket? A host of things, starting with a big new early-stage fund:
- Kleiner has more money, again. About a year after raising a $600 million vehicle, Kleiner Perkins raised a new, larger fund. Now flush with $700 million, the long-standing venture group has more money to play with than it has in recent memory. For early-stage deals, that is.
- Atrium shut down after raising $75 million. Investors got some of their money back, but the company had to layoff its 100 employees. The lesson here is that famous backers and tenured founders can't will something into existence that doesn't work.
- OYO is laying people off. Again. The major SoftBank Vision Fund-backed Indian hotel brand was supposed to be a massive hit. Now, with novel coronavirus and other challenges, it and global tourism are hitting snags.
- We also poked at the Robinhood downtime that came during a period of sharp trading swings. The company has a lot of work to do to recover user trust, and continue to grow into its valuation. (More on that here.)
- Zoom was the day's good news, posting strong earnings (here), possibly indicating that remote-work companies are seeing demand for their products.
We closed on a pair of posts from Danny based on AngelList and DocSend data that shows how signaling risk for startups has changed over the years, and how many pre-seed investors the average founder talks to during their first fundraise.
That's all from your friendly, local Equity crew. More soon!
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
After a long Shot hiatus, things keep happening that demand our attention. So, after digging into Tesla's near-miss of the $1,000 share-price mark, we're back to dig into Elliott Management's imposition into Twitter's world after sticking its nose into SoftBank earlier this year.
Alex and Danny had a few goals in this short, news-driven Equity episode: To talk about what the activist investor wants Twitter to do, and what it has wanted other tech companies to do in recent memory.
The tech world, sitting behind a contented wall of dual-class shares and founder-worship, may find activist investors grubby and irksome, but they don't care. And Twitter, a company that has famously loped along with a part-time CEO for longer than -- admit it -- you thought it would, is, in retrospect, an easy target.
Now that the social media company makes money on a repeatable basis, it’s more the sort of target that non-venture investors might want to peek at. They can make sense of it.
Danny and Alex then talk about Elliott’s multi-billion dollar investment in SoftBank, where the activist hedge fund wants the Japanese conglomerate to provide more transparency to investors to increase the value of its shares. The question is whether Elliott can win in Japan, where corporate governance remains comparatively docile, and whether it has learned any lessons operating in Asia after the firm suffered one of its few major defeats in South Korea a few years ago when it failed to block Samsung from merging two of its affiliates together.
Good morning friends, and welcome back to TechCrunch’s Equity Monday, a short-form audio hit to kickstart your week. Regular Equity episodes still drop Friday morning, so if you’ve listened to the show over the years don’t worry — we’re not changing the main show. (Here’s last week’s episode with Danny Crichton, going over the huge Roblox round and what is going on with no-code startups.)
What to say about this Monday other than it feels a bit like last Monday. The markets aren't doing well, coronavirus is a worry, and we have a cool early-stage round to talk about.
After the stock market took a beating last week, the weekend brought more news concerning the novel coronavirus, with more infections being discovered in the United States. It's not been the best time to check your 401k if you saving for the long-term.
But in better news, DoorDash's filing was followed by one from Procore, meaning that IPO season isn't dead, it's just glacial, slow, slothful, and far too measured compared to our prior hopes.
This week will see a few sets of earnings that we care about some (JD.com), less, (HPE), and lots (Zoom). When Zoom reports on March 4th it will be carrying the torch for recent, venture-backed IPOs, SaaS companies more broadly, and future-of-work startups specifically. Other than that, no one will be watching what happens to the video conferencing startup that is caught in a rare COVID19 updraft.
BrizaNext, we talked about Briza, a very neat early-stage startup that is working in the commercial insurance API space. Yes, this the fusion of several things I love to write about. Namely insurance-tech and API-infra companies. What would you get if you crossed the insurance marketplaces we've been writing about with Plaid? Something like Briza, I reckon.
The 500 Startups-backed company has put together $3 million in capital to date, has 10 people on-staff, is looking to double its personnel, and is heading to the market soon on the back of some notable momentum. With more insurance providers hitting Briza up for inclusion in its product, the startup has good pace heading into its impending Demo Day. And it already has the cash it needs to grow.
Infra is hot because it's the digital equivalent of selling picks and shovels. And APIs are hot because they are the SaaS of infra.
Infra APIs? So hot right now.
WrappingI'm stoked beyond belief that Equity turns three this month. Who would have thought that our little show that started life as a few Facebook Lives with myself, Katie Roof (WSJ) and Matthew Lynley (ex-Brex and now a solo operator) would make it this far. I'm lucky to still be a part of it.
Ok! Back Friday. Stay cool.
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
What a week. What an insane, heart-stopping, odd, and stuffed week. I'm utterly exhausted. But, in better news, all of that great fodder for podcast and chat, so today's Equity is pretty ok if I may say so.
Danny and I chewed through all the stuff that we couldn't get out of our heads, like the markets falling apart and DoorDash's initial movement towards going public. But in keeping with the real beating heart of Equity, we also went over four venture rounds and spent some time talking about SoftBank.
We were also a little tired, so come laugh with us and avoid taking things seriously for a few minutes.
Here's the week's rundown. And, yes, I did figure out my mic in the end:
- The markets have lost faith in themselves, with indices falling sharply.
- DoorDash is going public! We talked through the company's known numbers and results.
- Roblox raised $150 million at a $4 billion valuation.
- Three low, or no-code startups raised money, including $51 million for Unqork, $6.3 million for ProtoPie, and $3.9 million for Gyana.
We wrapped with whatever this is, other than utterly hilarious and terrifying. We wish you all a lovely weekend. Chat you Monday morning.
Good morning friends, and welcome back to TechCrunch’s Equity Monday, a short-form audio hit to kickstart your week. Regular Equity episodes still drop Friday morning, so if you’ve listened to the show over the years don’t worry — we’re not changing the main show. (Here’s last week’s episode with Danny Crichton if you want to listen; I also just got the pun in the headline.)
Starting off this week the news is not very good.
I start to prep for Equity Monday on Fridays, keeping tabs of themes and news cycles. By the time it's Sunday night I have a good idea of what the show is going to focus on. And I'm a little tired it being bad news about the coronavirus. Here's to hoping that we, as a species, make material progress to stopping the damn thing.
In more mundane terms, the disease continued to shutter cities and countries, slowing the global economy. I'd rather focus on the human side of the story, but I'm a financial and technology journalist, so here we are.
Markets around the world are down sharply. Stocks in the United States are set to fall. Tech companies are pipped by pre-market trading to fall even further. Growth and SaaS public shops look set to take the sharpest hit.
Turning to funding rounds this week, just one. Instead of covering a number of funding events in the early-stage market, we're discussing a single round raised by Capiche -- a $1.1 million investment sourced from a number of small angel groups and venture firms. The company -- here, on the Internet -- is working to connect SaaS customers and power users so that they can share tips, pricing information, and negotiation tactics. As literally everyone knows, the SaaS market is too opaque. Also major tracking entities are thought by some to be too favored towards vendors. Capiche wants to tilt the balance of power towards users, instead.
If that will prove a lucrative model isn't yet clear, but Capiche is a young company with its first real check. It has time to prove itself. According to CEO Austin Smith, his company has nearly two years (seven quarters) of runway in the bank without generating revenue. The startup intends to turn on income far before its money runs out, of course.
I think we'll cover more individual rounds on Equity Monday over time as it's more fun than running through a short, partially-themed list.
Finally, I riffed for you on the Credit Karma-Intuit deal that is supposed to be coming very, very soon, in a formal sense. $7 billion is a lot of money to start the week.
Happy Monday!
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
This week was a fun combination of early-stage and late-stage news, with companies as young as seed-stage and as old as PE-worthy joining our list of topics.
Danny and Alex were back on hand to chat once again. Just in case you missed it, they had some fun talking Tesla yesterday, and there are new Equity videos on YouTube. Enjoy!
Here's what the team argued about this week:
- HungryPanda raises $20 million from 83North and Felix Capital. With a focus on Chinese food, Chinese language users, and Chinese payment options like Alipay, it's a neat play. According to TechCrunch, the service is live in 31 cities in the U.K., Italy, France, Australia, New Zealand and the U.S and is targeting $200 million in GMV by early Summer.
- The Org raises $8.5 million, ChartHop raises $5 million. Hailing from two different product perspectives, these two org chart-focused companies both raised capital Thursday morning. That made them interesting to Alex as they formed yet another startup cluster, and Danny was transfixed by their differing starting points as businesses, positing that they will possibly move closer to each other over time.
- DigitalOcean's $100 million debt raise. The round — an addition of capital to a nearly-profitable, SMB-focused cloud infra provider — split our hosts, with one leaning more towards a PE-exit and the other an IPO. Whether it can drive margins in the smaller-spend cloud customer segment will be critical to watch in the coming months.
- (For more on venture debt writ large, head here.)
- And finally, the E-Trade sale to Morgan Stanley, and what it might mean for Robinhood's valuation. As Danny points out, the startup has found a good business in selling the order flow of its customers. Alex weighed in that the company has more revenue scaling to do before it grows into its last private valuation. So long as the market stays good, however, Robinhood is probably in good shape.
Equity is nearly three years old, and we have some neat stuff coming up that you haven't heard about yet. Stay tuned, and thank you for sticking with for so long.
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
This is the first Equity Shot in what feels like a long time, so, let me explain. Most of the time Equity comes out on Friday. It's a mix of news and chat and venture happenings. It's fun! But, sometimes, a topic comes up that demands more immediate attention. That's what happened today as we stared at Tesla's share price wondering what in the hell was going on.
Sure, Tesla isn't a private company (yet, at least), but as the company made it into the first-ever episode of Equity how can we resist a dive into what is going on today?
Shares of the electric car company are surging -- again -- today, pushing ever-closer to the $1,000 per-share mark. So, Danny, myself, and Chris on the turntables, got together to riff and chat about what is going on.
For those of you who want some links, here you go:
- Recent Tesla battery news
- Tesla's most recent earnings report
- Tesla's stock chart
- A fresh analyst note
- And yet more
Today was all about fun. The main, more serious (kinda) show is back Friday. Stay cool!
Good morning friends, and welcome back to TechCrunch’s Equity Monday, a short-form audio hit to kickstart your week. Regular Equity episodes still drop Friday morning, so if you’ve listened to the show over the years don’t worry — we’re not changing the main show.
Here’s last week’s episode with Danny Crichton and Bessemer's Elliott Robinson which I really enjoyed. And, we just posted the video from that taping, in case you wanted to see what a podcast looks like IRL. Spoiler: It's mostly a bunch of microphones and cables and nerds.
Turning to the news, global growth concerns stemming from the coronavirus outbreak are starting to come true, with Singapore changing its own forecasts. Singapore now expects either slower growth, or negative expansion in 2020. That's bad news. And, Japan's economy was on the ropes even before the virus really slowed things down. Expect more of this to keep happening.
Also this weekend there was yet another tech-media dustup. If you missed it, you didn't miss much.
The week ahead looks pretty tame. No major earnings reports or IPOs are on our horizon, though Dropbox, Wix and Zscaler will report. If you are a SaaS person, that's for you.
We then talked about Dovetail, Copper, Seez, and Bosta -- bringing the morning venture update together with a theme, a first I think for Equity Monday.
All that and we wrapped with Oyo's most recently disclosed financial performance. Surprise, it contained a lot of growth and quickly expanding losses.
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
After having a good time with NEA's Rick Yang last week, we thought we'd bring on another venture capitalist. So this week Danny and I had Elliott Robinson from Bessemer swing over for the show. As it turned out, he was about as correct as guest as possible as not only did the topics of the week line up with where he invests, he's also friends with some of the folks that we discussed on the show.
So what did we talk about? A whole host of things including two rounds:
- Headspace's fascinating $93 million hybrid, debt-and-equity round that pushes its known capital raised to date ahead of arch-rival Calm's own.
- Nova Credit's $50 million round to help power its cross-border credit system. (We all thought this one was smart.
Then we turned to two new funds, including Battery's battery of new capital vehicles that add up to $2 billion. In this part of the discussion we also touched on capital velocity, and why some firms are writing the same number of checks, but still need more capital. On the other end of the capital spectrum, Equal Ventures put together its first fund, and we riffed on the health of the micro-fund ecosystem.
The news run continued, with our trio touching on Airbnb's recent financial results, and our wonderment about how to price the firm, the closure of Brandless (RIP), and the issues at SoftBank.
All that and we had to leave Lyft's fascinating earnings and Uber's profit promises alone as we ran a bit long with just that set of topics. A good week, and we're back Monday morning!
Good morning friends, and welcome back to TechCrunch’s Equity Monday, a short-form audio hit to kickstart your week. Regular Equity episodes still drop Friday morning, so if you’ve listened to the show over the years, don’t worry — we’re not changing it in the slightest. (Here’s last week’s episode, which included our first guest in a bit, NEA's Rick Yang.)
We kicked off this morning with the latest economic news relating to the coronavirus outbreak in China, namely that a host of Chinese firms are looking for loans. Inside the group of companies seeking capital that Reuters reported are names that we know, like Didi and Meituan Dianping. At first it appeared that the coronavirus' impact would be a bump in growth; now it appears to be a bit more serious.
It's not just big companies that are impacted, mind. Small and private firms with supply chains in China are impacted as well, not to mention the country's entire domestic startup scene.
Looking ahead, there are three key earnings reports on the horizon: Lyft, Alibaba and Shopify. Each matters for a different reason. Alibaba will provide a window into China, Shopify a look at how investors are valuing momentum plays, and Lyft a health report for the on-demand world.
After Uber's surprising results and ensuing adjusted profit promise (Q4 2020, not calendar 2021), Lyft is under fresh pressure to match the covenant. If it doesn't change its profit forecasts, it could be punished. And that could shift the waters for smaller, private on-demand companies like DoorDash and Postmates, along with other mobility firms like Lime and Bird. On-demand companies have raised billions, so Lyft has more than its own investors riding shotgun for its Q4 2019 report.
There are no impending IPOs this week, but there were two rounds that we found interesting:
- Cherre's $16 million hybrid funding event.
- Moteefe's $5 million investment.
Finally, WeWork wants you to know that it is turning around. If that is the case is not clear, but its folks are back on CNBC to both beat back an activist attempt to push for change and talk up its own book. How close you think WeWork will end 2020 in the black is probably the next question to ask.
That's it from us. Stay cool, and we will be back Friday morning with yet another guest from the venture capital world.
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
This week was something fun. First, we were back as a group in the San Francisco studio, which is always fun. Even better, we had NEA's Rick Yang on hand to chat with Danny and Alex about the week. Yang, as old-school Equity listeners will recall, was back on the show in 2017. (Equity turns three soon, which is somewhat amazing.)
All that aside, let's talk about what we talked about. As always, we kicked off with three rounds:
- Sendoso raises $40 million on back of 330% revenue growth
- Finix raised $35 million for its payments infra product with Sequoia as its new lead
- Elodie Games picks up $5 million for cross-platform, in-house games (this sounds super cool)
After that we chugged through a mountain of news. First up, the confirmation of a story that we had mentioned on the show before, namely the existence of a new venture fund (angel pool, perhaps) from the CEO of email startup Superhuman Rahul Vora and Eventjoy founder Todd Goldberg. The $7 million vehicle is going to cut pre-seed sized checks ($75,000 to $200,000) which should make it a popular pit stop for pre-revenue companies.
What next? Well, Casper of course. The company's IPO pricing and debut was this week, something that we've had something to say about. That and the latest from One Medical's strong post-IPO performance, and the news that Asana has filed privately to go public in a direct listing.
That last item was of particular interest as the company hasn't raised as much cash as other companies that we've seen direct list, the Spotifys and Slacks of the world. So has it raised capital that we haven't heard about, or has it simply not spend the capital it has raised? If it had spent the money, then, wouldn't it want to raise some like with a traditional IPO? Mysteries! Riddles that will be solved when we get to see the damn filing.
Oh, and Spotify continues to pour money into podcasting. Which everyone 'round the table thought was pretty smart.
Good morning friends, and welcome back to TechCrunch’s Equity Monday, a short-form audio hit to kickstart your week. Regular Equity episodes still drop Friday morning, so if you’ve listened to the show over the years don’t worry — we’re not changing what we've always done. (Here’s last week’s episode with Danny Crichton, in which we talked about Kleiner Perkins, venture capital pace, and more.)
This morning we opened with the latest from China, namely its stock market selloff that looked a bit scary from this side of the ocean. However, global markets had largely absorbed the news stemming from the coronavirus over the last few days, meaning that what happened to China's stocks isn't replicating itself this morning. U.S. futures are up as I write to you this morning.
And since we last spoke, shares of One Medical managed to have a stunning first day, shooting higher despite somewhat lackluster IPO pricing. As we wrote last week, the result is good news for other tech-enabled companies looking to go public.
Bitcoin also had a big January, and we're seeing payments consolidation in Europe. No, fintech isn't very interesting. But, yes, fintech probably matters quite a lot. Consider yourself caught up.
Moving along this morning, we chatted about two different early-stage rounds:
- Rapidly's $1.8 million Seed round.
- Cloud Campaign's $1.5 million Seed round.
Both fit inside the vertical SaaS theme that we've seen raise so much capital over the past few years.
Finally, WeWork has a new CEO it appears, and the hire looks both intelligent and mature (two traits that WeWork sorely needed before). Better late than never, and so on.
Got all that? Good. Equity is back Friday morning with all the latest, including whatever happens to Casper's impending IPO.
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
It was yet another jam-packed week full of big news, IPO happenings, and venture activity. As always we've done our best to deliver the gist on what's been going on. We had Alex Wilhelm and Danny Crichton on hand to handle it all, which went medium-good. In other Equity news, we're back with guests over the next few weeks, so if you miss us having a venture capitalist along for the ride, fear not, their return is just around the corner.
Up top this week was Jon Shieber's report that Kleiner Perkins has rapidly deployed its most recent fund, a $600 million vehicle. While the news felt surprising, digging back through our archives we were reminded that the firm had indicated it might put its capital to work quickly. Still, as Danny pointed out, it's rare that venture capitalists have to go our raising from LPs on an annual basis.
https://techcrunch.com/2020/01/29/kpcb-has-already-blown-through-much-of-the-600-million-it-raised-last-year/
After that, we turned to some funding rounds that held our attention, including the Free Agency round that is working to bring talent management to the technology industry similar to the sports and entertainment worlds.
https://techcrunch.com/2020/01/28/free-agency-wants-to-give-every-tech-worker-a-career-and-salary-boost/
The concept makes some sense as compensation packages for top talent in the industry can extend into the seven-figures (Free Agency takes a 5-10% cut of an employee's income using the increasingly popular income-share agreements). Also this round felt a bit like a reminder that the labor market is tight at the moment.
https://techcrunch.com/2019/12/31/how-income-share-agreements-will-spark-the-rise-of-career-accelerators/
We then moved on to Josh Constine's story about "Ring for enterprise" startup Verkada, which raised a massive $80 million round at a $1.6 billion valuation. That's eye popping, since the extremely small dilution implied with those numbers (5%) is very rare in the venture world.
https://techcrunch.com/2020/01/29/verkada-security/
After that we turned to a few rounds that Alex has had his eye on, namely the somewhat-recent Insurify round, the pretty-recent Gabi round, and the most-recent Policygenius. All told they sum to $150 million, which made us ask the question, why are venture capitalists so into insurance marketplace startups?
Finally, we touched on the latest from the intra-SoftBank delivery war between DoorDash and Uber Eats, including who is impacted, and what it means for future consolidation in the on-demand world. Or more precisely, why hasn't there been more?
Finally, don't forget that IPO season is upon us. Are you caught up?
Good morning friends, and welcome back to TechCrunch’s Equity Monday, a short-form audio hit to kickstart your week. Regular Equity episodes still drop Friday morning, so if you’ve listened to the show over the years don’t worry — we’re not changing it in the slightest. (Here’s last week’s episode which took a look at The Athletic's latest round, in case you missed it.)
This Monday was a bit of a bad news run. The weekend was stuffed with news, not much of it good.
Continued concerns relating to the spread of the coronavirus led to equity selloffs in Asia and Europe. In the United States, markets look set to follow suit. The concerns come as startups had already come under pressure from investors to show a quick path to profitability. Now, their public comps are taking fire as well.
Topping it off, today kicks off a huge, two-week earnings run from tech companies worth trillions of dollars. It's not a great moment for it. (As we note on the show, the economic side of the outbreak is a small portion of the story; it feels a bit crass to cover the moment from a dollars-perspective, but that's our particular lens.)
We also ran through three funding rounds, including MURAL's $23 million Series A, Otter.ai's $10 million Series B, and Sawee's $2.3 million round focused on last-mile logistics. (As a product, I can't recommend Otter highly enough.)
Wrapping, a Wall Street Journal story was stuck in my head all weekend. According to the Journal's Eliot Brown, Lime and DoorDash have each been out in the markets trying to raise money lately. Neither has managed to pull it off. If stocks keep selling, what happens next for the infamous unicorns?
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
This week Danny and Alex are back with more than ever to get through. 2020 has come out of the gate fast when it comes to news, so much so that we had to leave out of the show way more than we wanted. Things like the newest members of the $100 million ARR club, One Medical's proposed IPO pricing, the Clubhouse funding round and Placer.ai's latest investment.
But we did manage to chat through a host of news, including:
- Why Front's latest investment (a $59 million Series C) is a pretty big deal. Not because of how much money it has raised -- the firm has raised more in a single, preceding round -- but because of who put the capital to work.
- On the venture capital front, Danny and Alex also chewed over signaling risk in venture, and why bigger funds are writing earlier and earlier checks.
- Also on the docket was the latest from Lambda School, which our former co-host and friend Kate Clark wrote. The gist is that regardless of how you feel about the company, your views are probably a bit too negative, or a bit too positive. (More on the company's ilk from Extra Crunch here, and here.)
- And three media deals, including The Athletic's latest investment ($50 million), who might buy the company behind the hit podcast "Serial" and why Spotify might buy The Ringer. Which is about sports, it turns out.
All that and we had fun. One more thing: Don't fret, we're going to bring guests back in just a few weeks. So if you've missed hearing from Folks Who Actively Invest, fear not, the VCs will be back.
Good morning friends, and welcome back to TechCrunch’s Equity Monday, a short-form audio hit to kickstart your week. Equity's regular, long-form shows still land each and every Friday, including this entry from just a few days ago.
This morning, coming to you early from the frozen tundra of the American East Coast, it's Tuesday. That's because yesterday was a holiday in the United States, so we took the day to work a little less than usual. But that doesn't mean we'd skip an episode, so let's dive into topics:
- Uber is cutting its losses in India, selling its Eats business for a stake in Zomato. Zomato is well-funded, and Uber now loses less money. However, where it will find growth is the next question.
- Earnings season is upon us. This week Netflix, IBM, and Intel will announce their results. Naturally, those aren't the companies that we care about the most on Equity, but they are big enough to generate quite a lot of noise. Noise that will help set market sentiment regarding technology companies, both public and private.
- Also on the news front, Tesla is saying 'no' to reports that its cars accelerate without input.
- Qonto, a French neobank, has raised a $115 million Series C. That's a huge round for a neat company that is taking a popular model in a fresh direction.
- Stasher is a neat company in that it must make sense, even if your humble servant doesn't really get it. It raised $2.5 million more.
- Captrace also put together a round, though we don't know how large. What happens if you cross the cap table with blockchain? We may find out.
- Finally, a reminder as to why Uber is leaving Eats in India behind. Globally, Uber Eats turned $3.66 billion in GMV into $392 million in adjusted net revenue in Q3 2019. That wound up generating -$316 million in adjusted EBITDA. Damn.
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
This week Danny and Alex were back together to riff over a the latest early-stage rounds, the latest on the late-stage front, and more. It was yet another stacked week, forcing us to pick and choose a bit.
Starting off, however, here's the rounds that caught our eyes this past week:
- Insurify raised a $23 million Series A, dwarfing its preceding capital raises
- WorkBoard stacked $30 million into its accounts less than a year after its Series B
- ProductBoard raised a $45 million Series B, from blue-chips Sequoia and Bessemer
Leaving the earlier stages and heading to the other end of the spectrum, we touched on Cloudinary passing the $60 million ARR mark, ExtraHop aiming for $100 million ARR mark in short order, and SiteMinder's new $70 million round that gave it a $750 million valuation after crossing $70 million ARR last year.
Got all that? Like we said, it has been busy.
The two main stories this week on the show were the big Plaid deal, and what's going on in the United States's own venture market.
With Plaid, Visa spent more than $5 billion to acquire the financial data API service in one of the first blockbuster exits of the year, making some VCs at Spark Capital and other firms very happy.
Meanwhile, the U.S. venture capital landscape is changing rapidly as more and more regions outside of Silicon Valley bulk up on their startups. The Valley is barely a majority of VC dollars these days, while regions like the mid-Atlantic and the Southeast are raising their profiles quickly. We talk about that, plus the more than a dozen mega funds that launched last year.
Wrapping up, it appears that the venture capitalist classes are tired. Not that we feel too poorly for them, but it goes to show that there's so much going on these days that no one is getting any rest. No matter how much money they have.
Good morning friends, and welcome back to TechCrunch's Equity Monday, a short-form audio hit to kickstart your week. Regular Equity episodes still drop Friday morning, so if you've listened to the show over the years don't worry -- we're not changing the main show. (Here's last week's episode with Danny Crichton, which was a lot of fun.)
What was on our minds this morning? Brian Heater's CES overview of sleeptech from the weekend, which made the argument that not all gadgets are bad for our sleep, even if there is some irony in using tech to help cure our tech-addled brains. Here's to something a bit more substantial than blackout shades.
Also, Facebook closed out last week after setting some record valuations -- so much for the techlash -- and Casper's IPO filing landed to much impact just as everyone was trying to get away from their desks and onto their couches.
Looking at the coming week, earnings season is upon us, but not quite yet for companies that we care about, the recently public tech and venture-backed firms of the world. There are some big names that are reporting this month, but over the next five days expect things to be a bit quiet. Pending news, of course.
And in terms of the Twitter forecast, with the CEO of Away coming back to her company as early as today, expect your timeline to feature one topic in particular. Can you guess what it is?
This morning we also took a look at two funding rounds:
- Former Google Pay execs raise $13.2M to build neo-banking platform for millennials in India (TechCrunch)
- Legalpad Raises $10M To Help Immigrant Entrepreneurs With The Visa Process (Crunchbase News)
And we wrapped with notes on the Casper IPO filing, and why it's attracting so much commentary, and criticism.
Hit play, and let's get this week started!
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
This week we had TechCrunch's Alex Wilhelm and Danny Crichton on hand to dig into the news, with Chris Gates on the dials and more news than we could possibly cram into 30 minutes. So we went a bit over; sorry about that.
We kicked off by running through a few short-forms to get things going, including:
- Alex wanted to talk about his recent story on Lily AI's $12.5 million Series A. Canaan led the round into the ecommerce-focused recommendation engine that has a cool take on what people care about.
- Danny talked about the acquisition of Armis Security to Insight for $1.1 billion, the VC round for self-driving forklift startup Vecna, and an outside-the-Valley round for Houston-based HighRadius.
Turning to longer cuts, the team dug into the latest from SoftBank, its Vision Fund, and the successes and struggles of its enormous startup bets. Leading the news cycle this week were layoffs at Zume, a robotic pizza delivery venture that is no longer pursuing robotic pizza delivery. Now it's working on sustainable packaging. Cool, but it's going to be hard for the company to grow into its valuation while pivoting.
Other issues have come up — more here — that paint some cracks onto the Vision Fund's sunny exterior. Don't be too beguiled by the bad news, Danny says, venture funds run like J-Curves, and there are still winners in that particular portfolio.
After that, we turned to China, in particular its venture slowdown. The bubble, in Danny's view, has burst. The story discussed is here, if you want to read it. The short version for the lazy is that not only has China's venture scene slowed down dramatically, but startups — even those with ample capital raised — are dying by the hundred. But one highly caffeinated Chinese startup continues to find growth in the world's greatest tea market.
Finally we hit on the Sam Altman wager and the latest from Sisense, which is now a unicorn. All that and we had some fun.
Hello TechCrunch readers and Equity listeners alike. This morning we have something new for you that Chris and I are excited about: We're doubling the pace that we bring Equity, TechCrunch's venture capital-focused podcast, to your phone or computer.
Starting this morning and continuing on Monday mornings moving forward, the Equity crew will put together a short, zero-bullshit episode designed to get your week started.
What news did you miss over the weekend? What recent venture rounds do you need to know about? What's ahead in the coming week? And what's on our minds? That's what Equity Monday will bring you each and every morning in about 7 minutes.
We will continue release the Equity that you know every Friday, with new and familiar hosts. We are excited about 2020 and all things that Equity has coming.
Sound good? Let’s talk about what’s going on right now.
Hello, MondayThe markets are a mess this morning, unsurprising given rising global geopolitical tension and rising energy prices. But inside the world of technology there were warning signs of other sorts.
Wired's latest look at on-demand busses caught our eye, especially in light of what the failure of some pilot tests could mean for ride-hailing giants. And Intagram's slowing growth looks like a bummer for Facebook, even if you could construe the news as a shot in the arm for tech startups looking to break into the social media space.
Looking ahead, it's CES this week, meaning that half the reporters you know are trapped in Las Vegas, slowly turning into walking plague victims, while the other half are gloating from home that they didn't have to go. TechCrunch has a great look back at CES history, and The Verge did good work here looking what to expect from tech companies at the show.
Three funding rounds caught our eye this morning:
- TypingDNA's $7 million round to help identify you by how you type
- Callisto Gaming's $500,000 Seed round that should bring new diversity to esports
- And Craft.do's purported Pre-Seed round.
Wrapping things up we had questions about One Medical's impending IPO. Mostly relating, if we're being fair, to what the company is really worth. We're back to the question of what a tech company is, and maybe isn't.
We're off to get that post done so hit play, catch up, and we'll be back on Friday with Equity as it always has been.
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
Kate and Alex and the ever-intrepid man behind the dials, Chris, took the time this week to dig into the two biggest stories from the end of 2019 and look into the future. But as you'll quickly hear, there was news on the show. Kate Clark is moving on from Equity and TechCrunch to The Information. We wish her nothing but the best but it's still a big blah to say goodbye all the same. (A big congrats to the folks at The Information, Kate's tremendous.)
But we still had Kate this week, so here's a short rundown of what we talked about as a team:
- The Away fiasco: We've discussed Away on the show a number of times, but this time it wasn't for something good. The company found itself in the midst of a media firestorm about how it treated its staff. The first story led to follow-on coverage, the earlier-than-internally-expected exit of the company's CEO, and more. Also in the conversation was the question of whether CEOs who are women are held to higher standards than men. After all, overbearing male CEOs in startupland is a tale as old as startups themselves.
- #Pelotongate: We couldn't help but chat a bit about everyone's favorite Christmas-time brand meltdown. And as Peloton was a 2019 IPO, it still fits in our private company wheelhouse. Or at least closely enough. Expect more eyes than usual on the exercise company's next earnings report.
We then turned to predictions, taking a turn apiece to detail what we thought was coming up in 2020. Traditionally, Equity is somewhat poor at making predictions that actually come true, so we roped our producer in to help talk about the future. He is, after all, the person in the world who has listened to more Equity than anyone else in the world.
What's ahead for Equity in our post-Kate future? We have a huge 2020 planned. We have new formats, new hosts, new guests and more coming your way. So don't worry, Alex and Chris are still around and the show will go on! (Check TechCrunch.com next Monday for more.)
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
This week Kate was in SF, Alex was in Providence, and there was a mountain of news to shovel through. If you're here because we mentioned linking to a certain story in the show notes, that's here. For everyone else, let's get into the agenda.
We kicked off with a look at three new venture funds. In order:
- Tusk Ventures: Tusk's new fund, worth $70 million, is an effective doubling of its prior fund's $36 million size. The politically-savvy firm has put money into Coinbase, and other companies that deal with regulated industries.
- Sapphire Ventures: SAP's former corporate venture fund Sapphire Ventures announced a whopping $1.4 billion fundraise this week. Sapphire may be one of, or the most successful CVC spinouts to date.
- Moxxie: Katie Jacobs Stanton, known for co-founding #ANGELS, just closed her debut fund on $25 million. Kate had chatted with her about her experience fundraising her very own fund, some of her previous investment and her plans for Moxxie Ventures so there was plenty to unpack here.
From there we turned the gender imbalance in the world of venture capital. KATE
After we took a quick look at two different venture rounds, including ProdPerfect's $13 million Series A and Pepper's smaller $5.6 million round. ProdPerfect's round was led by Anthos Capital (known for investing in Honey which sold for $4 billion). The company has $2 million in ARR and is growing quickly. Pepper, formed by former Snap denziens is working to help other startups lower their CAC costs in-channel. Smart.
And finally, Alex wanted to bring up his series on startups that reach the $100 million ARR threshold. A first piece looking into the idea led to a few more submissions. There seem to be enough companies to name the grouping with something nice. Centurion? Centipede? Centaur? We're working on it.
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
We have something special this week and it's not just because Kate's in Berlin for TechCrunch Disrupt Europe and Alex's in the throws of a cross country move! No, we've had this episode in the works for a while, and we're excited to finally present our deep dive on direct listings with Chris Mayo, the head of primary markets at the London Stock Exchange.
If you're unfamiliar with direct listings, no need for concern. Chris walks us through the basics and even the more complicated stuff. Before you jump in. Here's a quick refresher on the new and innovative method of going public. Direct listings allow companies to exit by listing existing shares held by insiders, employees and investors directly to the market, rather than the traditional method of issuing new shares. If you're interested, we've written quite a bit on the subject like this, this, this and more.
As for Mayo, before landing at the London Stock Exchange in 2014 he was a consultant at EcoLogic Systems and a director of equity capital markets, Central and Eastern Europe.
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
This week was a bit different than usual. First, we managed to come close to our old time target (20 minutes) instead of our regular length (30 minutes). And, second, Alex is coming back to TechCrunch starting next week!
Expect more Equity and, from Alex, writing for Extra Crunch. But don’t worry, we’ve got you covered. If you aren’t an Extra Crunch subscriber yet you can use the code “EQUITY” and save a bundle. (Woo!)
That done, let’s dig into the news that Kate and Alex discussed, starting with Harlem Capital’s $40.3 million new fund.The New York-based outfit has a focus on investing in minority entrepreneurs, who receive significantly less than their white male counterparts. This is one of the largest funds with a diversity mandate to date, and that's something to be stoked about.
Next we turned to Mike Cagney’s canny fundraising ability. The former SoFi CEO, ousted for bad behavior, is putting together another huge funding round for his startup, Figure Technologies. The expected $103 million round comes after the company raised $120 million before.
With over $50 million raised of the more than $100 million it expects, covering Figure is partially a financial story. However, due to Cagney’s part in the project, it’s also a story of how fast money forgives.
Pivoting to Europe, Kate and Alex chewed into the latest report on European venture capital, pulling from Atomico and Forbes. The headlines are pretty simple: There are more EU-based unicorns than ever, more money invested in the region, and the money is mostly finding male hands.
Disappointing diversity metrics aside, it’s an encouraging set of metrics for a region that has long found itself left to the side when major startup markets are discussed.
And finally, Alex wanted to talk about two impending US-listed technology IPOs. Coming in the wake of the WeWork fiasco and sporting similar share prices but divergent growth profiles, the debuts of Bill.com and Sprout Social are events.
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
We had a lot to get through this week and may have ran over our time a little bit but it was worth it. First, we discussed Weekend Fund's second effort, a $10 million vehicle targeting early-stage upstarts. Led by Product Hunt founder and CEO Ryan Hoover, Weekend Fund raised a smaller debut angel fund a few years ago. Now they're back at it after deploying capital to Girlboss, TTYL, Headspin and more.
Next, we turned to some upsetting news, at least for the employees and venture capitalists behind the startup Omni. After raising a total of $35 million in VC funding, Omni announced this week it was shutting down, with 10 of its engineers moving over to Coinbase. It appears the company struggled to make the economics of equipment rentals and physical on-demand storage work out. It’s another victim of a venture capital-subsidized business offering a convenient service at an unsustainable price.
Far from shuttering, we also spoke about Cocoon, a new company that wants to help you stay in touch with those who matter most. The company graduated from Y Combinator and has since raised $3 million in venture funding. The startup was founded by former Facebook employees, hence the headline, and is hoping to create the dedicated software that you use for that most important group chat in your life. The iOS-only app is a bit of a cross between Life360, Slack and Path.
Finally, we closed the episode with some Airbnb news and the New York Stock Exchange's interesting plans to alter direct listings.
Glad you guys came back for another episode, we’ll see you soon.
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
We have something a bit different for you this week. Equity co-host Kate Clark recently sat down with Manish Chandra, the co-founder and chief executive officer of Poshmark, and one of his earliest investors, NFX managing partner James Currier.
If you haven't heard of Poshmark, it's an online platform for buying and selling clothes. Basically, it's the thrift shop of the 21st century. We asked Chandra how he and co-founders Tracy Sun, Gautam Golwala and Chetan Pungaliya cooked up the idea for Poshmark, what bumps they faced along the way, how they raised venture capital and, of course, what details of their upcoming initial public offering he could share with us. Meanwhile, Currier dished about the company's early days, when the Poshmark team worked hard on the floor of Currier's office.
Unfortunately, neither Chandra or Currier were willing to share deets about Poshmark's IPO, reportedly expected soon. But they both shared interesting insights into building a successful venture-backed company, battling competition and putting your best foot forward.
Glad you guys came back for another episode, we'll see you soon.
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
This week Kate was in China, so TechCrunch's Danny Crichton and Alex took the helm while she was out grilling Lime. So, with our producer (the excellent Mr. Gates) in San Francisco and Danny in New York and Alex in the provinces, we got into the following to start:
- Jetpack Aviation and it’s seed round to build a flying motorcycle, because of course why not
- An endurance racing startup raising money from Usain Bolt
- Norwest’s mega new $2B fund
- EQT’s mega new $750 million rumored European growth fund
- And a new round for Peanut, the social network for mothers
Pivoting into the biggest news from the week, 1Password raised a comically-large $200 million Series A round of funding. The firm quite obviously hadn't raised much capital before but had grown to be quite large. Hence the large check. Recall that Series A really means a company's first institutional round, not a specific dollar range.
Next we discussed DoorDash and its possible $100 million add-on to its $600 million round from earlier this year. The new capital should keep the on-demand technology company's valuation pegged just above where it was set during its preceding round. So, a down round this is not.
Meanwhile, Docker received a $35M investment from Benchmark and sold much of its business to Marantis, which has all the appearances of a recap for the formerly high-flying unicorn.
What else? JUUL is laying off staff, WeWork is still losing an ocean of dollars, and Line is partnering up with Yahoo Japan.
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
This week we did something just a little bit new. Kate was in studio at TechCrunch's SF HQ. Alex was in his dork cave in Providence. And we had a guest in the studio as well. We've done similar setups before, but never with video all around. So, welcome to a slightly new chapter in Equity's production history (all praise to Chris for making it work, video will be out today on TechCrunch's YouTube page).
Our guest this week was the excellent Sarah Smith from Bain Capital Ventures. Before she turned to writing checks, Smith worked for both Quora and Facebook. Her fun fact? She's an avid and competitive player of board games.
First up we dug into one of Kate's latest, a piece looking at the influencer space, venture investments into it, and what's next for the power of the Instagram-famous.She highlights startups like Influence, Cameo, Karat and more.
Next up, Deserve raised $50 million from Goldman Sachs, making the round something that was worth touching on. Later, Alex spoke with the company's CEO and picked up more context, but what matters for today is that Deserve is doubling-down on its credit card fintech service, not doing what other companies that handle money are up to, namely trying to become neobanks at high speed.
Speaking of which, why is every fintech or finservices startup becoming a bank? Partially because they can, partially because it can be lucrative, and partially because, we found out, it's a way to juice customers that they've already paid to acquire. Want to make your CAC expenses look more efficient? Stretch out that LTV!
And then we spent a minute on Uber's results, which proved better than but wound up being poorly received.
Glad you guys came back for another episode, we'll see you soon.
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
This week Kate and Alex broke the discussion into two main themes. The first dealt with early-stage companies, and the second, as you can imagine, later-stage affairs. Don't worry, we don't get to SoftBank for quite some time.
Up top, we dug into Kate's story about Quill, a formerly stealthy company that could be taking on Slack. That or something similar to Slack. Next, we turned to ManiMe, a startup in the beauty space that raised a smaller $2.6 million to take on a market that is valued in the billions.
After that it was time to leave the auspices of the early-stage market and move to, of all things, a public company. GrubHub reported earnings this week. It went poorly. Alex wanted to riff over the company's earnings report and what it could mean for startups that are competing with GrubHub, a leader in the food delivery space that DoorDash and Postmates would prefer to lead themselves.
What impact GrubHub may have on the highly-valued on-demand companies isn't clear yet, but will be pretty damn interesting to see when it does land.
Sticking to the later-stage markets, Alex dug into the problems at Wag which is struggling and looking for a sale despite raising a castle of cash from the Vision Fund. Kate followed that up with notes on problems at Katerra. The Information is reporting this week that the business is going through a number of layoffs and we're wondering if it will suffer the same fate of some of SoftBank's other investments.
And, finally, the changing face of things at SoftBank itself. The great money spigot is slowly cutting flow. How many unicorns that will strand isn't yet clear. But surely it can't be zero.
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
This week Kate and Alex held the reins as a duo (check out our chat with Greylock's Sarah Guo from last week here) to dig into an enormous raft of news. And don't worry, it's not all late-stage happenings. We're discussing early-stage news every week because that's what the listeners want!
Up top we dug into Kate's excellent work covering the Superhuman founder's new micro fund, or at least his attempt at raising such a fund. Our main question is how can he be a good VC and a good executive at the same time? Folks don't tend to do both at the same time because they're each more than full-time jobs. Having two such gigs sounds hard.
But hey, it's not just athletes and musicians who can bring outsized interest to deals. In-demand founders can have a similar effect. We'll be keeping a close eye on the upcoming fun. Moving on.
Next we turned to the other end of the venture landscape, looking at Founder's Fund's new capital vehicles. With a combined $2.7 billion in eventual capital, FF is hoping to build a financial redoubt from which they can rain capital down on late-stage targets wherever they may be.
Is it a bit late in the cycle to cut late-stage checks to companies that might otherwise go public? That's the gamble so far as we can see it, but perhaps with WeWork's IPO dreams turned to nightmares, there's demand among a group of companies for another 12 months in the private markets. And that means more money is required.
On the theme of more money, Lime is raising some more and we were treated to new financial results from The Information's great work getting the figures. Or discussion asked the question of how far the company's unit economics could improve. Kate said that Lime is investing a lot now in developing better hardware, so their scooters can last more than 5 minutes on the roads before breaking down. She thinks things will start looking up when its deploying only new, fancy, good scooters. Alex is bearish.
Before we could turn back to the early-stage market and wrap up, we had to cover the latest from WeWork. SoftBank did in the end come and save the day (at least for now) for the company, meaning that WeWork lives on, though layoffs are expected sooner rather than later. Who knows what the future holds...
And finally, Vendr, a company that is profitable, raised a $2 million round. This is interesting because, again, it's profitable! And the startup willing shared some financial data with us--a rarity. Read more about the recent Y Combinator graduate here.
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast where each week we discuss other people’s money and what sense their investment choices make (or don't).
This week was honestly a treat. We had Kate Clark in the studio along with Alex Wilhelm and a special guest, Sarah Guo from Greylock Partners, a venture firm (obviously). Guo has the distinction of having the best-ever fun fact on the show.
We kicked off with Grammarly, a company that recently put $90 million into its accounts. We chatted about for whom it was built, and if we use it today. One thing that felt clear was that consumers are more willing than before to pay for their tooling. And that means that companies like Grammarly may prove strong investment candidates.
Next, we hit on two more rounds, namely Tiger Global's investment into Lattice and Clari's $60 million Series D. Starting with Lattice, a performance management company founded by none other than Sam Altman's brother, Jack. The startup raised $25 million from Tiger Global, read more about that here.
Clari led us a to a discussion of vertical SaaS, and Guo's views on the future of SaaS products (she's bullish). Alex and Guo had a lot to say on this subject.
After talking over a few rounds the discussion turned to the Q3 venture market. A few things stood out from the data and projections. First, that early-stage fundraising was a little light in the quarter. It could be a single-quarter wobble, but the data was worth chewing on all the same. And, second, that Seed deal and dollar volume were hot once again.
And we wrapped with a discussion of Tempest, a new sobriety-focused startup that raised a $10 million round. Honestly, we aren't sure how we feel about the business model. Please let us know if you have thoughts.
It was a good time. A big thanks to Guo for coming on the show, and a shoutout to the team that makes Equity happen: Chris Gates, and Henry Pickavet.
Equity drops every Friday at 6:00 am PT, so subscribe to us on iTunes, Overcast, Pocketcast, Downcast and all the casts.
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
We have a special episode this week. Instead of our regular lineup, we got Alex on the phone with an IPO expert to dig into the year's IPO cycle both at home and abroad. Helping with the effort was James Clark, the Head of Tech and Lifesciences, Primary Markets at the London Stock Exchange.
That means we had IPO fans from both the US and across the pond to kick into what has happened thus far in 2019, and what's coming around both in Q4 and in 2020.
We touched on a few topics, including the declining popularity of startups that don't make money, the strength of software companies' debuts (Datadog, CrowdStrike, for example), and a little bit on direct listings (they have a different name in the UK, it turns out).
We're now into the fourth quarter of 2020, and some companies have done better than expected (Beyond Meat), while others have done worse (Uber and Lyft). It's been fun, and, fingers crossed, we won't run short of more fodder in the coming months!
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast where each week we discuss other people’s copious dollars and lacking sense.
This week was special! Kate and Alex at Disrupt where they recorded live in front of an audience. Equity has recorded at Disrupt before. Equity has taped before an audience before. But this was the first time that we taped it at Disrupt and in front of an audience that actually had chairs. Progress!
https://twitter.com/KateClarkTweets/status/1179915146392588289?s=20
Charles Hudson of Precursor Ventures joined us as well, making for an excellent show. Astute listeners among us will recall that Hudson is a former guest on the show, having taken part back in mid-2017.
Onto the topics, we discussed the impending Precursor Ventures opportunity fund (more here). We wanted to know why it was of modest size, especially in an era of ever-larger venture capital funds.
Next, we turned to a trio of startup stories, starting with Rhino, a company that is working to shake up the rental deposit market. Hate paying deposits for an apartment? Would you rather pay a small, regular fee? Rhino hopes that you would, and has raised $21 million to build out the idea.
Also on our list of topics was a small upstart by the name of Knowable, our colleague Josh Constine profiled the business here. The company sells educational audio bits, and they want you to know, they are not a podcasting business. We're still a bit unclear of the difference between educational audio and podcast but VCs seem confident enough in the company's prospects, funneling $3.75 million in the project.
The last startup we riffed on is called oollee. The company provides people with an unlimited supply of filtered drinking water for a small monthly fee. It’s raised $1 million in pre-seed funding from investors, including Mission Gate Inc. and Columbus Holdings, and, of course, we have thoughts!
After that we touched on the most valuable Y Combinator companies, including Stripe (more here and here), Airbnb and DoorDash. The list of YC's hits is getting long. And, it provided the perfect segue to Airbnb.
Airbnb intends to go public via a direct listing, according to a whole bunch of recent reports. Every VC in town seems to have opinions about direct listings as the next best path to the public markets, maybe they're right. Finally, WeWork is selling off a bunch of stuff that it bought recently. Here's a list of what it bought, but SpaceIQ, Teem, Conductor and more are said to be on the chopping block.
All that and we had fun! Back to normal next week.
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
As with yesterday, Kate and Alex were both on-site at TechCrunch’s San Francisco headquarters to chat over the latest. Unlike yesterday, however, Equity brought along a guest: Sean Dempsey from Merus Capital. (Merus writes Seed and Series A checks, with a focus on enterprise companies.)
And thus the three dove into the news. Early-stage first, to shake things up.
Early-StageKate wrote a story this week about a startup you might have forgotten about but who's name probably rings a bell. Bodega! The company now goes by Stockwell, actually, and they've raised a whopping total of $45 million in VC funding. But what's in a name after all? We debate.
Next we turned to an interesting company called Kapwing. What's that you ask? "It's a laymen’s Adobe Creative Suite built for what people actually do on the internet: make memes and remix media," says TechCrunch's Josh Constine. We're intrigued.
Late-Stage And BeyondThis week Peloton priced and went public. The firm's $29 per-share IPO price was top of its proposed range ($26 to $29). The public markets, however, decided that the unicorn had reached too high.
So, shares of the high-end exercise company dropped, wrapping the day down about 11 percent. A good IPO first day this was not, though the company did manage to raise more capital than it might have with more conservative pricing. (Peloton has a yucky multi-class share structure that we touched on as well; it seems that all the big companies these days are opposed to regular governance.)
Next we turned to the Vox-NYMag merger. It's a bit out of our territory but its a digital media deal, so we were interested. After all, the two of us have spent our entire careers in digital media and we have a vested interested in these companies surviving.
WeWork (Redux)We honestly tried to get all the WeWork out of our system yesterday. We wanted to include zero WeWork content on this episode. But WeWork keeps doing things, so here we are.
Keeping things as brief as we can, WeWork is going to divest some companies that it bought (more on what we thought it was up to, here) including its jet, and the firm is looking to take on more capital. Unsurprisingly.
All that and we're done for this week. Chat you all at Disrupt!
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
This week Kate and Alex were back at TechCrunch’s San Francisco HQ to huddle over the weeks' biggest news story: WeWork's infamous CEO exiting his role. Adam Neumann is now merely the non-executive chairman of The We Company, a firm that he helped found and led the public story for over the last half-decade.
His exit comes after a number of revelations made his tenure at the highly-valued WeWork appear chaotic and self-dealing. After WeWork's valuation tumbled as it raced towards a financially-critical IPO, something had to give. The firm tried to ameliorate investors with changes (read: improvements) to its corporate governance but that wasn't enough. Snakes don't rot from the tail, and WeWork needed new leadership, which it got the form of co-CEOs.
WeWork is now led by Sebastian Gunningham and Artie Minson, seasoned executives with stints at Amazon and Time Warner Cable, respectively. They've been charged with leading the company into an era of maturity, cost-cutting and maybe even profitability! But probably not. Anyway, we think there are a whole lot of parallels to draw between Uber and WeWork, as we've made clear in the past.
Kate and Alex also touched on corporate governance, especially regarding super-voting stock. The TL;DR: private company boards look and operate much differently than public company boards. More often than not, startup boards are made up of venture capitalists focused on protecting their equity and future returns. It's a dog-eat-dog world, folks.
Wapping, it seems likely that WeWork will look to secure new cash in the short-term as it buttons up its business, divests or kills off non-performing assets (remember this?), and looks to temper both its growth-rate and losses. If that will be enough to allow the company to float in 2020 (2019 seems unlikely) isn't clear.
Icarus.
We're back Friday morning with our regular episode and a guest. Stay tuned!
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
This week Kate and Alex were back at TechCrunch's San Francisco headquarters to chat the news with Kleiner Perkin's Mamoon Hamid. Hamid is best known as a former member of the Social Capital team, and for driving generational change at Kleiner Perkins, a decades-old venture capital firm.
While we were prepping our notes, Airbnb announced that it is indeed going public next year. The firm's terse statement launched 1,000 blog posts (here is one, here is another), while instigating a few jokes. After all, the IPO market is hot now. Saying that you are going to try your best to get out next year isn't incredibly impressive from a firm with as many billions as Airbnb is today. It's also not at all surprising.
Still, it's a near-promise. And that means eventually we'll get to see what the popular home-sharing and accommodations company spends all its gross margin on. Moving along, we discussed the recent WeWork revelations. If you haven't read the Wall Street Journal's piece on the matter, you must.It is chock-full of colorful anecdotes with WeWork's co-founder and CEO Adam Neumann front and center.
Next, we got into the news concerning a split at Aspect Ventures, which TechCrunch covered here. We had heard rumors about the split, first reported by The WSJ, for a few weeks now and were interested to discuss what drives these sort of shake-ups with our guest.
Scooting ahead, we turned to the early-stage market where quite a few of you, our lovely friends, have asked us to spend more time. So, we talked at length about D2C startups, including the new, and we think cool Thingtesting business. You can check out their Instagram, the focal point of their business, here. Despite enjoying Thingtesting, Kate and Mamoon are bearish on the D2C movement.
All that and we had a good time. Sorry about the lack of donut continuity in the video. We're back next week with more, and we'll see everyone at Disrupt in two weeks!
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
This week Kate and Alex were back to cover a lot of late-stage news, which they rounded up with some early-stage notes towards the end. As a reminder, come check out the show at Disrupt SF if you are in town, we'll be out amongst startups, chatting all things startups and money.
Up top, we dug into WeWork and the latest from the company's continuing IPO saga. The question regarding the co-working company's public offering has changed to whether the IPO will happen this year, not just at what price the firm can entice enough investment to actually get public.
Alex has written about the company's cash appetite a few times now, which raise the question of how long the company can survive without some sort of large, external investment. If SoftBank is willing to commit more capital is an open question.
Moving along to Uber, the firm underwent layoffs again this week. More than 400 people, or 8% of the operations, were cut as the company attempts to streamline operations, cut costs and, well, take baby steps toward profitability. As mentioned in the show here is a link to the Travis Kalanick letter.
Turning to the early-stage part of the world, there's a new early-stage-focused venture fund out there, Work Life Ventures, which intends to put small checks into promising SaaS companies.The firm is led by SaaS School founder Brianne Kimmel, a well-known angel investor in the enterprise space. So far she's backed three companies out of the fund, including recent Y Combinator standout Tandem.
We finished off the episode with... cereal. A company called Magic Spoon (their website is here, as promised) raised $5.5 million this week for its D2C breakfast business. Our take is that the price point is a bit too high for comfort in its current iteration. It'll be interesting to see if the startup can lower its prices now that it has new capital.
We'll be back in a week! Chat soon, and please stop telling us to become angel investors!
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
This week, we recorded on location at TechCrunch Sessions: Enterprise in San Francisco, a show that saw talks from Box's Aaron Levie, Atlassian CEO Scott Farquhar and venture capitalists Maha Ibrahim, Rebecca Lynn and Jason Green. The latter, the founder of Emergence Capital, joined us before his panel for a special episode of Equity focused almost entirely on enterprise tech. Danny Crichton, the esteemed leader of TechCrunch's Extra Crunch, was on hand to co-lead the episode with Kate.
Before we jumped too deep into the enterprise pool, we had to review some news from one of the most-talked about companies. The co-working giant, legally known as The We Company, is said to have halved its IPO exceptions to a minuscule $20 billion! Ok that's not really that small but compared to its most recent valuation of $47 billion, we're a bit shocked.
Next, we ran through the IPO pipeline. Cloudflare is expected to go public next Friday. Datadog will come after that. WeWork is reportedly kicking off its roadshow next week, but given this week's reports, that could be delayed.
After that, Green gave us his take on Box, the file sharing business in which he was an early investor in. If you haven't heard, activist investor Starboard Value took a 7.5% stake in the business this week. Green explains what that means and what he think is next for the company. Levie, of course, spoke on stage at the enterprise event. In short, the executive said his goal is to continue building a sustainable business.
Finally, we dove into the latest trends in startups. Enterprise still isn't sexy but it's much sexier than it's been in the past. Why? Because all the enterprise startups want to build consumer friendly tools. Tune in to hear what Green thinks of the consumerization of the enterprise and all the startup madness.
TechCrunch is back in San Francisco for our flagship event, Disrupt SF. We've got a fantastic line up of startup and tech leaders on tap like Snapchat's Evan Spiegel, Postmates CEO Basitan Lehmann, and Salesforce's Marc Benioff.
Plus, you can experience an entire track of "how-to" content to help you grow your business from experts at Bumble, Fitbit, Uber, Goldman Sachs, Y Combinator and more.
Also! We'll be recording a special episode of Equity right in the middle of Startup Alley. So get a ticket and come enjoy the goodness. Early-bird pricing ends tonight, and if you act now you can save another 20% by using promo code EQUITY. techcrunch.com/disruptsf
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
This week we were back in the SF studio, with Kate and Alex on hand to chat venture, business, startups, and IPOs with Iris Choi. Choi is a partner at Floodgate, and one of the very few folks who have ever been invited back on the show.
Despite Floodgate being an early-stage firm, Choi was more than willing to dig into the week's later-stage topics, starting with the Peloton IPO filing. Kate was stoked about the offering (her piece here, Alex's notes here). Peloton, a fitness, media, hardware (and more) company, is a lot different than your run-of-the-mill enterprise SaaS exits.
Next Alex ran the team through a list of impending IPOs that we care about. There are a number of venture-backed companies looking to go public before the stock market falls apart. More on each when they price.
After the S-1 march, we turned to personnel news, namely that Instacart's CFO is leaving the firm after about four years with the company. Ravi Gupta is joining Sequoia Capital. We'll tell you why.
Next, we touched on two rounds. First, a Kleiner deal into Consider, an app that brings power-tooling to email. And then we chatted about Inkitt, another Kleiner deal. Why the pair of early-stage rounds? Because Alex recently went to Kleiner to chat with its new partner team about where they'll deploy capital in the future.
And that took us comfortably overtime. A big thanks to Choi for joining us, again, and you for sticking with the show. More next week!
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
This week we were helmed by Kate Clark, Alex Wilhelm, and yet another extra special guest. Unusual Ventures co-founder and partner John Vironis joined us to talk soil investing (yes, it's a thing), seed investing, growth investing and all the somewhat meaningless funding stages.
Vrionis was a longtime investor at Lightspeed Venture Partners and has made big bets on a number of companies, including AppDynamics, Heptio, and Mulesoft.
It was a great episode that kicked off with some conversation around DoorDash, the food delivery company that continues to make headlines week after week. We'd like to stop talking about the company, but it intrudes regularly into our notes.
This time DoorDash bought a few companies, purchases that appear set to allow the firm to boost its investment and research into self-driving delivery robots. (Kate saw one in the wild recently!)
Next we went deep into the subject of seed. John, of course, has been a seed investor for years and has lots to say on the topic. Mostly, we discussed Kate's latest piece on mega-funds making an increasing number of deals at the earliest stage. John doesn't think "stage-agnostic" investing makes any sense. You need experts at each stage making bets on a specific type of company. In his words, 'a heart surgeon wouldn't deliver your baby, right."
Then we moved onto one of our favorite subjects, namely direct listings, the IPO market, and if money is too often left on the table. The question takes on extra import when we see results like Dynatrace's IPO, which rose around 50 percent its first day. It seems likely that we'll see other companies pursue the sort of direct listings that Spotify and Slack managed.
That segued us brilliantly into our final topic: Airbnb and its financial health. The firm, we reckon, is a good candidate for a direct listing itself. We talked over its numbers, and if we were to sum our perspectives, we'd say that Airbnb is about as impressive as we expected.
All that and we had fun, as usual.
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
We have a special episode ready for you today. As many of you know, it's that time of year when hundreds of nascent startups make their big 2-minute pitch to the top venture capitalists of "Silicon Valley" (San Francisco) at Y Combinator's Demo Day. We (Kate and Alex) thought we'd bring in a YC expert, YC chief executive officer Michael Seibel, to chat about the batch, changes in the last year, rising deal prices, SAFEs vs. convertible notes and the future of technology in SF.
"This place is where tech is happening and they want to be here," Seibel told us. "Like I'm a struggling actor in Iowa and I want to get to Hollywood. This is kind of the promised land for a lot of people around the world."
We had a lot of questions for Michael. For one, deal sizes and valuations at the seed stage are growing like crazy and YC is a big cause of that. To our surprise, Michael isn't actually a big fan of these huge rounds.
"We don't think this is necessarily a positive phenomenon; on the other hand, we like that our founders get less dilution," he said.
If you're interested in taking a look at each of the companies that made their pitch yesterday, at Day One of Y Combinator's Demo Day, you can take a look at TechCrunch's full list. Check back end of day Tuesday for a full list of companies that pitched on Day Two.
As a final note, Equity is still not an interview show. This was a fun exception!
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
Today is our promised Equity Shot (a short-form, single-topic episode) on the WeWork S-1. You can read Kate's notes here, or Alex's here as a place to start.
Given that we didn't know when the WeWork S-1 filing was going to make itself known, we put together this episode from TechCrunch's SF HQ, Alex's home office, and Kate inside a New York Blue Bottle Coffee. We were not about to let the locational issues stop us from having fun!
Where to begin! WeWork is growing like mad, but it's hard to tell what its gross margins are. This makes its revenue quality hard to parse. (Alex tried to figure that out here, TechCrunch has even more good questions and notes here). What wasn't hard to figure out was that WeWork -- also known as The We Company -- is tectonically unprofitable on operating and net bases. And that the company's operations consume cash, while its investing activities torch the stuff.
WeWork's eclectic chief executive officer and co-founder Adam Neumann will maintain a majority of voting rights. It's not uncommon for founder-led companies to adopt this sort of voting structure and considering how central Neumann is to WeWork's identity, we weren't the least bit surprised by this.
The company's IPO will make a lot of groups a lot of money. Mainly Benchmark, a respected venture capital fund, JP Morgan, and, of course, SoftBank, which has invested billions in WeWork and now owns more than 100 million shares.
And that's all for now. Don't miss our episode with Dan Primack that came out yesterday. A busy week, but a good one. Chat again soon!
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
This week was a bit special. Instead of meeting up at the TechCrunch HQ to record the episode, Kate and Alex met up in muggy Boston at Drift's office, where we linked up with Axios's Dan Primack. And since we were feeling chatty, we went a bit long.
After checking in with Primack (he has a newsletter and a podcast), we first dealt with the latest from Tumblr. In short, Verizon Media is selling Tumblr to Automattic for a few dollars. How did Verizon wind up owning Tumblr? Ah. Well, Yahoo bought it. Later, after Verizon bought AOL, it bought Yahoo. Then it smushed them together and called it Oath. Then Verizon decided that it didn't like that much and renamed the group Verizon Media. But Verizon doesn't want to own media (besides TechCrunch, of course), so it sold Tumblr to Automattic, a venture-backed company best known for operating WordPress.
That's a lot, I know. What matters is that Yahoo bought Tumblr for more than $1 billion. Verizon sold it for around $3 million. Now, Automattic now has a few hundred new employees and a shot at juicing its userbase before it goes public.
After that, we lamented that the WeWork S-1 had yet to appear. This was a tragedy, frankly. We had expected to spend half the show riffing on WeWork's financials, alas...
So we turned to some normal material, like Ramp's recent $7 million raise to take on Brex, and, SmartNews's recent round, which gave it an eye-popping $1.1 billion valuation.
We ran a bit long because we were having fun, fitting in some conversation surrounding the notes from the SEC regarding the now-dead and then-fraudulent Rothenberg Ventures. More on that here if you want to get angry.
And finally, Vision Fund 2. It's been a big source of interest for everyone on the show, and we expect whatever the second-act Vision Fund winds up becoming to be a big damn deal. The fund will invest in more than just consumer marketplaces, in fact, it's eyeing more AI businesses and even biotech. That should be interesting.
All that and we have a lot more good stuff coming. Thanks for listening to the show, and we'll be right back.
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
This week we were helmed by Kate Clark and Alex Wilhelm, but those of you who love the show having guests on don't despair. As we explain at the top, there's a lot of folks coming on the show soon, many of whom you know by name.
But that's to come, and we had a lot to chat through this week. Including, right from the jump, the latest gyrations in the stock market. Earlier this week tech stocks, and especially cloud and SaaS stocks, took a nosedive. Sentiment swung around later in the week when markets caught their breath and Lyft's earnings went well. But the movement in highly-valued SaaS companies caught our eye. Perhaps if the market finally does correct, we'll see growth stakes take the worst of it.
But it wasn't all bad news on the show, a new app that raised $5 million caught Kate's attention. It's called Squad and it's now backed by First Round Capital, the seed fund behind the likes of Uber. You can read Kate's interview with the founder, Esther Crawford, here.
Next, we turned to two startups that are focused on male reproductive health. While we've covered startups focused on fertility before on the show, this is the first time we've delved into male-focused services that are designed to help men take part in conception. The news here is Dadi has raised another $5 million in venture capital funding. Legacy, the other male fertility company we discussed, is taking part in Y Combinator's summer batch right now.
On the IPO-ish beat, we talked about Postmates which has a new stadium partnership, and, more importantly, permission to use cute robots to deliver things in San Francisco. After hearing about how small, rolling robots will handle last-mile deliveries for years, we're excited for them to actually make it to market. In our view, technology of this sort won't eliminate the need for human workers at on-demand shops, though they may replace some routine runs. Bring on the burrito robots.
We closed on Airbnb's purchase of Urbandoor, yet another acquisition from the popular home-sharing company that will eventually go public. It has to, right? Perhaps Urbandoor will help unlock new revenues in the corporate travel space before we see an S-1. After all, Airbnb wants to debut with plenty of growth under its belt to help it meet valuation expectations. Adding revenue to its core business could be a good way to ensure that there's new top-line to report.
More to come, including something special next week!
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
This week Kate and Alex were back to dig through a surprising number of fresh rounds and new funds along with a little breaking news. The traditional VC summer is nowhere to be seen in 2019, so expect the show to stay packed for the foreseeable future.
DoorDash's decision to buy Caviar from Square upended our agenda. The decacorn's decision to drop $410 million in cash and stock on an asset that Square had spent around $90 million on was nearly confusing. Square couldn't offload the damn thing for $100 million back in 2016; Jack's second company has now shed an unprofitable arm that looked less and less core to its operations as time has gone along. And DoorDash turned cash and stock into a bit of growth.
Next on the docket was Clearbanc. The company, which wants to disrupt venture capital by popularizing the revenue-based financing model, raised a $50 million round and announced a $250 million fund. We're keeping a close eye on this company, as its fast-growth is relatively unmatched. Plus, Kate's interviewing Clearbanc co-founder Michele Romanow at TechCrunch Disrupt San Francisco, our annual conference that brings together the leaders of tech today. So that's fun.
In this week's edition of SaaS Watch, Monday.com raised $150 million at a $1.9 billion valuation. The corporate task management and productivity company is another firm selling software to help teams work together more efficiently. Slack, Asana, Notion and others are working in related areas.
Our second to last topic was Compass. There wasn't enough time to go too deep but here's the TL;DR: Compass raised a whopping $370 million on a valuation of $6.4 billion.
And finally, PowerPlant ventures raised a second, larger fund. The new $165 million vehicle will follow the first (a $42 million capital pool, as TechCrunch reported), investing in plant-based food companies. With the epic rise of Beyond Meat on the public markets, plant-based foods are hot and investors want a bite of the results. Also, we dig niche, focused funds.
Reminder, you can connect with us via email at equitypod@techcrunch.com. We're open to feedback, suggestions and even compliments!
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
This was a special week for us because Danny was back in the office, which meant we cornered him into coming on the show. Danny, of course, is an Equity regular. Also aboard this week were our regular hosts, Kate and Alex.
We were relieved to have three hosts because there was a lot of news to get through, from IPOs to late-stage financings to little seed fundings, and we shit you not, camping!
Up first was the rapidly-approaching WeWork IPO. WeWork, also known as The We Company, filed to go public some time ago. So we weren't terribly surprised to learn the company is plotting a September listing. Though that's earlier than we'd been expecting, we're not complaining. If the sooner-than-anticipated IPO is due to market timing, or the company simply being ready we don't know yet. But we will when we see the numbers. Bring on the S-1 filing.
Next Alex took us through a few recent and upcoming IPOs. He promised to be brief, so we'll mirror the feat here. Last week Phreesia, Medallia, and DouYu went public (notes here), Livongo got out this week (S-1 review here), and 9F and CloudMinds have filed. Expect more IPO news in time whether you want it or not.
Leaving the public markets, Kate had words concerning the forthcoming Bird round that has yet to close. The company is raising its Series D led by Sequoia at a $2.5 billion valuation. Listen to the episode for your weekly scooter rant.
Next, Danny took us through the Robinhood round, which brought us to a discussion point. Alex wanted to compare Robinhood to Slack, when the latter company was worth about the same amount as Robinhood is now. Kate objected to the comparison, one's an enterprise software business and the other a fintech giant. Still, Alex had lots of great points.
We then turned to HipCamp. The company, known as Airbnb for camping, raised a nice round of funding at a $127 million valuation. Andreessen Horowitz was involved via new general partner Andrew Chen, who recently announced another deal in the email subscription platform Substack. We're betting Airbnb gobbles up HipCamp at some point.
We also touched on Gusto's $200 million raise (and its constituent new valuation), before closing with the now-very-probable Vision Fund 2.0 and its Microsoft connection.
All that and we left even more material on the floor due to time. Make sure to check Equity out on Spotify if you haven't seen us over there before. Click here to find the show.
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
It's a good week here at Equity HQ because our two co-hosts are both back at the same time! Kate Clark and Alex Wilhelm, after each of them taking some time off, led the show today, digging into a wealth of news and happenings.
Here's a quick rundown of what happened on the show this week!
Postmates is still working on its IPO! Despite some reports indicating that the popular on-demand delivery company was talking to rival players about a possible sale, the company's CEO said this week that his firm is still looking to go public. (It's also picking up money this year, and talent.) Selfishly we love this, as we want to read its S-1 and see its numbers, something that wouldn't happen if it wound up subsumed into a larger company. Say, Uber for example.
DouYu priced its IPO at the low-end of its range, but the offering did add lots of new capital to its coffers. Not every IPO raises its range and prices above the heightened interval, DouYu reminds us. But the company's debut is yet another China-based unicorn going public on the U.S. markets, so we had no choice but to pay attention to the streaming and esports-themed company. Recall that Huya, a similar company, went public previously (more here).
CrowdStrike's first earnings report was a success. The cybersecurity business focused on endpoint protection posted revenues of $96.1 million on GAAP net losses of $26 million in the first quarter of fiscal year 2020. The company, if you remember, completed a $612 million NASDAQ initial public offering in June.
The next unicorn list contains some obvious companies (Rothy's, Next Trucking, etc.) and some surprise entries (Lattice?).
100 Thieves has lots of new money, and esports is cool. That's a quick summary, but in detail, the firm added a $35 million Series B to its accounts less than a year after it raised a $25 million Series A. When a firm raises an extra round that quickly, it usually means things are going well.
Patreon raised a big new round. You're all familiar with Patreon, a platform that supports creators. Can a pivot toward SaaS accelerate its path toward a billion-dollar valuation? We think so.
Substack, a plucky favorite of the journalist scene, has fresh capital! Because both Alex and Kate are authors of their very own newsletters (yes, they have a podcast too, sorry), they had plenty of thoughts about this one.
Next week Kate and Alex are back and we may even have a special guest back with us. So make sure you are subscribed, and we'll be right back in just seven days.
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
This week was a bit of a turn-about. Kate was off this week and Alex was back, so we brought back a few favorites to tide us over until our regular leader returns. For this IPO-themed episode, we had TechCrunch and Extra Crunch's Danny Crichton in the studio along with Deloitte's Barrett Daniels, a prior guest on the show and one of our favorite humans.
It being roughly the middle of the year, we decided to do a bit of run through the first two-quarters' worth of tech IPOs. There was, as you can expect, a lot to get chat about.
We started with notes on how the Chinese venture capital market is changing, most notably in terms of its share of the world's largest venture rounds. After leading the world for what felt like years, venture investment into China-based companies is slipping. And the declines are picking up attention (here, here).
But not all the news was gloomy on the show this week. Indeed, while some global data relating to the global IPO market wasn't exactly sparkling, the US-listed tech IPO market is doing really well.
After we went over a number of the companies that went out and did well post-IPO (nearly every company aside from the ride-hailing players), we conceded that things are pretty damn warm for companies going public. At the same time, we couldn't agree on how long the IPO market would remain so welcoming.
If it stays open, more unicorns will make it out. If the IPO window closes soon, we'll see hundreds of unicorns trapped on the wrong side of the glass.
And we wrapped with notes on everyone's favorite space-faring SPAC. We'll see you all really soon.
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
I was in the studio alone this week with the wonderful Clara Sieg of Revolution, an early-stage venture capital fund that invests in disruptive startups from underrepresented geographies. As you might have guessed, we talked about the rising trend of investors backing companies from "second-tier" markets like Austin, Atlanta, Denver, Philadelphia, Seattle, etc.
Clara herself hails from Pittsburgh, an up and coming market for technology startups and venture capital investments. We discuss how that has influenced her career in VC and how she landed at Revolution (she's been there for nearly a decade!) in the first place.
In this special episode, Clara also teaches me how cities become tech hubs. It's a special kind of recipe. A city must have a great university, or a few, nearby to provide a constant flow of talent. They need some big corporations around for the same reason. They need a healthy community of angel investors ready and willing to get things going. And... well, listen to the episode to learn the rest.
Finally, I ask Clara what investment she regrets not making the most. Her answer might surprise you.
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
Our esteemed co-host Alex Wilhelm was out again this week, but Kate Clark was in the studio with the lovely TechCrunch editor Connie Loizos and Canvas Ventures' general partner Rebecca Lynn. The wonderful Chris Gates is on vacation this week, so TechCrunch's Megan Rose Dickey sat in the producer's chair. That made this episode extra special, as it was our first all-female group on the mics and behind the scenes.
First on the docket was news from StockX and Cameo. The buzzy startups both raised big rounds this week. The former, a sneaker resale marketplace, closed on $110 million at a $1 billion valuation, while the latter attracted $50 million at a reported $300 million valuation. Rebecca shared her thoughts on the rise of influencer marketing and how its made way for the success of mobile apps and websites like Cameo, which caters to celebrities and influencers.
Next up was Brandless. The direct-to-consumer business made headlines this week after a report from The Information outlined internal drama following a big investment from SoftBank in 2018. Amid the turmoil, detailed here and here, the business brought on a brand-new CEO, former Walmart chief operating officer John Rittenhouse. Whether he can meet SoftBank's steep demands remains to be seen. The whole thing leaves us wondering: Do any of SoftBank's portfolio companies regret taking the firm's money?
Finally, we talked about WeWork's latest acquisition. The co-working giant bought Waltz, a smartphone app and reader that allows users to enter different properties with a single credential. The deal will make it easier for WeWork’s enterprise clients, such as GE Healthcare and Microsoft, to manage their employees’ on-demand memberships to WeWork spaces. WeWork has been quite acquisitive in 2019. Will its M&A activity help it prepare for an IPO? And why the hell does it still have an all-male board? We have more questions than answers.
That's all for now. See you next week.
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
Sadly, Equity co-host Alex Wilhelm is out this week, but for good reason: He's getting married this weekend. Fortunately, we had the esteemed TechCrunch editor Danny Crichton step in to discuss Slack's direct listing, Facebook's new cryptocurrency, the scooter cash desert, startup founder salaries and more with Equity co-host Kate Clark.
We began this week's episode with the latest Slack news. The enterprise communications business was said to price its shares at $26 apiece Wednesday afternoon, valuing the company at around $15.7 billion. We taped this episode on Wednesday, the day before Slack's direct listing. It's now Friday. We'll be back next week to unpack Slack's initial performance on the public markets.
Then, we turned to Facebook's new cryptocurrency, Libra, which will let you buy things or send money to people with nearly zero fees using interoperable third-party wallet apps or Facebook’s own Calibra wallet that will be built into WhatsApp, Messenger and its own app. As Kate mentioned in the podcast, if you're curious at all about Libra, read TechCrunch's Josh Constine's deep dive here. And, of course, listen to the latest episode to learn more about the role VCs have played in the development of the token and what it means for crypto startups.
Next up on the agenda was scooters because we can't seem to tape a single episode of Equity without mentioning VCs favorite sector. The news wasn't great this week, however. We're hearing that Lime, a scooter startup that has raised hundreds of millions in venture capital funding, is having a tough time landing fresh funding. That's a big problem because hardware is a tough and expensive business and if Lime -- and Bird for that matter -- aren't able to secure additional capital, well, it's goodbye scooters.
Finally, Danny and Kate chatted about startup founder salaries. There's not much written on this topic and comprehensive founder salary data is hard to come by. Fortunately, TechCrunch's Ron Miller did a little digging to find out just how much VC-backed entrepreneurs are being paid these days. The results are surprising.
As usual, we'll be back next week. Thanks for listening!
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
This week was a lot of fun. We had Kate and Alex in the studio with Chris running the show and reminding half the recording team about English words (immersive, as a spoiler).
This week had a lot to go over. First, Kate went to the Recode + Vox Code Conference in Scottsdale, Arizona where it was very, very hot. She tells us her key takeaways of the event (here's another spoiler: techlash).
Next, we turned to acquisitions, namely that Fortnite (Epic Games) bought Houseparty (formerly Meerkat, remember that?). Fornite is a cultural sensation that has become just as much a social phenom as it is a gaming powerhouse. Bringing Houseparty's multi-party and popular-with-the-youth video chat product under its umbrella makes some sense. That Houseparty's usage growth had reportedly stalled, we're sure, had nothing to do with the sale.
Moving on, we chatted briefly about the Bird-Scoot deal which we had touched on last week. (Kate wrote about it here and Alex here). Scoot, as it turns out, was having a not-so-easy time raising additional venture capital and sold to Bird for less than $25 million (way under its last valuation of $71 million). Ouch.
From there it was deal city (BetterUp! Tenderd! Others!) before we jumped into the CrowdStrike news. The firm's IPO is hot (more here, and here), which led to questions about IPO pricing (again. Sorry, we can't stop) and whether IPO pops are good or bad (yes, this again, too, but it's worth discussing).
Two topics followed. The success of the Fiverr IPO (and what that means for growth-y IPOs), and the impending Chewy debut + dual-class shares as a concept.
We've touched on dual-class stock structures before, but we think there is a lot more to unpack here and unpack we did! Basically, we think Silicon Valley's founder fetish, as the headline here suggests, infantilizes public companies. Listen to the whole episode to hear our full rant.
All that and we had a lot of fun. Alex is out for a few weeks, but Kate has a bunch of great things coming down the podcast pike. Chat with you all next week!
Equity drops every Friday at 6:00 am PT, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Pocket Casts, Downcast and all the casts.
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
Good news! Kate and Alex were both back in the studio this week. And even better news, the new TechCrunch studio is big and soundproof and pretty nice, really.
But enough about all of that, let's get into the news. First, a rapid-fire look at some recent items:
Thumbtack is raising a Series H at a flat valuation.
Bird is acquiring Scoot, which is unsurprising and probably smart.
Google is buying Looker and we don't really have much to say about it other than its linear funding history is picture-perfect.
And Mirror, the bike-free Peloton cognate, is raising money at a higher valuation.
From there we turned to four material topics. First up, the Peloton IPO news.
Everyone's favorite fitness tech company is going public. We were expecting this, still, we're excited. For now, all we have is a lousy press release announcing the IPO. Sit tight, the S-1 will come soon enough.
Next, we turned to a topic near and dear to the heart of this show: SoftBank's Vision Fund. The second Vision Fund, to be precise. Rumors indicate the folks behind the first Vision Fund are having a harder time than expected nailing down new money for a sophomore vehicle.
If the second Vision Fund doesn't come to be, what happens to late-stage startups? Those folks are dependent on huge chunks of cash and had gotten used to a new normal: large, late-stage funds doling out IPO-sized rounds to companies still too immature to go public. Without the promise of SoftBank's money, might we see an uptick in IPOs? Or an increasing number of late-stage companies floundering for capital? Will everything fall apart?
Speaking of messes, the folks behind Social Capital that got left behind when their venture firm became a family office are back with something new. Tribe Capital is raising $150 million fund. Kate detailed the firm here but here's the TL;DR, Tribe has hired a bunch of former Social Capital partners and they are essentially rebuilding Social Capital sans Chamath Palihapitiya.
Finally, the pace at which female-founded startups are reaching unicorn status is accelerating, big time. That's good news. If the speed of new, female-founded unicorn creation continues at this pace, we're in for some record results.
Oh and lastly, if you have a suggestion regarding who should come on Equity as a guest this summer, we're taking tips at equitypod@techcrunch.com. Let us know.
Equity drops every Friday at 6:00 am PT, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Pocket Casts, Downcast and all the casts.
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
It's our first week in the new TechCrunch podcast studio, or it was for Kate Clark and Chris Gates. Alex Wilhelm will be back around SF next week. For now, we fired up the mics and dug into what was a veritable barrage of news.
First, Paul Graham's contentious comments. The co-founder of Y Combinator tweeted some criticism of the tech press on Thursday; naturally, Kate and Alex had a few thoughts. In summary, Graham doesn't seem to understand what it is we tech journalists do and that's a problem.
Next up was Uber's first quarter numbers. Given how strongly the company had signaled this set of results, the earnings report was a bit anticlimactic. Until you dug into the numbers, and things got stickier. Uber's operating loss more than doubled from the year-ago quarter. Its adjusted EBITDA tripled, from -$280 million to -$869 million. Adjusted revenue growth compared to the year-ago quarter was just 14%.
Naturally, Uber's shares rose in after-hours trading.
Next, we turned from public decacorn to private unicorn, working our way through the latest mega-round from American fintech shop SoFi. The new $500 million round is either an up round or a down round (we really aren't sure) and comes at a time when the business was not at all in need the money. Following accounts of the fresh funds, news leaked that SoFi intends to snag naming rights to the Rams impending stadium. What a great use of venture funding, lol. Don't look over here at this bubble-shaped object.
After that, it was on to Brex, which is in the process of raising even more money (Kate's piece here, some notes from Alex here), which is a bit of a headscratcher unless, like SoFi and Slack before it, it's raising the money simply because it can.
And last and actually least, CrowdStrike set a price range for its IPO. If you are into S-1/A dives, head here.
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
We're back to our old, weekly cadence. Which is all well and good but after a run of doubling up episodes to keep up with the news cycle, showing up just every seven days nearly feels like vacation. But hey, we're here for you (you follow us both on Twitter, right?).
There was a lot to go over, so please enjoy the following:
An IPO update: First up we checked in on our favorite children, the recently public. Uber and Lyft are still down, but did you know that Fastly is still far up while Luckin Coffee is losing air like a pinched balloon. Also, Slack has a new ticker symbol, and we have thoughts about it.
Changes at YC:
DoorDash's capital hunger: We had to record a day early this week, putting us precisely one day ahead of the DoorDash round. Turns out it was a $600 million round at a $12 billion pre-money valuation. Listen on for our take on the round, the company, and its space.
Sun Basket raises:
TransferWise's not-an-IPO: What do you call a company more than doubling its valuation through a huge, sanctioned secondary transaction? Weird flex, but ok. Anyway. TransferWise is now worth $3.5 billion, up from its now-passé Series E valuation of $1.58 billion. Anyway, if you want to dodge an IPO this is one pretty good way.
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.This week was something a bit special for the team, albeit in a sad way. It marked the last episode in which we'd all be together in the current TechCrunch office. It's a place we've spent so much time in so we were all a bit nostalgic. (TC is moving offices, nothing else is changing!)Anyway, there was news to discuss!After Alex went through what he called a "mid-quarter check-in" we got into the meat of things, kicking off with Kate's recent story on Madrona's new startup studio. The $11 million that will be spent on spinning up ideas and spinning out companies forms a model that could be exported to other cities. In Kate's view, there are a few other cities in the nation where the idea could work.After that, we dug into two different pieces of scooter news (Boo!), namely that you can get a Boosted-branded electric scooter for $1,600 or the new Bird One scooter for around $1,300. You know, if you can't find one to rent and want to absorb the maintenance and charging headaches yourself.Next, we turned to Away, a brand you would recognize if we showed you its most famous product. Away has raised another $100 million in Series D funding at a $1.4 billion valuation. Sure, that's a big jump from its $400 million Series C valuation but we think it makes sense.After that, we had to get to the latest from Impossible Foods, which is now sitting atop $300 million fresh dollars. This announcement comes hot off the heels of Impossible Foods' partnership with Burger King.Finally, we turned to the latest S-1 filing from tech: CrowdStrike. You can read Kate's notes here, and Alex's here, but the gist is that this company will go public, the only question is how to price it.Oh, and Slack is pulling off its direct listing on June 20th. Get hyped!
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.We are back, as promised. Kate Clark and Alex Wilhelm re-convened today to discuss the latest from the Uber IPO. Namely that it opened down, and then kept falling.A few questions spring to mind. Why did Uber lose ground? Was it the company's fault? Was it simply the macro market? Was it something else altogether? What we do know is that Uber's pricing wasn't what we were expecting and its first day was not smooth.There are a whole bunch of reasons why Uber went out the way it did. Firstly, the stock market has had a rough week. That, coupled with rising U.S.-China tensions made this week one of the worst of the year for Uber's monstrous IPO.But, to make all that clear, we ran back through some history, recalled some key Lyft stats, and more.We don't know what's next but we will be keeping a close watch, specifically on the next cohort of unicorn companies ready to IPO (Postmates, hi!).
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.This week we had the full Equity staff on hand to dig through the week's news, helmed by Kate Clark and Connie Loizos with Alex Wilhelm in the studio too. Plus, Om Malik, a former scribbler and current venture capitalist, joined us to riff on the latest.Before we dig into what we covered, a small note from the team: As this episode is going out before Uber will trade, we'll have another episode coming to you tomorrow after the madness. Stay tuned.Uber priced its IPO at $45 per share right before we hit record, so we first touched on the final pricing of what should be the year's largest tech IPO. Pricing towards the lower-end of its range, Uber could be setting itself up for a strong first day. Or, demand was lower than expected following Lyft's slide. Either way, Uber will trade tomorrow as a public company at last. Om predicts Uber and Lyft rides will get a whole lot more expensive in the next eighteen months, so hold onto your hats, the future for riders and drivers alike is... unclear.Next, we debated Harry's exit to Edgewell Personal Care. The direct-to-consumer razor supplier sold this week for more than $1 billion in a deal reminiscent of the Dollar Shave Club's sale to Unilever. From there, we spoke about the latest from the Luckin Coffee IPO. The news, in brief, is that its IPO is moving forward. Next up is pricing, we'll be sure to discuss any updates on the podcast.In big deal news, Carta closed a $300 million round. Connie has learned a lot about the business in recent weeks and it turns out, Om wishes he was an investor!Finally, Cruise's latest new round, and the capital needs of autonomous driving. As we all quickly agree, it's an expensive business and not one that will get cheaper. But, given that so many companies are working on the tech, we hope it works out. Especially Om, who doesn't have a driver's license, it turns out.All that and we had fun! Chat tomorrow!
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
This week brought the ever-excellent Danny Crichton back to the show, along with myself. The two of us opted to do a bit of a news run, so strap in for a host of topics. Of course, we had to cover some IPO news at the end, but here’s what else happened this week that caught our eye:
New funds at a16z! We haven’t chatted about new funds too much this year, but a16z’s two new funds ($750 million and $2 billion) are a big deal. The bio and crypto and early-stage firm now has a separate late-stage vehicle.
More Vision Fund! SoftBank’s capital cannon is going to double up its crew and possibly reload with $100 billion more. Maybe. The personnel thing is happening, according to the firm. The money, more like probably.
Cheddar exits! It’s always nice when a media company works out, and Cheddar’s up-exit at $200 million is a win. Sure, it’s no Slack but the scrappy video network ran hard and managed to cross the line worth nine-figures. Not bad.
Divvy snags $200 million! This week Divvy raised as much in one go as Cheddar sold for, a good reminder of how rich the venture market is today. Divvy has been on a fundraising tear in the last 18 months, landing a Seed, Series A, Series B, Series C, and a debt round since December 2017.
And then we pivoted to the two topics we had no choice but to talk about: The WeWork IPO news (more here), along with the latest on Slack’s S-1 from Danny himself.
All that and we had some fun. Chat you all next week.
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.Kate and Alex are back (again), bringing you the latest on the IPO front. As Friday is coming to a close, we'll keep this post short to leave plenty of room for you to dig into the audio. Welcome to the weekend.Up first we dug into Uber's latest S-1 filing. This time, the company set a price range for itself (TechCrunch's coverage here), valuing itself at $84 billion and also detailing estimates of its first-quarter results (Crunchbase News's notes here).We suspect Uber will ultimately price a top that range. Time will tell.And then we turned to Slack, who's direct listing will help set the historical tone for the unicorn era; screw your money, Slack says, we have our own. Well maybe not, but the company has impressive growth, killer margins, and, to our surprise, larger GAAP deficits than we expected. The company's filing was fascinating.But worry not, we can figure out how to value Slack. It's Uber that left us scratching our heads. Expect next week to be another blizzard of news and numbers.Thanks as always for listening to the show. We've never had more downloads than these last few weeks. It means a lot that you want to hang out with us. Don't forget that we have an email address (equitypod@techcrunch.com), and a hashtag that Alex needs to learn to use: #equitypod.
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.This week Kate Clark and Alex Wilhelm dug into the latest, namely big news on the fund front from folks you know, two China-based companies going public on domestic exchanges, and what's next in the long-running sagas of getting Uber and Slack public.First up Kate talked us through the latest at Kleiner Perkins and Mary Meeker's new growth fund, called Bond Capital. Alex has some more great context on that here, for interested parties, Kate has more here.Next, we turned to the F-1 filings of Luckin Coffee and DouYu, two China-based companies joining the list of firms from the country that have chosen to go public here in the United States. With Luckin's filing, we have a fascinating look into the costs of building a hyper-growth company; as you can imagine, Luckin running pretty steep deficits, but adding revenue incredibly quickly on a year-over-year basis. DouYo is fascinating for a different reason, namely that it only recently began generating gross profit. And in 2018, when it did begin to create some margin to cover its operating costs, it didn't make much.DouYu works in the live streaming and esports worlds, places where Twitch and Huya (another China-based company that went public in the States) have found success.Finally, we had two domestic public offerings to dig into. Slack, an exit we've long anticipated, is supposed to drop its S-1 today. If that's the case Alex and Kate will be back at their mics to bring you the highlights from that filing. And then there's Uber.To cap off a fun show, we chatted through the impending Uber debut. We expect the company to set a price range tomorrow, but if early reports are correct, the firm could be sandbagging a bit in hopes of raising its price next week. Lyft reports earnings on May 7, giving Uber a somewhat tight window to jump through if it wants to control its own narrative. (If Lyft's earnings fall short, for example, and Uber hasn't gone public by that point, it could be forced to lower its own pricing.)That's all we got for now. We'll probably be back later today with an Equity shot. Stay cool!
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.This is a relaxed, Friday, Equity Shot. That means Kate and Alex were on deck to chew through the latest from the IPO front. We'll keep doing extra episodes as long as we have to, though we're slightly sorry if we're becoming a bit much.That's a joke, we're not sorry at all.So, three things this week. First, Fastly filed an S-1 (Alex's notes here), second, Zoom completed its highly-anticipated IPO (Kate's post here, Alex has notes too), third. Pinterest went public too (More from TechCrunch here). Ultimately, Pinterest's stock offering valued the company at $12.6 billion (higher than its latest private valuation) but we've got some notes on the 'undercorn' phenomenon anyway (here and here).Fastly is going public after raising more than $200 million at a valuation greater than $900 million. Founded in 2011, the content-delivery company surpassed the $100 million revenue mark in 2017, growing a little under 40 percent in 2018. It's an unprofitable shop, but it has a clear path to profitability. And given how Zoom's IPO went, it's probably drafting a bit off of market momentum.As mentioned, Zoom had a wildly successful first day of trading. The company ended up pricing its shares above range at $36 apiece only to debut on the Nasdaq at $65 apiece. Yes, that's an 81 percent pop and yes, we were a bit floored.Finally, Pinterest's debut was solid, leading to a more than 25 percent gain over its above-range IPO price. What's not to like about that? It's hard to find fault with the offering. Pinterest got past the negative press and questions about private market valuations, went public, raised a truckload of money and now just has to execute. We'll be watching.If you're looking for more Uber IPO content, don't worry, there's plenty more of that to come. See ya next week.
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.This week was a bit of a reunion with Kate and Alex on as usual, with the addition of Extra Crunch denizen extraordinaire Danny Crichton. Danny, you may recall, has been a semi-regular Equity co-host over the past year.As Kate explains up front, Equity is out a day early this week due to the Big TechCrunch Robotics Affair in Berkeley today. We'll be back on Friday with IPO news regarding Zoom and Pinterest and we can't wait.Ok, all that sorted, what did we talk about? Alex wanted to talk about some market signals that he reads as bullish. Whatever went wrong at the end of 2018 has healed over he thinks because there have been a whole lot of supergiant venture capital rounds and some other stuff.Next, we gave an example of one of those supergiant rounds in the works. The reported Pax round, which could put $400 million into the cannabis vaping company, intrigues us, especially because Pax is the corporate sibling of JUUL, the now-famous e-cigarette company what sold just over a third of itself for nearly $13 billion last year. A truly staggering deal.Then we turned to Brex, the fintech startup that was back in the news this week. Why? Because it raised a $100 million debt round as startups of that sort do. Brex provides a credit card made specifically for startups that require no personal-guarantee. Yeah, risky, we know. We talked about that risk and Brex's plan to target Fortune 500 business in the future.Rounds for Ro, Kindbody and Carrot Fertility made it a busy week for healthtech, too. Ro is raising at a $500 million valuation to support its three digital health brands: Roman, Rory and Zero. Meanwhile, a pair of fertility startups, Kindbody and Carrot, brought in $15 million and $11 million, respectively.With Danny back on the show, we extended our reach and discussed the latest in the chip and sensor world. NXP, fresh off a failed, multi-billion dollar exit to Qualcomm put money into Hawkeye Technology, a China-based company working in the car sensor space. Equity's regular hosts mostly nodded as Danny dropped a lot of knowledge.All that and we had some fun. We'll be back before you know it.
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.Kate and Alex were here yesterday to dig into the Uber IPO filing; for today's episode, we put that aside and discussed everything else that happened this week. Lucky for us, for the second half of our Thursday podcast-a-thon, the excellent Phil Libin joined us. He was the perfect guest for an IPO-heavy week.You may know Libin as a co-founder of Evernote, or part of General Catalyst, a venture shop. What's he up to now? We took the time to let him explain it, so listen up and you'll find out.This week we talked about a few other IPO results, including what's going on with Lyft's stock price (it's going down and Uber's expected IPO price range isn't helping) in the wake of the company's own hugely successful IPO (in terms of capital raised). Lyft may be losing altitude due simply to hype wearing off but at least now we understand how important its first earnings call will be. We turned next to Pinterest, the buzzy visual search engine that's now being called an 'undercorn.' We didn't spend too much time mocking the phrase, interestingly, instead, our guest explained his philosophical stance on IPOs, in general. He spoke for a while and Alex and Kate nodded their heads in agreement. They especially agreed with his claim that companies shouldn't have to sacrifice culture for profits, amen! Staying on the IPO theme, PagerDuty was next. It's IPO performance has been huge, and big, and impressive. And in a wave of appreciation towards everyone who has listened to the show for a long time, we did not spend 14 minutes arguing about IPO pricing. You're welcome! We ended with Kate doing a rapid-fire review of all the venture capital funds that announced closes this week because there were a lot, including Slow Ventures, Defy.VC and Texas's LiveOak Venture Partners. If you're already itching for more Equity, we have a feeling next week will be another heavy news week with Pinterest and Zoom's IPO on the docket.
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines. It's time for another Equity Shot, a quick-take episode centered around a breaking news event. This time, as you already guessed, Kate Clark and I sat down to dig into the Uber S-1. It's a huge, complex document, but we did our best to summarize what's inside. First, we talked through yearly results, looking back a half-decade into Uber's revenue growth. In the filing, Uber reported 2018 revenues of $11.27 billion, net income of $997 million and adjusted EBITDA losses of $1.85 million. We highlighted those numbers, talked about operating losses and the company's gyrating net results that included the positive impacts of various divestitures. Yes, this S-1 required a bit more unpacking than most. We apologize for the frantic scrolling, we were pouring through the document live and we were a bit excited. This is an IPO that's been talked about for years and will be easily one of the largest floats of all time. Anyway, an S-1 brings insights to more than just a company's financials, so we spent time highlighting key stakeholders, or, in other words, the people are going to get really really really rich off Uber's IPO. That includes Uber co-founder and chief executive officer Travis Kalanick, famous venture capital firms like the SoftBank Vision Fund and Benchmark, and more. The IPO, remember, is expected to sell $10 billion in stock (primary and secondary) and value the company at $100 billion or more. If 30 minutes digging through the S-1 wasn't enough for you, don't fret, we'll be following the Uber IPO for weeks -- probably months -- to come.
We want to introduce you to a new special Equity show called Equity Dive. Each month, as part of TechCrunch’s membership offering Extra Crunch, we will talk to the writer of Extra Crunch’s EC-1, a deep dive look into a single company. Their origin story, growth and future prospects. Enjoy this first one with Eric Peckham who spent hours with the powers that be at Patreon, a platform that lets creators develop relationships with their fans and generate revenue from their work.
If you don’t want to miss out on the Patreon deep dive and all of the other great content Extra Crunch produces, go to TechCrunch.com/subscribe and become a member. Use promo code EQUITY to get 20% off for your first year.
Enjoy this first episode of Equity Dive.
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines. This week your humble Equity squad (Kate Clark, Alex Wilhelm) were stoked to take on as much as we could with what little time we had. We kicked off with a speed round that turned out to not be very quick and then dug into the biggest news of the week. The Not-So-Speed-Round: Affirm raised $300 million at nearly $3 billion valuation. The round marks another win for Max Levchin's company and is another point on the board for the PayPal mafia. Clearance announced a new campaign to rapidly back 2,000 e-commerce businesses with $1 billion, called "The 20-Min Term Sheet."Rippling raised $45 million, making for both an interesting financing story and a redemption arc, packaged neatly alongside a few dozen million dollars. Parker Conrad is part of the Rippling team, meaning whatever the company does will court attention. The femtech sector is on pace to hit $1 billion in investment this year -- finally -- with organic tampon retailer Cora being the latest startup in the space to garner the attention of VCs.And finally, we took a brief look at the world of corporate venture capital; a few notes: Okta has a new $50 million fund, Chevron has a $90 million fund, Intel Capital has been busy and more. Seems like every corporation wants to get into the game, or get in bigger. After all that, we turned to Forbes' big Andreessen Horowitz cover story. There was a lot to unpack. Long story short, a16z has given up its status as a venture capital firm and registered all 150 of its employees as financial advisors. Curious what that means and why it matters? We were too, so we found answers.Next, we turned back to the newly public Lyft. Since its IPO, Lyft's stock price has taken quite the dive. Now, Lyft is back to its IPO price, which we think means it priced its IPO quite well. Still, where'd all the bullish Lyft investors go and why are so many people shorting the stock? We answer these questions and discuss what the falling numbers mean for other IPO-ready unicorns. Next up was a look into the Jumia IPO, which Alex wrote about here. We need to pay more attention to startups outside the U.S., like Jumia, an African e-commerce platform. So listen to our plea. We want to hear from you! Email us at alex@Crunchbase.com or kate.clark@techcrunch.com if you have suggestions. Finally, the Midas List. Does it matter? Why are we talking about it? Why do lists exist? Who's on top? Who's not? Who's sad? Who cares? And more questions left unanswered.
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines. Sure, we just aired a new episode yesterday but things keep happening, and after talking about this crop of IPOs for so long, we can't help ourselves. (You can follow us on Twitter, here and here, by the way, if Equity isn't enough for you.)Lyft, as you know, started trading today, closing the loop on a long saga that brought the smaller of the two domestic ride-hailing unicorns to the public markets. After so much speculation about which of the two would get out the door first, Lyft did, and now we get to see what sort of pricing shenanigans happen next. Does Uber drop rates and punish Lyft? Or does Uber work to cut its losses, lowering its expenses and providing a clearer path towards profitability before its April IPO roadshow kicks off? (Not a path to profitability, mind; Uber and Lyft need to show a path to the direction of profitability first.)We hit all the basis, going over the company's pricing path, its varying share figures, final raise metrics, and more. If you want the hard stuff, we've got a shot for you. Now that the Lyft IPO has wrapped, we'll be shifting our focus to Pinterest, Zoom and of course, Uber. Stay tuned. Ok, now we're done. Until next Friday. Unless something else happens.
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
This week we had the full gang around, with Connie Loizos in the studio with Kate Clark and our guest Barrett Cohn from Scenic Advisement. Alex was on the line from Providence.
Lucky for us, news of Lyft's IPO pricing broke right before we hit record. That shook things up a bit, but it was far better to have it break as we were getting our notes together rather than after we kicked off. Let's start there.
Lyft is going out at $72 per share, the top-end of its boosted range. The firms fully diluted $24 billion valuation (give or take) will be supported by around $2.4 billion in new capital, giving Lyft fresh runway to continue its expensive growth strategy.
Next, we turned to podcast industry stalwart Casper. Fret not podcast fans, the D2C mattress company has $100 million more in the bank, a fresh $1.1 billion valuation and IPO plans on the horizon. That's a pretty parcel of news, which means it should be a full-charge ahead for the newly minted unicorn.
We also discuss newly leaked Casper financials. The company, like most unicorns, is still losing money but its swelling annual revenues point to a profitable future.
From unicorn to unicorn to unicorn, we moved on to WeWork. WeWork, now known by its stage name The We Company, reported its 2018 financial performance this week and the results were amazing, twice. Amazing first in terms of growth, with revenue spiking from $886 million in 2017 to $1.8 billion in 2018. And amazing again in terms of cost, as WeWork's net loss shot from $933 million in 2017 to $1.9 billion in 2018.
We had a chat about precisely what the firm is, with our guest arguing that WeWork isn't a tech company at all, it's a real estate business. We aren't sure what the future holds for WeWork but we're glad to have a front-row seat to the Adam Neaumann show.
Finally, investors are once again in trouble. This time the venture community is taking stripes for landing in the college admissions cheating scandal. As if we still thought this country was a meritocracy.
Regardless, your friends at Equity are glad to see you. And we'll be back before you miss us!
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines. What a Friday. This afternoon (mere hours after we released our regularly scheduled episode no less!), both Pinterest and Zoom dropped their public S-1 filings. So we rolled up our proverbial sleeves and ran through the numbers. If you want to follow along, the Pinterest S-1 is here, and the Zoom document is here. Got it? Great. Pinterest's long-awaited IPO filing paints a picture of a company cutting its losses while expanding its revenue. That's the correct direction for both its top and bottom lines. As Kate points out, it's not in the same league as Lyft when it comes to scale, but it's still quite large. More than big enough to go public, whether it's big enough to meet, let alone surpass its final private valuation ($12.3 billion) isn't clear yet. Peeking through the numbers, Pinterest has been improving margins and accelerating growth, a surprisingly winsome brace of metrics for the decacorn.Pinterest has raised a boatload of venture capital, about $1.5 billion since it was founded in 2010. Its IPO filing lists both early and late-stage investors, like Bessemer Venture Partners, FirstMark Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, Fidelity and Valiant Capital Partners as key stakeholders. Interestingly, it doesn’t state the percent ownership of each of these entities, which isn't something we've ever seen before. Next, Zoom's S-1 filing was more dark horse entrance than Katy Perry album drop, but the firm has a history of rapid growth (over 100 percent, yearly) and more recently, profit. Yes, the enterprise-facing video conferencing unicorn actually makes money! In 2019, the year in which the market is based on Uber's debut, profit almost feels out of place. We know Zoom's CEO Eric Yuan, which helps. As Kate explains, this isn't his first time as a founder. Nor is it his first major success. Yuan sold his last company, WebEx, for $3.2 billion to Cisco years ago then vowed never to sell Zoom (he wasn't thrilled with how that WebEx acquisition turned out). Should we have been that surprised to see a VC-backed tech company post a profit -- no. But that tells you a little something about this bubble we live in, doesn't it?
- There were some edit issues in the initial publishing of this week's Equity episode that have been corrected. The player below will play the corrected episode.
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines. This week Kate Clark and Alex Wilhelm took us through an IPO, a big round, 943 startup pitches, two new unicorns, and some scooter news. A very 2019 mix, really. Up first we took a peek at the latest from the Lyft IPO saga. Recall that Lyft is beating Uber to the public markets, and we can report that it's having a good time doing so. The popular ride-hailing company, second-place by market share in its domestic market, is oversubscribed at an already-healthy valuation. If the company will raise its price or the number of shares that it sells isn't yet known, but early indications hint that Lyft timed its IPO well. Next, we took a look at the recent OpenDoor round that has been long-rumored. Tipping the scales at $300 million, and valuing the home-buying-and-selling startup at $3.8 billion, the company's latest equity event was a bit higher than expected. There are other players in its space, and the firm isn't yet recession-tested. All the same, a Murderers' Row of capital lined up for the latest round. Moving on, Kate went to Y Combinator's Demo Day and got a closer look at the accelerator's latest batch. There were a ton of two-minute pitches, many of which sounded the same, but chances are we'll see a few unicorns emerge from the bunch. And, interesting tidbit, some of the companies actually forwent Demo Day and raised capital before they could hit the stage! Later, we discuss two new unicorns. This week's unicorns had a theme and one that was new to Equity. This time, both the billion-dollar businesses mentioned on the show were founded by women. As Kate noted, there aren't too many of those, so to see two in the same week is great. Glossier, founded by Emily Weiss, brought in a $100 million Series D led by Sequoia Capital. The round values the beauty business at a whopping $1.2 billion, tripling the valuation it garnered with a $52 million Series C in 2018. As for Rent The Runway, a startup founded by Jen Hyman and Jennifer Fleiss, it closed a $125 million round led by Franklin Templeton Investments and Bain Capital Ventures. This round values the company at $1 billion. Hyman took to Twitter to share some inspirational words on raising capital as a woman, a pregnant woman, in heels! And finally, we took a look at a Parisian scooter tax. Mostly because Alex wanted to talk about Paris. And that's Equity for the week. We'll see you soon!
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines. This week was a lot of fun. Connie Lozios took the captain's chair in San Francisco while I manned the sails, and we had Female Founders Fund's founder Anu Duggal in the studio to round out our crew. It was a week of conclusions. Our prior notes on YC and Uber and a few other things came home to roost. But, you're busy so let's sink our teeth into the good stuff: Uber's IPO lands in April: Right before we hit record, news broke that Uber's IPO will land in April. This isn't an unexpected result, but it is one that is long-expected. With Lyft's S-1 live, and in the wild, it's time for Uber to, ahem, shift and catch up? Regardless, the company's possible $1 billion raise to fund its research arm is another indicator that Uber is serious about going public. You know, that, and the fact that it's filed privately.Q1 IPO pace was slack: Aside from Lyft's public S-1, there's been an annoying dearth of public progress on the IPO front from tech's biggest players. Sure, some companies filed to go public privately, but that's more annoying than helpful. My point here was undercut by the Uber news, but if Lyft doesn't debut in March then it's going to be a complete first-quarter miss. Stash raises $65 million: Another of the neo-banks raised capital this month, with Stash stacking a fresh $65 million dollars. The firm was coy about the round's participants (odd), and silent on its new valuation (more normal, but still annoying). What matters is that Stash now has more dosh on hand to compete with Chime and Acorns, each of which recently raised big new rounds this year. Changes at YC: As expected, and presaged on this very show, Sam Altman is graduating himself to the chairman's seat at Y Combinator. That and the firm is finding office space in San Francisco. That's more evidence that the center of gravity has truly shifted here in Northen California. Sand Hill Road is more Route 66 than it is a hyperloop. And with that failed attempt at a joke, I give up. We're back in seven days! Equity drops every Friday at 6:00 am PT, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Pocket Casts, Downcast, and all the casts.
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.We're back to basics this week with Kate Clark at the helm, Alex Wilhelm in the sidecar, and a stack of venture capital news and happenings to get through. And to make everyone feel included, we kicked off the episode with a roll-call of new VC funds.Then, of course, we dug into the recent news out of Y Combinator. The famed accelerator is shopping around for a San Francisco HQ, signaling the end of an era where Silicon Valley ruled the world as home to YC and other the top-tier venture funds that have since moved South to The City by the Bay.Next up was the new Grab round, a fresh $1.46 billion from the Vision Fund into what TechCrunch noted is now a $4.5 billion Series H. Amazingly, we've typed that out correctly. Grab, now topped up with about $8.8 billion in capital raised is not the ridehailing shop that has raised the most capital, though it does round out the top three.Next, Alex wanted to talk about Chime. Kate isn't too big on fintech, but the $200 million round into the neo-bank brought its total capital raised to $300 million. That's a lot of coin for the company which grew its accounts from one million last year, to three million. (Don't forget that Acorns raised $105 million earlier this year.)Changing gears, the Latin American scene, already hotting up, is going to get even warmer with the arrival of a new $2 billion fund from SoftBank. Called the SoftBank Innovation Fund, the Japanese telecom giant wants to raise a total of $5 billion to invest in emerging markets across South America. I know what you're thinking: damn, that's a lot of cash. Yes, yes it is.Final,ly this week, hours before we hit record, Airbnb agreed to acquire the popular hotel booking app HotelTonight for what's reported to be about a flat price to its last valuation (~$465 million). The deal made us wonder if the Airbnb IPO could be delayed due to the roughly half-billion deal (provided that reports bear out). We haven't confirmed the transaction price, so more from us when we have it. Also, this is hardly Airbnb's first buy.That and we had fun. See you all in seven days!
Hello and welcome to an Equity Shot, a short-form episode of the show where we dive into a single breaking news story. Guess what we're talking about today?! It's Lyft. You guessed correctly.
The Lyft S-1 is the very first major S-1 event of 2019. As you might recall, the government shutdown gummed the IPO process by halting the Securities and Exchange Commission, an agency that plays the most active role in helping a company go public. Now the government is open, and Lyft's formerly private filing is now a public filing.
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines. February is now behind us, but we gathered the troops to send it off in style: Connie Loizos was here, Kate Clark was in, I was around, and NEA's Jonathan Golden joined us, as well.
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
What a week. It had looked a bit quiet with just a few big rounds to cover. I was looking forward to a relaxed episode, frankly. But no, as Kate and I were prepping the show notes, the News Gods opened the heavens and dropped a fifty-weight of mana right on our heads.
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
This week was a treat. We had TechCrunch's own Connie Loizos in the studio along with your humble servant and General Catalyst's Niko Bonatsos. A fine group for a busy week.
We had to pare our topic list some for length, but after working out what qualified as the biggest news from our usual orbit, we decided to touch on:
Peloton's bank shopping: Peloton, the popular in-home cycling service, is looking for banks to help take it public. We riffed on its revenue, revenue growth, its possible margins, and price points. Peloton has become a big name in recent quarters due to its growth, and its marketing. We're excited to read the eventual S-1. Check here for historical context regarding its debut.
Postmate's private IPO filing: Postmates actually filed, albeit privately, putting it a smidge further along the public-offering conveyer belt. The Postmates IPO will help the market better understand the food delivery marketplace, an area where a host of companies play. Including the company in our next topic!
DoorDash's latest round: Yes, more money for food delivery. DoorDash is said to be on the hunt for $500 million more at a valuation around $6 billion. That's many dollars at a very high price. Oh, and don't forget this.
Nuro's enormous check: Have you heard of Nuro? No? Neither had we. But it just raised over $900 million in a single go. Even for 2019, the delivery-robot-car company's fundraising is aggressive.
And the latest in SaaS: Quickly, the private SaaS market looks hot, and the public SaaS market is scorching. It's a good time for SaaS. Which is odd, as it seemed that the world ended in December.
All that and we had some fun. Thanks as always for listening to Equity, it's a treat to make for you each week. Stay cool!
Hello, and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
This week Kate Clark and I sat down to get through the biggest news in the venture and startup world. This is our regular episode of the week after a shot focused on the Slack IPO, and an interview concerning Facebook. So, back to our roots. And as has been the case for months and months now, there was a lot to get through.
Podcasting took center stage this week, with music giant Spotify snapping up podcasting tool startup Anchor and podcast production company Gimlet. The latter was expected, but the combined $230 million pricetag may have come as a surprise to some.
Spotify says that it isn't done investing in the space. It won't be alone, however, in hoping to drive big dollars with original audio shows. Himalaya raised a pocket of money -- $100 million -- to build out its own podcasting world.
Moving to other huge rounds, Calm picked up $88 million in a new round, pushing its valuation to the $1 billion threshold. That makes Calm, probably, the first mental-health focused startup to make it into unicorn territory. Reddit is also scoping a nine-figure round (Kate isn't a fan), which could just about double its valuation to $3 billion.
Famed investor Roger McNamee once advised Facebook. Now he's certain it's destroying our democracy.
No, I haven’t started drinking again, Equity Shots are short takes on breaking news. And no news was more explosive recently than word that Slack has filed to go public confidentially. Confidentially in that we don’t get to see the numbers (yet), but publicly in that the company went ahead and told the world that it had filed, privately, with the SEC.
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines. This week we recorded as a trio: Connie Loizos holding down the studio with our guest, the ever-present Jeff Clavier of Uncorked Capital. I dialed in from the what was the East Coast, back before it froze over.
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
This week we had the gang back together with our own Connie Loizos at the helm, Kate Clark in the studio as well, Alex on the phone, and Ed Sim from Boldstart Ventures onboard as well. A good crew for a busy week.
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
We’re back! After what I think was our first-ever break, Kate Clark and I sat down to dig into the latest startup venture news. There was a lot. We had to skip a few rounds to squeeze the show down to size, but we still hit the biggest stories.
With everyone logging valuable family time this week and wondering if it's worth returning that sweater, we decided to do something a little different and run a special holiday episode, one that features just Connie Loizos in conversation with Bradley Tusk, a venture capitalist, philanthropist, book author and, earlier in his career, a trusted aid to billionaire Michael Bloomberg, whose successful third run for mayor of New York -- the first and only mayor to serve three consecutive terms -- was managed by Tusk. In fact, one of Tusk's first roles after moving on from politics was an early advisor to Uber, which sought out his know-how about both regulatory environments and upturning the status quo.
Perhaps because all of these interests, Tusk has become among the country's most visible proponents of mobile voting, supporting -- though not investing in -- a app called Voatz that was first used in a small pilot project in West Virginia last spring that gave overseas citizens and members of the military the option of using it to cast ballots on their phones. Not a whole lot of attention was paid to the project at the time, though when the app was used again in 24 West Virginia counties in the mid-term elections, critics who worry about voter fraud were quick to call it an "horrifically bad idea."
That isn't stopping Tusk from getting behind more mobile voting efforts, which we chatted about recently for "Equity," along with a bunch of other things, including the brow-raising valuation that Uber's bankers have bandied about in conversations about its upcoming IPO, how important it is for Uber to beat Lyft to the public market (assuming they move forward with plans to go out despite the suddenly rocky markets), and what it means for fintech startups that Democrats are taking over control of the House in another week.
We always enjoy talking with Tusk; we hope you'll enjoy our chat, too. In the meantime, a quick reminder that after this, we're off for two weeks, then back in full force in the middle of January. Until then, all of us wish you very happy holidays and a terrific New Year. More soon!
This week we had 75 percent of the core crew on hand to chat: Connie Loizos, Danny Crichton, and myself. Kate will be back on the show early next year, we promise. We were also joined by Menlo Ventures' Venky Ganesan who was a super great addition to the team.
There was a lot to get through. In fact, we had to toss a few things overboard toward the end due to time. So, we didn't get to US-China cross-border venture flows, or the new Lightspeed China fund, but we did dig into:
SoftBank's latest three mega investments. SoftBank let loose a trio of titanic checks into three companies, including $385 million into Fair, a car-focused company, $400 million into Relay Therapeutics, which deals with "protein motion," and $500 million into Cambridge Mobile Telematics. That's what, $1.285 billion announced in a single week?
Pinterest's impending IPO. As expected, Pinterest is going public. We riffed on its recent revenue growth and the timing of its debut. Honestly, I'm pretty giddy to read this S-1, and I doubt that I am alone.
The US market's crisis. Recording this late in the day on the 20th, we cut the episode right after US tech stocks took a pounding. Dropbox fell under its IPO price as other SaaS players like Box took big hits. Social fell, as Snap and Twitter both swooned, the former falling under $5 per share temporarily. The pain went on, and on, and on.
Big Chinese tech stocks at 52-week lows. It's not only American tech stocks that are in trouble, however; Chinese tech shops that have already gone public are taking their lumps as well. Indeed, as Danny detailed, many firms that were running hot before are now testing full-year lows.
Equity's impending two-week vacation. And to celebrate all of that, this podcast is taking the first two weeks of 2019 off. Mostly so that TechCrunch can decamp to Vegas for CES, but also because after more than 100 episodes, we need to catch our breath. (And restock the fridge with Red Bull. Danny did yawn on this episode, after all!)
Next week we have a special holiday episode involving the ever-brilliant Connie and a guest. Past that, as mentioned above, we are off for two weeks. So, we'll be back as a group in the middle of January.
This week we had the regular crew back together which was good fun. Connie took point, we had Danny mic'd up in New York, and I was onsite to help the crew natter along with Bubba Murarka, a former VC and founder who now cuts checks on his own.
Thematically, this was a week of mega rounds so we had little choice but to go over more than a few. And Uber is out there doing its IPO thing. So, we started with cars and pivoted into rounds.
This week we had Connie Loizos in the studio along with Kate Clark, myself and a special guest. The special guest was fitting, as it was a special episode. Why? Because this is our 100th episode, a milestone that would have probably seemed a silly idea back when we started the show.
This week our first guest, SaaStr founder and venture capitalist Jason Lemkin came back on the show. When he first showed up, we talked Elon Musk. This time it was ridesharing liquidity, ridesharing M&A and more.
Sadly two of our founding members (Katie Roof and Matthew Lynley) are elsewhere as we reach 100 shows, but a big cheers to them for their work. Hugs and thanks to Chris Gates for producing Equity with a rare mixture of kindness and patience. Material appreciation to TechCrunch's Henry Pickavet and Yashad Kulkarni for approving and shepherding the project thus far, and a big round of appreciation for Connie Loizos, Danny Crichton and Kate Clark for joining the hosting crew.
Finally, thanks to you for sticking with us. Millions of downloads, live shows successful and not and three-figures of episodes later, we're still here!
Alright, enough self-congratulation. Let's talk tech. And money.
This week we had a bit of a laundry list of topics to get through. The first of which was Lyft's now publicly known, but privately filed IPO document. The company is going public about going public while staying private about the same matter.
Regardless, Lyft's decision to go public now should mean it's the first out of the gate. Uber will go public second. Which company that order will assist isn't super clear. In the past, it was thought that the first of Uber and Lyft to go public would expose itself to pricing pressure from its yet-private competitor. But this deep into the ridesharing saga, and with both companies still so unprofitable, perhaps that isn't the case.
Uber may be scooter shopping regardless, so perhaps its IPO isn't in the offing. Yes, reporting indicates that the company may be playing Duck Hunt because it could be taking aim at Bird. With an M&A gun? This analogy isn't good.
If Uber buys Bird, say, does that mean Lyft buys Lime? Even though Uber is a Lime investor? Place your bets.
Next up we riffed on Utah's tech scene, the well-known Silicon Slopes. The region's 2018 has been big. Podium raised and posted big revenue growth figures. Pluralsight and Domo went public. And most recently, Weave raised $37.5 million. It's a big year for the state. My view is that it is no longer up-and-coming. Our guest agreed.
And finally, Kate took us through the Huawei fiasco. The company's CFO has been detained in Canada for what MSNBC calls "U.S. extradition." Oof. This at a time when the American premier is rattling about in his barrel about trade. The stock market is worried. Maybe we should be as well.
This week we hit two news items and one roundup:
Asana raises $50 million. Yep, Asana went back to the funding well this week for its Series E, despite having raised a $75 million Series D earlier this year. The company's funding pace might seem aggressive, but we're hearing that many startups are looking to tack on extra cash. Why? Because the market might change, and so the savvy are stacking chips in case the cashier closes. Oh, and the company dropped a number of relative growth metrics that were, I have to say, impressive.
Airbnb gets a new CFO. After its old CFO took off, Airbnb's eventual IPO was on hold. You can't go public without a CFO. But now it has one! And that means that the company can eventually sell shares on a public exchange, whenever it deigns to sell equity to the hoi polloi. But put your checkbook down, as it's far from clear precisely when Airbnb will pull the trigger and give us an S-1.
Speaking of which, let's talk decacorn IPOs. Not my best segue, but it'll do. There are a number of private tech companies worth $10 billion or more (10x unicorns, or, ahem, decacorns) that will probably try to go public next year. The gist is that Uber, Lyft, Pinterest and Airbnb need to go public, and there's reason to believe that they are going to do it next year.
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
It's the day after Thanksgiving, so if you are reading this in America I hope there is a pet leaned up against your legs and that you are sitting next to a fire while staring down one more plate of leftovers.
We made this episode for just such a moment. Welcome to our take on a relaxed episode of Equity, a show normally featuring four people arguing about this or that. This week, it's just TechCrunch's Kate Clark and myself digging into some of the strangest and most interesting rounds of the year. Thus far, at least.
So what made our cut?
First, Allbird's $50 million round for shoes. Shoes that are popular here in Silicon Valley. $50 million? For shoes?
Next, a few media rounds. Goop's $50 million round for an e-commerce play powered by items of dubious scientific impact was worth our time. Also, Cheddar's $22 million Series D was notable. The streaming service's capital base will likely ensure that you'll see lots of its videos on Twitter in 2019. And TheSkimm raised a $12 Series C. We had some thoughts on that, as you might imagine.
Kate conjured up a theme called "Fewer And Fatter," referring to funding events that are outsized for their putative stage. An $88 million investment for generic ED meds sent through the mail that is claimed as a Series A? Sure. And how about a $20 million Seed round for a company called "Oh My Green"? Why not.
In the fitness realm, Peloton raised a $550 million round earlier this year (the company seems to be doing well, though its advertising load feels high). And Mirror raised $13 million. Guess what it does!
And one more: Brex. This company provides corporate cards to startups, cards that its IRL advertising claims offer strong perks. How it will hold up in the eventual correction isn't clear. What is, however, is that it has $125 million more to work with.
We hope that you are well and that the holidays are as delightful and full of joy as they can be. And if you are having a bad run of the end of the year, big hugs from the Equity crew. We think you are just perfect.
Stay warm!
This week, Uber was first in line due to the scale of its results. The firm disclosed its third-quarter results including slowing growth (in percentage terms), steep losses on a GAAP basis (GAAP means that all costs were counted) and adjusted losses that fell in the period.
Next up was the big deal of the week, effectively. The Qualtrics exit to SAP for $8 billion in cash, a portion of which it borrowed, as we point out. The deal meant that the company didn't actually go public (boo), but it still made a hell of a splash all the same.
Finally, we riffed on the latest WeWork numbers which include a $3 billion warrant, and a massive third-quarter loss. WeWork lost more money in the quarter than it generated in revenue. That is, as they say, not great.
Many companies lose money while growing and work out great! But for every Facebook, there are a few Snaps, and I can't tell which side of the coin WeWork lands.
Oh, and this Instacart story happened. What's up with that?
Equity drops every Friday at 6:00 am PT, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Pocket Casts, Downcast and all the casts.
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
This week was a blast. Connie and I were in the studio with our guest, True Ventures's Tony Conrad, while Danny repped the other side of the country, dialing in from New York.
It was another week shaped by news from Asia. Once we had sorted the sartorially expedient, we first turned to the world of SoftBank, this time taking a close look at its debt load. While SoftBank is currently famous for its investments through its Vision Fund, the company is picking up some notable, debt-powered investments into its vehicle that could add to its risk profile.
After all, who doesn't want more risk as 2018 comes to a close?
Moving on, Ford is doubling-down on its wager that mobility means more than cars, this time picking up Spin for some sum of money between $40 and $100 million, with most figures coming in a bit light from the nine-figure range.
We care as it's a fresh turn in the scooter skirmish, not to mention the greater micromobility wars. Bird and Lime have a new competitor that has, possibly, super-deep pockets.
Next, we took a peek at Luckin Coffe's meteoric rise. This is where our guest selection really showed off; Conrad is a former investor in Blue Bottle, making him a functional caffeine expert. We dug through margins, growth, and why venture players are interested in Luckin at all.
And finally, a look at how recently-public companies are selling more shares after their initial debut. So, when it comes to money on the table, don't fret it too much.
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines. This week, we missed Alex Wilhelm, who was sunning himself somewhere (vitamin D deficit), but we had a rollicking time nonetheless with TC's very excellent VC reporter Kate Clark, along with our always dependable co-host Danny Crichton and, in a bit of perfect timing, investor Brad Twohig of Lightspeed Venture Partners, whose firm participated in one of the week's biggest financings, a $1.25 billion round for Epic Games, maker of the gaming smash hit "Fortnite."
It wasn't just a lot of moolah for Epic, which was founded roughly 25 years ago but unleashed "Fortnite" on the world roughly a year ago. The deal is fascinating because Epic is one of the hottest stories of the year and, as Twohig allowed, probably also one of most the most oversubscribed fundings of 2018, so we wanted to talk with him about how it all went down.
Also on the docket this week: sinking stock prices in China. Video games and the politics behind them are causing huge problems in the country, and Tencent (which conveniently owns a sizable stake in Epic Games), has lost almost 40 percent of its value this year over fears about China’s crackdown on the sector. In fact, huge losses across the board for Chinese stocks are putting enormous pressure on IPOs; we took a lot at whether that contagion could possibly hit Silicon Valley.
And we talked about Coinbase, which is now valued at a whopping $8 billion by investors that provided the company with $300 million in new funding, even as the value of most cryptocurrencies continues to fall through the floor.
What will Coinbase look like when it's all grown up? Investors like Tiger Global, Wellington Management and Y Combinator clearly have a better idea than we do, but we took at a stab at it anyway!
Last but not least, we definitely dished about IBM and the major feat it pulled off last weekend, which was to close the largest software acquisition in history by announcing its intention to acquire open source cloud provider Red Hat for $34 billion. Not only does it change the dynamics of the cloud wars between IBM, Google, Amazon and Microsoft, but the deal is also very much about open source, as Twohig noted.
Not discussed, but still interesting: how deeply satisfying the deal must be for Red Hat's founders, one of whom, former CEO Bob Young, was reportedly unemployed and working out of his wife's sewing closet when he started Red Hat in 1993.
We think/hope you'll enjoy this one.
Also, we were kidding about Alex. He has a surplus of personality, not a deficit of vitamin D. (Also, he was stuck in a meeting when we were recording.)
See you next week, everyone.
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines. This week the normal band was together, with Connie Loizos, Danny Crichton, and myself on hand along with IVP investor Jules Maltz.
We had yet another episode of market turmoil, that was again reversed to some extent before we could even talk about it. Our questions are somewhat simple: when does all this public market mayhem begin to impact private markets? Maltz isn't worried yet, but we wondered not only about what level of upheaval is enough to change things, but also how we'd be able to tell when things were changing.
But, in keeping with recent news, the venture world is still blasting along. This week we talked about three different billion-dollar-plus rounds, including:
A new Thrive Capital fund (historical chart here), that tips the scale at $1 billion;
A new Bessemer fund (historical chart here) that weighs in at $1.85 billion;
And a new vehicle from Tiger Global (historical chart here) that covers a full $3.75 billion.
That's a lot of new money charging into tech. If there's going to be a downturn any time soon, it's going to be a downturn that can afford a Bently. At least if the venture world keeps writing checks.
But not everything was doom, gloom and new cash. Yes, we had an IPO to go over. Qualtrics, one of the lesser-known but highest-quality companies out of the Utah scene is going public, and we like what we see.
How does solid revenue growth in the nine-figure range, effectively break-even GAAP profits, and strong cash flow sound? We're guessing it's going to sound pretty good to public market investors who have paid top dollar recently for tech IPOs that seem to be of, if we may, lesser quality.
Thanks for tuning in, we are back in a week!
Equity drops every Friday at 6:00 am PT, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Pocket Casts, Downcast and all the casts.
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
This week we had the Three Excellent Friends (Connie Loizos, Danny Chrichton, and Alex Wilhelm) on hand to kick things about with Scale Venture Partner's own Rory O'Driscoll.
As I've written the last few weeks, what a pile of news we've had recently. And like the last few episodes, we had to pick and choose what to drill into. This week: Twilio-Sendgrid, Palantir, Uber, Lyft, and Tencent Music IPOs, Instacart, and Saudi Arabia.
In order, I think? First, we tackled the week's biggest venture-themed M&A: Twilio buying SendGrid. Keep in mind that they are both recent IPOs; Twilio went out in 2016, and SendGrid in 2017.
The $2 billion-ish all-stock transaction is effectively Twilio using its rich market cap (rich in terms of its revenue and profit multiples) to snag an obvious (though intelligent) extension of API-powered communications toolset.
Next up we dug into the chance that Palantir is worth $41 billion. Spoiler: It isn't. Then we chatted the two other recently-floated IPO valuations for Uber ($120 billion) and Lyft ($15 billion). They probably make more sense, depending a little on how you add and then divide.
All that and we also touched on the recent delay in the Tencent Music IPO, a profitable company.
Then we riffed through the Instacart round ($600 million more at a $7.6 billion valuation; wow), and re-touched on Silicon Valley's currently least popular dinner party topic: how much Saudi money has recently gone to work powering tech startups.
A big thanks to you for not only sticking with Equity for so long, but also for making it quite literally as popular as it has ever been. It's super fun to have the biggest crew with us every week that we've ever had.
You, yes you, are a delight.
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
This week we had a good crew on the show. We had Connie Loizos and Danny Crichton from TechCrunch, I scampered over from the Crunchbase News domicile, and Brian O'Malley, a general partner with Forerunner Ventures, joined us to us to round out the collective.
It was yet another packed episode. There's so much going on in the venture world that we can't get to it all. Not even a large fraction, really. So we did what we always do, and picked out our favorite bits.
Up top we talked about the recent market carnage. It's been super rough for tech stocks large, small, medium, and SaaS. Everyone got hit. O'Malley gave us the standard venture answer that he isn't a public market investor when we asked him about it, but as public market valuation multiples impact private market valuation multiples, this stuff matters to investors and founders alike.
Next up: What's going on with WeWork and the Vision Fund? After some back and forth, it seems that world-famous capital cannon won't pick up a majority stake in the starkly unprofitable shared-offices concern. But the saga demonstrates that the Vision Fund is more willing than ever to cut checks the size of small continents.
Where the Vision Fund gets its capital, though is under increasing scrutiny. After the apparent murder of a Washington Post columnist by Saudi agents in an embassy in Turkey, Saudi money is quickly becoming radioactive. Talking personally for a moment, perhaps it would have been better if the U.S. tech industry, famous for claiming to be more interested in improving the world than paying a dividend, hadn't taken so much money from the ruling monarchy of a country famous for terrible treatment of women and LGBTQ folks, and for having an overdeveloped taste for the death penalty.
Regardless, there was even more news to get through. Forerunner itself recently raised a pretty penny, Egnyte is now $75 million richer thanks to Goldman Sachs, and two Chinese rounds clocked in at a combined $1 billion, give or take.
Crazy times. Thanks for listening, as always, and have a great weekend. Get some rest. We all need it.
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
This week was a treat. We had Danny Crichton in the studio. We had Connie Loizos in the studio. I was in the studio. And our guest, the excellent Andy McLoughlin, a partner at UnCork Capital, was in the studio as well.
Thus it was with much enthusiasm that we first got to talk about the latest Elon Musk tweet to move Tesla's stock, causing the famous CEO's best-known company even more self-inflicted damage.
What a mess.
Happily, we had a whole show planned out before that happened, so after cleaning up Musk's latest we tucked into a bit of our normal fare: big rounds, IPOs, and venture moves.
Up first was the $100 million Hopper round. For those unaware, Hopper is a travel-focused company that helps folks with flexible schedules get cheap tickets to fun places. Who these people are who have flexible schedules isn't clear to me at the moment, but I'm sure someone, somewhere, isn't effectively their Google Calendar's valet.
Also up this week: $165 million more for ZipRecruiter, and possibly $500 million more for Coinbase. A few thoughts. First, it was super interesting that this was only Zip's second known round ever, and that Coinbase's valuation could have been even higher than the rumor. Perhaps even 50 percent higher.
Scooting to the next, the impending Tencent Music IPO caught our fancy. It's going to be big, it's going to be splashy, and the company actually makes money. What an odd trio of things! Yes, there are companies in the world that go public and make money. Just not that many of them these days.
And finally. there's news out of the a16z fortress: a new partner rises. As Connie notes during the show, Andreessen as a firm has been on a bit of a hiring kick. Which is fair, frankly, as it's not like the shop is short of cash.
That and a few jokes along the way were all that we had time for. Shout out to Andy for being fun, and you, for sticking with the show. Chat soon!
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
This week on Equity, the gang was back together. We had the ever-excellent Connie Loizos on hand, along with TechCrunch's Danny Crichton, and myself, on loan from Crunchbase News. Even better we had Iris Choi on the show. When she's not hanging out with us for the pod, she's a partner at Floodgate.
This week was another that offered a panoply of topics that we couldn't get to in detail. Stripe's huge new round, and attendant valuation bump, for example. Oh, and new Lyft financials too!
But we picked out the best, divvied them up, and here's what we chose:
The SoftBank Payroll: SoftBank was super active in the past week, dropping capital into a number of companies. OYO was up first, a budget hotel startup based out of India. SoftBank has been a recurring investor in the firm, but most recently helped drop a billion dollars more into the company.
Also on the SoftBank front was a brace of real estate companies: Opendoor and Compass. Both raised $400 million this week, and SoftBank is backing each with checks. If the move was oddly internally competitive or not, is up for debate. Still, more huge checks from the Vision Fund.
SurveyMonkey's IPO: After a long road to the public markets, the venerable SurveyMonkey managed to raise its IPO price above-range, and sold more shares than planned as well. Its stock then took off.
Bitmain's IPO numbers, redux: After posting an incredible Q1, Bitmain had a pretty lacking Q2. Will this scuttle an IPO that was supposed to be a hot ticket? Can one of the most famous crypto-focused companies go public at all?
All that and we still had time to natter about JUUL, about which Connie had great notes on from her recent interview with the founders.
That is us, thanks for coming around, and stay cool!
This week we worked with an (excellent) skeleton crew. Our own Connie Loizos held down the fort with a guest that knew quite a lot: March Capital's Jamie Montgomery.
There was a healthy blizzard of news to get through, so Connie and Jamie plowed ahead.
Up top, the Eventbrite IPO was big news. After a long path to going public, Eventbrite reported interesting revenue growth acceleration, attached to a standard set of GAAP net losses. (Standard in that most tech IPOs these days do not feature profitable companies.)
But Eventbrite's IPO was just one thing going on the IPO front. X Financial also went public this week after a somewhat muted pricing event. But even that wasn't all the IPO news. There was one more tidbit to hang our hat on: NIO's recent IPO price see-saw.
Moving along, Uber may be going on a shopping spree, picking up either Careem (a rival car-sharing service) or Deliveroo (a competing food-delivery service), or both. Or neither! We'll have to see when all the dust comes to rest.
But that wasn't all! Ro has new capital to spend, bringing more drugs to the male health space. Oh, and UiPath raised a few hundred million as well.
And I think that that is it. Thanks for hanging with us over so many dozens and dozens of episodes. We think that you are just great!
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
After a long run of having guests climb aboard each week, we took a pause on that front, bringing together three of our regular hosts instead: Connie Loizos, Danny Chrichton, and myself.
Despite the fact that there were just three of us instead of the usual four, we got through a mountain of stuff. Which was good as it was a surprisingly busy week, and we didn't want to leave too much behind.
Up top we dug into the latest in the land of crypto, which Danny had politely summarized for us in an article. The gist of his argument is that the analogies relating crypto as an industry to the Internet may work, but most people have their timelines wrong: Crypto isn't like the Internet in the 90s, perhaps. More like the 80s.
On the same topic, crypto companies formed a team lobbying effort, and a high-flying crypto fund is struggling to once again post strong profit figures.
Moving along, Juul is back in the news. Not, however, for raising more money or posting quick growth. Well, sort of the latter, as the government is after it. The Food and Drug Administration has put Juul on a countdown to get its act together regarding teens and smoking. That the financially-impressive unicorn is in as much trouble as it is nearly surprising.
Finally, we ran through the three most recent Chinese IPOs that hit our radar. Here they are:
Meituan Dianping: The Tencent-backed group buying, delivery, and everything company raised over $4 billion in its debut, which was impressive, but also short of expectations. The firm won't begin trading until the 20th, but it's one more massive deal that got done in 2018.
111: We spent a minute on the show discussing what counts as a technology company thanks to 111. We voted that the Chinese online-to-offline pharmacy startup did in fact count. So, it's in our list. Some notes on its debut can be found here.
NIO: Finally on our list was NIO, a Chinese electric car company with, as we have discussed on Equity before, a shockingly short history of revenue generation. Whether the company is a gamble or not, it did raise $1 billion in its own offering. And its stock is off like a rocket to boot.
And that was the end of things. Thanks for sticking with us, as always. Speaking of which, our 100th episode is coming up. Who should we bring onto the show to celebrate?
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
This week was incredibly fun. We recorded live from the first floor of TechCrunch's Disrupt SF confab, putting us right in the middle of the action. So it was good that we had a full crew on hand to natter about the news. From TechCrunch, Connie Loizos and Danny Chricton were on deck, along with myself. In addition to us regulars, Garry Tan joined in. He's a managing partner at Initialized Capital.
So we had the crew, a lovely stage, and four mics. Putting that together we kicked off with some ironically non-Valley news, in particular, Amazon reaching the $1 trillion market cap threshold. The firm has since given back around $50 billion in value, but we wanted to know why it was up, and why it was down.
Seguing with some precision we tucked into the recent "Peak Silicon Valley" conversation, specifically predicated on two recent pieces from the Economist (here, and here) that, in effect ask the question is the Valley no longer what it once was? And the answer, as you can imagine, is a firm kinda.
Next up we riffed on the recent crypto meltdown. Tan was not concerned, noting that you have to have 10 percent down days to have 10 percent up days. I found that hard to stomach, but crypto remains young, per Tan, so perhaps we'll see things calm down yet.
Next, two IPOs. First up: Elastic, a search company that seems quite young has an impressive set of numbers to show off. It's not as hot as Snap, perhaps, but the firm is in good shape to make a good debut. And Upwork is going public as well. If Elastic is quick to IPO and quick growing, Upwork is a bit less of each. It's older and growing more slowly.
The firms are linked by an investor, however, something that Crichton broke down for us here.
We wrapped with Caffeine's $100 million round, and the changing pace of supergiant capital injections. And then we stopped talking, so we'll catch you all in seven days. Thanks for being great!
This week, we were a man down, with the excellent Alex Wilhelm of Crunchbase News on a vacation that someone seems to have sanctioned, though it was not us, as we don’t believe in vacations. (Wilhelm, get back here.) We did, happily, have the very knowledgeable Kirsten Korosec of TechCrunch join us on the line; we were also joined by this week’s personable in-studio guest: Lauren Kolodny, a partner at the San Francisco-based, early-stage venture firm Aspect Ventures.
It was the perfect mix to talk about car makers and more car makers, including Tesla and CEO Elon Musk’s seemingly ill-planned plans to take the publicly traded company private, then vacillating a bit before changing his mind again, much to the chagrin of his board, the company’s shareholders, and poor Kirsten, who was trying to enjoy her evening last Friday when Musk decided (for now) to leave well enough alone and drop the whole cockamamie idea of switching out Tesla’s investor base.
We also talked about Toyota’s announcement this week that it’s sinking $500 million into Uber and forming an intriguing if confusing driverless-car pact in the process. And we lingered on Nio, a four-year-old, Shanghai-based electric car vehicle that, if it has its way, will begin trading on the New York Stock Exchange in roughly two weeks — even though it only made $7 million in the first half of this year and reported a net loss of $503 million. Who’s counting, though? Not U.S. investors, it hopes.
Speaking of IPOs, we knew we’d be remiss not to talk about the IPO filing this week of SurveyMonkey, a now 19-year-old, San Mateo, Ca., company that’s beloved by both personal and business users of its analytical tools and surveys, but which is still not making money, owing in part to expensive debt that the company is currently servicing (and will pay down using its IPO proceeds). Will public shareholders embrace the company, which was last valued at $2 billion during its last private round in 2014 but whose value has subsequently been marked down by fully 25 percent since by fund manager Fidelity? Stay tuned!
We did not get to our favorite topic of scooters, running out time to chat about this major development and also this one. Knowing how much we love to toot about les scoots, rest assured that they will back next week, as will we, so tune in again then!
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
This week we had a full house which was super great. TechCrunch's Connie Loizos and Sarah Buhr held down the fort in San Francisco along with our guest, Susan Mac Cormac, a partner at Morrison Foerster where she works on some of the most interesting deals in the private capital space. I dialed in from the home office in Providence.
It was good that we had eight hands on deck as there was more than enough news to go around. We started with the recent executive changes at Zoox, an autonomous car company that came up on the show a few weeks back when it raised $500 million.
The firm is now down its CEO after he was ousted after the round. In the founder-friendly era that we find ourselves in at the moment, this is High Drama.
Next up was the #breakingnews concerning Eventbrite, which filed to go public just before we recorded. My initial notes are here, but we're still far from knowing where the unicorn will price. That means it's hard to say much today, aside from the fact that the company appears to be in more than rude enough health for a flotation.
And then, the megarounds. There were three:
Slack is richer and more valuable than ever after raising over $400 million at a valuation of more than $7 billion. The news surprised precisely no one, but it's again amazing to see how the enterprise chat app and budding productivity platform can raise as much as it wants, whenever it wants. The new round, of course, came after Slack put $250 million in its pockets last year. (Here's some quick math on its new valuation, just for fun.)
One Medical picked up $350 million of its own, though the company doesn't get all the money. It's $220 million for One Medical itself, and $130 million for extant shareholders in the premium medical service.
Getaround raised $300 million led by SoftBank (which also invested in Slack, of course). SoftBank's 2017 and 2018 investment cadence are already the stuff of legend. How the firm will do when returns are tallied isn't settled, though some early wagers are bearing fruit as we noted on the show. Getaround faces competition from rival peer-to-peer car sharing service Turo, which also raised this year.
All that and we managed 1.7 jokes and 2.3 puns.
We'll be back in a week, and don't forget that we are coming to you live at Disrupt in about two week's time. Stay cool!
Production note: Alex’s mic was a bit whack until the 16-minute mark. Please forgive the issue, we noticed and fixed it as fast as we could. Hugs and love!
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
This week was a corker. We had Alex Wilhelm in-studio with our guest Minal Hasan, founder of K2 Global, and TechCrunch’s Danny Chriton jumped in from New York to help the crew dig through the biggest and best stuff from the last seven days.
It’s been busy, to say the least. First, we took a look at the Elon-Musk-taking-Tesla-private-situation, which has kept Markets Twitter in suspense for days. We didn’t really get to talk about the Grimes-Azealia Banks stuff, but, hey, stay in your lane and what not. Don’t forget that the latest Telsa upheaval comes on the heels of the firm’s pretty good earnings report.
Next, we took a look at earnings. Not of public companies, mind, but two unicorns that have become so large as to require regular financial disclosure. So, we took a peek into what Uber and WeWork had cooking. In short:
WeWork loses a lot of money, and despite its impressive growth we have some concerns;
Uber loses a lot of money, but due to its impressive growth our group was (on average) not too worried.
Put into simple terms, WeWork’s long-term lease situation has us worried, while Uber’s losses compared to its net revenue seem kinda alright given other financial metrics. Place your own bets, of course.
Moving along we took a dig into the NIO IPO, which you probably haven’t heard about yet. It’s another electric car company, but this time from China. And it’s raising a lot after having essentially zero history as a revenue-generating company. What could go wrong!
And finally, crypto and all that has happened to your favorite coin recently. Hasan was on hand with a grip of good points on the matter. She was a pretty damn great guest.
That’s it for this week, hang tight and come see us at Disrupt.
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
This week Matthew Lynley and Alex Wilhelm were joined by 500 Startups CEO Christine Tsai for what turned out to be a super packed episode.
We kicked off with the latest from Slack: $400 million new dollars at a shiny, new $7 billion valuation, according to TechCrunch. The new capital comes after the firm raised a huge sum last year from SoftBank's Vision Fund.
We dug into why the company would raise again, and what competitors it has left after the Atlassian deal.
Next up, two earnings reports. Continuing our tradition of keeping tabs on recent tech IPOs, we talked through Snap and Dropbox which reported earnings this week. Both lost ground after doing so. Ironically, they each beat financial expectations.
Snap ended up dropping value over a DAU decline, and Dropbox's fall is still a bit undetermined. But by the time this episode ships, perhaps the market will have figured it out.
Next up we scrolled through the key reviews of the commercially available Magic Leap headset that is out at last. It's a bit pricey, and a bit not-what-people-expected, but the well-funded startup seems to have avoided a complete miss. Its second-generation device may prove to be more impactful.
And finally, big news from China. As has become the norm on Equity, a few big Chinese rounds captivated us. This time it was the Manbang news, and what's going on at Bytedance.
All that and we'll be back in a week's time. Stay cool!
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
This week TechCrunch's Matthew Lynley and Crunchbase News's Alex Wilhelm were joined by Jyoti Bansal, the founder of AppDynamics and a partner at Unusual Ventures, among other startup work.
Our own Connie Loizos was off this week.
This episode was effectively a news grab-bag. There's a little of everything: public company drama, big rounds, acquisitions, and more.
Up top: Apple's broaching of the $1 trillion barrier, which some people called early and some people called late. It depends on how you were counting. But the venerable consumer electronics giant did indeed manage to hoist its market cap over the trillion dollar mark, making it the first American company to do so.
But as we all wind up agreeing, it's just a round number.
Moving along Sonos's IPO had a good first day but only after a disappointing pricing run. Or as Lynley explains on the show, the firm had to price under its target range to go out, but then closed above that target range by the end of its first day's trading. This is more evidence that pricing an IPO is an occult art of sorts. (More here on the company's numbers.)
Scooting along, Duo Security is exiting to Cisco for $2.35 billion. This deal came at quite literally the perfect moment as the company our guest founded sold to Cisco for $3.7 billion last year. Why? Recurring revenue, which is seeing its value rise.
And finally, Brandless, which picked up a massive $240 million round led by the ever-hungry SoftBank Vision Fund. A deal to which I had a question: Why?
All that and we even managed to tell a joke and mangle a segue. More next week!
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
This was one hell of a week. Happily, we had our own Connie Loizos, Matthew Lynley, and Alex Wilhelm on hand, along with Initialized Capital's Alexis Ohanian to pick over the mix.
First up we had zero choice but to talk about Facebook. The social company's epic repricing in the middle of the week blotted out the news sun. It may keep us in the shade for another week, too. Facebook's dive has implications for social startups and competing public companies alike. Like, say, Reddit.
Moving along, Crunchbase News recently dropped a report digging into the rise of $100 million and larger rounds. From a turning point in 2013 to today, megarounds have been on the rise. Why? When does it stop? Whose fault is it really? And is going public really that bad? We worked through each question, even tagging the structure of the stock market along the way. (Even more data here.)
From there we took a quick pivot to a company that is known for raising megarounds -- Slack -- and its new IRL BFFF -- Atlassian. Yes, the Slack-Atlassian deal dropped right before we recorded. Our take is that the agreement makes sense, especially in light of a competitive landscape that keeps getting tougher for Slack.
That said, everyone agreed that Slack is one hell of a business.
And then we ran out of time. But, happily, we also worked in an advertisement for Melbourne and riffed one of Ohanian's recent investments.
Thanks for comin' round, and we'll see you all in a week!
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
This week we had another full house which made for a good time. Our own Connie Loizos, Matthew Lynley and I were joined by Renata Quintini, a partner at Lux Capital.
Today's episode is a grab bag of topics, including some self-driving stuff, late-stage venture noodling, and Microsoft. So, this show hit on every topic I used to have listed on my OkCupid profile.
First up was Zoox's epic $500 million infusion. The self-driving company is notable for its full-stack approach, and, as Lux is a long-time investor in the project, we had the perfect guest on hand to help us discuss it. As you can imagine, we dug around who else is working in the space, what SoftBank is up to, and why Zoox might need so much capital.
Oddly enough everyone 'round the table found the dollar amount pretty reasonable. We apologize for the lack of drama.
Next up we peeked at Insight Venture Partners' epic new fund, and how some founders are looking to provide liquidity to their investors without exiting. As you can imagine, we wanted to know how these Very Large Indeed funds are going to return enough capital to make their LPs happy. We also spent some time chewing on what happens to startups that wind up growing, but not as quickly as their venture backers had originally hoped.
Finally, Microsoft's earnings. We don't do too much about the already-public, but Microsoft's latest digest was something that we couldn't pass up. The company posted another set of healthy growth as it scampers along in the $1 trillion race.
And that's about it. We'll be back in a week with more Equity.
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
This week we had the full crew in the studio along with a friend. The excellent Connie Loizos hosted, and Matthew Lynley and I were both on as well, along with our guest this week: Graham Brown, a partner at Lerer Hippeau, an early-stage venture fund based in New York.
We took a slightly different tack this episode. Yes, scooters came up, but we have some later-stage notes that should be a welcome reprieve for regular listeners. Also, no crypto!
Up first was the Uber-Lime deal. Lime, one of the two domestic scooter darlings, raised a brick of new capital recently, including monies from ridesharing giant Uber. Getting a tie-in with Uber does two things. First, it dramatically raises the profile of Lime domestically as it can perhaps tap into the Uber customer base. And, second, it puts pressure on Lyft (an Uber competitor) and Bird (a Lime competitor) to do a deal themselves.
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
This week we were back in the studio with Connie Loizos and myself hanging out with Jai Das, a managing director at Sapphire Ventures. Our beloved Matthew Lynley was off this week, but he’ll be back for the next episode.
This week we had an excellent list of things to get to, first of which was Lyft’s latest shopping run. This time Lyft accreted to itself Motivate, a bike-sharing company that operates various programs in cities like New York City, and San Francisco.
The context for the transaction is threefold. First, Lyft just raised a bundle of money for effectively diddly dilution. Second, Uber bought Jump and there is no FOMO in the market today like ridesharing FOMO. And third, scooters, which now lurk in the background of any and every ridesharing conversation so the big shops are on a bit of defense.
The sum is that Uber and Lyft now own bike companies, which feels a bit 2017.
But moving along Unicorn Row we quickly found ourselves at the door of Airbnb which is prepping for a 2019-2020 IPO and a change to its personnel comp cadence, the latter due to its age and a market trend that Das noted concerning employee comp and shareholder dilution.
In other news, Airbnb needs a CFO, so if you are in the market that’s who to call.
Next up was Automation Anywhere’s epic $250 million Series A which brought the software process-automation company to a valuation of $1.8 billion. The firm helps companies execute repetitive software tasks at a fraction of the cost of having humans click the buttons.
And we wrapped with Juul, everyone’s favorite e-cigarette company that has simply beautiful financials. If it’s ethical is something that we spent a moment talking about.
So fire up your vape or just hit play and we’ll be right back in seven days.
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
This week Connie Loizos and I were joined by Norwest’s Scott Beechuk. Sadly, Matthew Lynley was reading slam poetry to ambivalent cacti in the Sonora Desert and thus couldn’t join us. He’ll be back soon, we promise.
But we had a good crew on deck and a grip of news to sift, so let’s get to what we got into.
First up was the latest headlines in the on-demand transportation sector. Lyft raised a huge new pile of cash at a staggering valuation, Uber got the go-ahead to operate once more in the great city of London, and Bird’s $300 million round officially closed.
So that’s another $900 million for domestic transportation-sharing, at least, in a single week. Right.
Next up Sequoia’s epic new $6 billion in fresh capital. Recall the famous line about a million dollars not being cool, but a billion dollars being cool? Sadly a billion dollars isn’t cool, 2012 Andreessen Horowitz. But maybe $6 billion is cool. At least 2018 Sequoia thinks so. (Good luck returning a multiple of that figure!)
Speaking of a16z, that shop has a new vehicle in the market focused on the crypto space. With $300 million ready to go and no 20 percent cap on crypto investments, a16z can now do what it wants inside of the surprisingly-still-nascent space.
All that and we tried to squeeze AppNexus into the show. (Update: We failed!)
Stay cool and we’ll see you in a week!
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines. This week TechCrunch's Silicon Valley Editor Connie Loizos and I jammed out on a couple topics as Alex Wilhelm was out managing his fake stock game spreadsheets or something. (The jury is out on whether this was a good or bad thing.)
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
This week was something of a first for the crew, twice. First, we had two guests on the show, and, also, we only made it through two and a half topics. The former is good, the latter is, well, we’ll see.
So, this week Matthew Lynley and I were joined by David Chao, co-founder and general partner at DCM, and Steve Vassallo, a general partner at Foundation Capital. Points to both for being guinea pigs.
Heading into our first topic I’m sorry to inform you that, at least in terms of Equity, scooters are the new Uber. So, we wound up talking about both this week. We started with the fact that Bird is raising new capital at an even more staggering valuation than before ($2 billion!), and that Lime is working to raise a truckload of capital itself. (Reports vary, but it’s probably a $250 million equity round at around a $750 million valuation. There may also be some debt in the mix for Lime. More when we lock that down.)
And, as Chao’s firm is an investor in the space, we had even more to chew on.
Next up we dug into the massive new Opendoor round. The firm’s new $325 million puts it into a solid position to help people sell their houses. Which markets are the best fit was something for us to unspool, along with public market comps, such as they are. But most critical, at least in my view, was the idea of risk. On that point Vassallo made a reasonable argument regarding stress testing. We’ll see.
And finally, we touched on Meituan’s impending IPO, and how it came to be.
Thanks for sticking with Equity after all this time. We’ll be back next week with another round of chatter about the latest, greatest, and dumbest that tech has to offer.
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
This time ’round we had Connie and Alex on hand with Brian Ascher, a longtime partner with Venrock down in Palo Alto, Ca. It was a surprisingly busy week, so we had our work cut out us. Without further ado:
Github! The biggest story in tech this week was right up our alley: Microsoft bought the venture-backed GitHub for $7.5 billion, bringing a massive portion of the developer world under its auspices. Whether developers want passports to Redmond remains up for debate, but from a corporate perspective, Microsoft’s move has largely been well-received. The transaction also provided a huge bump for GitHub’s investors, including a16z.
Domo! Another tech company is fighting to go public, but this time there’s doubt it can pull it off. Domo’s numbers are the wrong side of rough, with the firm burning tectonic amounts of cash to grow quite modestly. If the firm manage to go public, and soon, it may struggle to stay alive.
Scooters! As per usual, there’s new money flowing into the scooter niche. (Note: Domo is looking to tap the public markets at a time when scooter companies can raise $450 in two rounds. Ouch.) We try to find out if Bird and Lime are worth the change, as well why do they need so much cash. We also touched on the broader crowded non-car, on-demand transit space.
Dataminr! Sticking to the mega-round theme, Dataminr’s huge raise was perfectly timed for this episode, as our guest’s firm has money in the company. Indeed, with $221 million more in its pocket, Dataminr — which makes of online chaos for its customers — has an epic bankroll from which to bet.
Here’s a fun question: What will Equity sound like when the market turns and we cover the slowing of venture and the compression of valuations instead of venture acceleration and towering new post-money figures? All we know today is that the venture world is investing like that reality is far-off. We’ll see.
Hit play, and we’ll be right back.
Equity drops every Friday at 6:00 am PT, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Pocket Casts, Downcast and all the casts.
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
This week was fun. Back in the studio, Connie Loizos, Matthew Lynley, your humble servant, and Ramneek Gupta, managing director of Citi Ventures was with us to provide the venture perspective.
As you can probably guess, we got a bit stuck in Bird’s nest, trying to vet why the young company is hoping to punch its unicorn card in nigh-record time. The firm’s potential new $150 million round may make it a unicorn, but Lime is in the chase, and the firm’s economics are still not fully understood.
What did we agree on in the end? Scooters are fun, and Lynley said a swear.
Moving ahead, SoftBank’s Vision Fund is cutting another check, this time to General Motors. Yes, the galactic slushfund is dropping up to $2.25 billion into GM’s Cruise arm, a former startup that the American metal-shaper scooped for around $1 billion in 2016.
The deal, of course, is complicated: Most of the SoftBank money won’t land until certain performance marks are met, and GM is also putting money into the thing that it owns — $1.1 billion worth. So, if we don’t count the GM money as part of a post-money valuation, we can calculate that SoftBank’s 19.6 percent stake in Cruise values the company at over $11 billion.
Sure!
Next up, Ant Financial is raising $10 billion at a $150 billion valuation, give or take. That’s a lot. This brought up the ever-interesting struggle between Alibaba and Tencent, of course, as Ant is an Alibaba -affiliate that competes with Tencent’s WeChat’s WePay product.
Sticking to China, we wrapped on the NIO IPO, yet another Chinese company looking to debut on a US market.
All that and we even told some jokes! Hit play and we’ll be right back.
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
This week was fun for a few reasons. First, it was our own Connie Loizos’s first time leading, and it was our very first regular episode that included us recording remotely. I mention that as Matthew Lynley and I were each in different places, meaning that we had a bump or two to smooth out. Your patience is more than appreciated.
Happily, we didn’t have to adventure alone, as Jonathan Abrams of Founders Den was on hand to help us cart through the news.
Up first: A huge round for Rover, bringing even more money into the dog- and pet-focused space. As you’ll surely recall, this is not the first time that a tectonic sum has been disbursed into the pet-care vertical. Hell, Rover’s $155 in new capital, while impressive, still can’t touch Wag’s epic $300 million infusion that happened earlier in the cycle.
While we were on the subject, another Softbank-backed company made waves: Uber. Yes, our favorite and least favorite topic is back.
This time Uber released yet another grip of statistics relating to its financial performance in the first quarter. The big picture? More gross spend, more net revenue, smaller losses. But how you measure Uber’s pace of financial improvement depends on how you measure its losses and its remaining markets.
This being Equity, however, we couldn’t avoid the IPO topic. So, in order:
A Foxconn subsidiary will soon be making big waves in China with a huge debut;
A Dutch payments unicorn is going public on the back of great results;
GreenSky went out, and did pretty ok, which was a change of pace from recent debuts.
All that and we had a laugh. Thanks for listening in, and we are back next week.
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
Today Matthew Lynley, Connie Loizos and I were joined by Semil Shah, the founder of seed-stage fund Haystack and venture partner at Lightspeed.
This week, we stuck to our roots: big rounds, venture capital liquidity thirst, one IPO, two Vision Funds, and three scooter jokes. Maybe more than three, but who is counting.
First up we took on Circle's new $110 million round, working to understand why the firm is raising new capital at such a huge valuation (~$3 billion!). Also in play: Circle's new lead investor isn't a venture capital shop, making the monetary infusion all the more interesting. (Oh, and here's more on the Basis stable coin we brought up.)
Next, we chatted through NEA's plan to raise a fresh $1 billion to buy a lot of its stakes in startups that have yet to find an exit, allowing it, presumably, to return a chunk of capital to its own investors. The move is potentially fraught with conflict, we think, but perhaps it's also the way of the future.
After that, it was time for an IPO break. Lynley had just got off the horn with the CEO we went through Pluralsight's IPO that priced on Wednesday and started trading on Thursday. Short version: it went well.
Capping off this particular episode was a rundown of the potential for a new Softbank Vision Fund. What's better than raising a half-squillion dollars? Raising a full squillion dollars.
So drink up, tech world. There's still plenty of money to go around.
Equity drops every Friday at 6:00 am PT, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Pocket Casts, Downcast and all the casts.
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-themed podcast where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
This week Matthew Lynley, Connie Loizos and myself were joined by Villi Iltchev, a partner at August Capital.
It was good that we had a full crew on deck, as the news flew thick and varied this week. In honor of the news cycle, we took on as much of it as we could inside a single episode.
And as we’re sure that you guessed, we had to talk about the Flipkart-Walmart deal first. The staggering transaction sees the American IRL commerce giant with a proven appetite for e-commerce players bring the India unicorn into its fold. This is the second multi-billion-dollar startup deal for Walmart in recent memory. (Jet.com was the first unicorn to find new nest in the Walton’s rafters.)
Today is Katie Roof's last day on Equity. She will be missed as she moves on to her next endeavor. This week she was joined by TechCrunch's Connie Loizos and M.G. Siegler from Google Ventures. They talked Tesla, Apple, Spotify earnings and the DocuSign and Smartsheet IPO Recap
Today Katie Roof and I were joined by James Hardiman, a partner at Data Collective (DCVC). If you want to tell him how he did, he's on Twitter here.
It was good to have Hardiman on board as there was an ocean of news to swim through. Indeed, we are in the middle of earnings seasons, companies can't stop from buying one another, and the IPO window is stuck wide open.
So we decided to just do everything. Here's how it broke down.
Earnings
Facebook's earnings had two purposes. First, the company showed the world that it's run of financial feats is not at an end. The company beat on top and bottom lines and kept growing around the world. That second result is our second point: the company is not taking material slings and arrows at least in terms of lost users from its recent privacy scandals.
Staying on the social side of tech, Twitter's earnings were strong as well. The company also beat on top and bottom lines, turning in GAAP profit and some modest user growth. For Twitter, who spent much of its time as a public company in the public penalty box, has seen its share price more than double from lows.
And then a few more of the big three, which we tried to hit quickly:
Amazon had a great quarter, and AWS continues to kick out huge numbers.
Alphabet had a solid quarter, and we also know now how Nest is doing.
Microsoft beat too, also managing to have all its operating groups beat as well.
It's a lot of numbers. But now at least you know.
$1 trillion?
All the above sums to an interesting question regarding value. Those companies we just touched on (with the exception of Twitter) are in the running to be the company that first reaches an inflation-unadjusted market cap of $1 trillion.
Which might be the first to make the grade? We had some ideas.
Square-Weebly
Next up we tackled the Square-Weebly deal, in which the public payments company bought the private website-builder corp for hundreds of millions of dollars. The downside is that the company was worth over $100 million more the last time the private markets valued it.
But, exactly who won out isn't clear, and it's not hard to see why VCs made the bet. There are two Weebly competitors in the Unicorn Club!
IPOs
And finally, the thing nearest and dearest to our hearts: public offerings.
This week Ceridian went public, shooting 42 percent higher in its first day of trading. That's good. But, as we discuss, the total deal might not be super hot for the company's owners.
(Note: Never feel bad for private equity.)
All that and DocuSign and Smartsheet are probably trading by the time you read this.
Stay cool!
Equity drops every Friday at 6:00 am PT, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Pocket Casts, Downcast and all the casts.
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
This week TechCrunch's Katie Roof and Crunchbase News's Alex Wilhelm sat down with Science Inc's Michael Jones to dig through the latest in the world of technology and money. And goddamn was there some stuff to get through.
On our even-more-stuffed-than-usual agenda this week we first dug into the Coinbase-Earn.com deal, and how it came to be. This raised the question of dividends (which somehow Alphabet still doesn't have to play, bringing a new high watermark to the concept of corporate adolescence) and venture firms bringing together two of their own deals under one roof.
Scooting along we turned to Netflix's staggering earnings run, including its share price rally that has been nigh-parabolic. That took us into MoviePass whose parent company you have not heard of, and seems to be in potentially serious financial trouble.
After that we jumped into Discord, a popular gaming chat service that is raising another $50 million at a $1.65 billion post-money valuation. That's a hell of a lot of new money, and a hell of a lot of new market cap. (At this point we also started talking about League of Legends. I am sorry.)
Finally, back on theme, we poured over the DocuSign IPO pricing range that it just dropped, and the Pluralsight S-1 which brought up many fun questions.
All that and we had a few laughs. Hit play, and we'll chat you all next week!
Equity drops every Friday at 6:00 am PT, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Pocket Casts, Downcast and all the casts.
This week was a damn corker. Instacart is fighting back! Zuora went public and it went well! There were other IPOs! Uber loves bikes! And what is #AllRaise? We happily had a good crew on hand to sift through the mix, including Katie Roof, myself, and Kara Nortman, a general partner at Upfront Ventures.
Up top we dug into the massive new Instacart round, the completion of its Series E. The new $150 million brings Instacart's valuation to a staggering $4.35 billion, up from $4.2 billion when it closed the first $200 million of its latest round of capital. It's an incredible bet from the private markets, and we dug into it as a possible anti-Amazon bet.
Moving along, it was an IPO run for the ages:
Zuora went public, and it went super well for the subscription billing firm. I had a few questions about why it went so well, but, at a minimum, the company had an amazingly good run: it raised its range, priced above that range, and then popped miles higher. Not bad.
Carbon Black is bringing more security equity to the public markets with its new S-1, which we spent a few minutes poking into. Sadly, who actually understands what security companies do? I don't.
And finally, Pivotal Software is going public. We unpack its revenue mix and try to figure out why it thinks that it is worth what it does. Mysteries all abound!
Moving along, we wandered back into the hottest region of Silicon Valley conversation: bikes scooters. The JUMP-Uber deal finally wrapped -- as expected -- and we discussed the finer points of what a scooter is and how they fit into our lives.
We wrapped on #AllRaise and the fact that Kara may or may not have been on the cover of a magazine.
Hit play and we'll see you all next week!
Equity drops every Friday at 6:00 am PT, so subscribe to us on iTunes, Overcast, Pocketcast, Downcast and all the casts.
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
This week Katie Roof and I were joined by David Welsh, part of KKR’s growth equity shop. (His formal title: Member and Head of TMT Growth Equity, where “member” actually means “partner,” it turns out.)
And what a week it was. There was news aplenty to get through, not the least of which that Spotify’s shares — as of airtime, at least — were being pretty reasonable. After rising sharply above their reference price, they fell some and then recovered a bit on Thursday.
That success, to pick a word, you might think would be an inspiration to other startups. However, our guest made a good case that the market is not about to see a bunch of other companies follows suit in putting together direct listings. Spotify was a bit of an outlier, it seems.
Moving along, we peeked into DocuSign’s latest numbers, which show declining net losses (GAAP, of course), and growing revenue. In short, the firm’s updated numbers that include calendar 2017 (long story, more here) look pretty good, and now DocuSign’s impending IPO’s only real question left concerns pricing.
Equity drops every Friday at 6:00 am PT, so subscribe to us on iTunes, Overcast, Pocketcast, Downcast and all the casts.
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
This week Katie Roof and Alex Wilhelm were joined by David Golden who Managing Partner at Revolution to talk about Spotify's direct listing.
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
This week Katie Roof and Alex Wilhelm were joined by Byron Deeter of Bessemer Venture Partners, who was an excellent selection to have on deck as we tooled through the most recent news. And there was a lot to get through, as a host of companies have decided to go public before the markets turn south.
Welcome to the Dropbox Equity Shot! Today Katie Roof sat down with Eric Kim, who wrote the Dropbox research report for Goodwater capital. Eric breaks down the Dropbox IPO and looks ahead to the IPOs coming down the pipeline, explaining along the way how open the IPO window is today.
Welcome to "Equity," TechCrunch's venture capital and tech business podcast. Hosted by Katie Roof, Matthew Lynley, and Alex Wilhelm For this week, we talked about the wave of enterprise IPOs. And we were joined by Dharmesh Thakker, a general partner at Battery Ventures. He was the perfect guest because he specializes in enterprise and Battery is pretty good at it. We also talked about Facebook's privacy debacle.
First up, we talked about Dropbox pricing its long-awaited IPO. It priced at $21 per share, which was better than what the company was initially hoping for. It's still below that $10 billion last private round which VCs say we shouldn't care about. But if it "pops," it could push back that milestone on day one.
Then we talked about other upcoming IPOs, like e-signature business DocuSign. I broke the news that it filed confidentially.
We also talked about cloud security business ZScaler which doubled following its debut. I broke the news of that one, too. (If you know of any other upcoming IPOs, please contact me).
There's also Zuora, the subscription software business, which unveiled its IPO filing this week.
And MuleSoft, one of last year's IPOs that now got purchased for a lot of money by SalesForce.
But we also saved time to talk about Facebook's big privacy mess. And Travis Kalanick's new job (again).
Alex Wilhelm was off, which is unacceptable. Fine, I guess being sick is an ok excuse. Get well soon!
We had the full crew on hand this week with Matthew Lynley, Katie Roof, and myself, along with Mar Hershenson from Pear Ventures who stepped into the guest chair. It was a damn busy week, with news raining down from the skies. We had to pick the best, so we went with the biggest rounds and exits. You are welcome.
First up, Spotify’s massive not-really-an-IPO, which has a listed $1 billion maximum raise that won’t happen. Indeed, the company is racing ahead with its direct listing, which should see the firm just start trading. You need to get under the hood of its numbers to grok the music streaming business. But, to be clear, if anyone is making money off of streaming, it certainly isn’t Spotify.
Next up we chatted about the Dropbox IPO in light of Box’s recent earnings (and what Box’s recent earnings did for its revenue multiple). Dropbox publicly filed when Box was valued at essentially all-time-highs. Now, after Box shed about a quarter of its value, one of Dropbox’s most critical market comps is worth a lot less.
Also in the news this week was Amazon’s $1 billion purchase of Ring, a connected home company. The value of the deal was actually greater than $1 billion, though no one seems to know precisely how much more. Even more, it’s not the only deal in the space worth mentioning.
All that and we found time to noodle about DoorDash’s massive SoftBank feast, which far more than doubled its capital raised to date. Spending $100 billion, as it turns out, is hard.
At long last, after many predictions and even a private filing, Dropbox dropped its S-1 today. The filing marks the public beginning of the end of Dropbox’s life as a private company. Dropbox is going public!
To mark the occasion, Katie Roof and Alex Wilhelm met up in the TechCrunch podcast studio to chat about the company’s numbers. And, we got Aaron Levie, CEO of Dropbox competitor Box, on the phone to talk about the occasion.
This week the full gang was in town, with Katie Roof, Matthew Lynley and Alex Wilhelm all back in the podcast studio. The trio was joined by Hilary Gosher, a managing director at Insight Venture Partners who helped dig through the news.
The packed week meant some things had to get left behind (Rovio's dive, and so forth), but, as always, we picked the best of the bunch to chew over. First up: Roku's earnings results and ensuing share price shellacking. The company was a 2017 IPO, and a breakout success, meaning that its recent dip was all the more interesting since we covered, and spoke about it during and after its IPO.
Next up, Snap's own share price problems. After an earnings report went its way and the social company's stock managed to climb back over its IPO price, at last, a combination of things knocked it off center this week, including an analyst downgrade, a celebrity tweet, and its CEO's massive 2017 payday.
Following, we walked through Airbnb's new plans for more upscale lodging, and experience-accommodation hybrids. The popular unicorn took itself off the 2018 IPO table, but it will eventually pull the trigger.
Welcome to “Equity,” TechCrunch’s venture capital and tech business podcast.
On this week, we were joined by Mike Ghaffary from Social Capital, who was the perfect guest because he used to run Eat24, when it was Yelp’s food delivery business. Food delivery is highly relevant to this week’s news.
First up, we talked about Uber, which is losing lots of money in Asia and also from Uber Eats. It could be profitable if it wants to, says Uber’s chief, but it doesn’t want to because the company is investing in growth. Okay!
Next, we talked about Instacart and how somehow investors are throwing even more money at the company. The grocery delivery app is now worth over $4 billion, on paper anyway.
And of course there’s Amazon, which often seems like it’s winning at everything, but hundreds of people at the company are still losing their jobs. Ouch.
Today we're doing another Equity Shot, a short topic-centered episode where we assemble the troops to dive into one particular thing. Or, in this case, two particular things.
Matthew Lynley, myself, and Katie Roof gathered to pick over Snap and Twitter's respective earnings reports. They each managed to best expectations, leading to sharp rises in their respective share prices.
First up, Snap shot sharply higher after beating Wall Street revenue and profit expectations. The firm remains deeply, deeply unprofitable, consuming hundreds of millions of cash quarterly to grow. But, its top-line expansion was far enough ahead of expectations that when coupled to solid user growth investors were content.
(Also, a former TechCrunch denizen has a book coming out about Snap that is a good read thus far. More when I finish it.)
Snap is back over its IPO price and managed to retake the market cap crown from Twitter.
Speaking of everyone's favorite blue bird, Twitter also managed to beat expectations with better-than-anticipated revenue and actual, real, not-adjusted profit in the quarter. Shares of Jack's social shop were up a comfortable 12 percent when we cut the episode.
All the above sums to a good moment for social startups. Their leading market comps are no longer the kick bags of the internet and financial realms.
We'll be back to our regular schedule next week. Stay cool!
This week was a treat. Not only did venture capitalist Annie Lamont join our own Katie Roof, Matthew Lynley, and Alex Wilhelm, we also recorded this episode live at SaaStr, a yearly SaaS-focused confab in San Francisco.
Happily for us, though not happily for your 401k, the markets took a massive dive and wound up bouncing SaaS stocks right as we were prepping the episode. Perfect fodder, if you will, for the moment.
What the market's chop means in practice is that quite a few companies that went public last year took hits while this year's IPO list is just getting itself together. Will the market turbulence impact private-market investment? Lamont votes no, given that the upward swing was only so impactful.
Scooting along, we noodled our way through the Big Cash Return Cycle, in which a host of tech giants may bring home hundreds of billions of cash. What will they do with it? Well, that's the new game. Will they buy a host of smaller tech companies? We tried to figure it out.
All that and we looked into the crypto meltdown (sorry for the jokes), and the news that Slack now has a CFO. Which can also be spelled "IPO."
This week Matthew Lynley and Alex Wilhelm were joined by General Catalyst's Steve Herrod, who helped us dig through the week's biggest news.
As a group, we looked at Wag's mega-round, a $300 million infusion from SoftBank's Vision Fund. The scale of the capital was surprising, though the round had been rumored previously. What will the company do with the money, and why might it need so much were questions on the top of our minds.
Next up was Airbnb's recent executive shakeup and its public notice that it has no IPO in the works in 2018. The company's non-2018 flotation puts at least one unicorn outside of the year's potential IPO crop. That said, there are other unicorns that should go public this year.
On the subject of public companies, we tooled over Amazon's huge quarter and its subsequent share-price rise. Apple also reported earnings, giving us a host of questions around what counts as success for a company that is so big, so valuable, and so profitable.
This week we once again had the full crew on set: Matthew Lynley, Katie Roof, and myself. And even better, we were joined by Sarah Tavel from Benchmark, who helped us unspool a topic or three.
Equity is recording a live ep at SaaStr which is cool.
And topics we had. This being earnings season, we had little choice but to talk about at least one public company's results. Obviously, we picked Netflix, a firm whose stock has gone parabolic as its cashflow has moved in the opposite direction.
But as we discuss, in the era of infinite money for land-grabs, why slow down?
Next up was Twitter, from which a bird has flown the nest right into the arms of SoFi. Yes, SoFi is picking up Twitter's COO for its CEO role. Regular listeners will know why SoFi, a heavily-funded unicorn, needs a new CEO in the first place.
Next up was the venture world. How much money did VCs disburse in 2017? Quite a lot as it turns out. In the United States and the world, the numbers were quite large -- records since the dotcom boom. (More here if you are so inclined). We also noodled over the ICO landscape, including the Telegram offering.
All that and it turns out that Lyft is not woke. Alas.
This week was a corker. Our co-host Matthew Lynley is back, Katie and myself were on hand, and our guest, Shruti Gandhi from Array Ventures, was brilliant.
And the news gods were kind, as there was quite a lot to get through. First, we looked into the Dropbox IPO. Dropbox has reportedly filed confidentially to go public, meaning that the company's long dance towards the public markets is nearing its conclusion.
But what will it be worth when it does go public? That is the new Silicon Valley parlor game. We looked over some maths regarding its prior valuation, its recent revenue, and a current public-market comp. The result: billions, but not quite ten.
Moving along, Xiaomi is on the path to an IPO as well. But the rumor in its case is that the firm could hit a $100 billion valuation. Lynley talked us through its product position, and focus on smaller margins than it might. Where the IPO will land, geographically, is a good next question, and Hong Kong or New York are its possible answers.
All that and we dug into the Telegram ICO, a billion-dollar-plus transaction that could see a popular app take part in the bubbling token industry. Why is Telegram pursuing an IPO? That's a great question, it turns out.
All that and we tell some jokes. Hit play and we will chat you all in a week!
Equity drops every Friday at 6:00 am PT, so subscribe to us on iTunes, Overcast, Pocketcast, Downcast and all the casts.
This week we took a look back at the year’s M&A market, which brought some big wins and some low lights. Equity this week was Katie Roof, Alex Wilhelm, and Jamie Leigh, a partner at Cooley, who joined us to go over the year’s receipts.
What to look for ahead? Leigh mentioned big box stores, Roof brought up automakers, and we also kicked over the idea of non-tech companies buying smaller firms that are not merely talent plays. (Instead, this about investments in long-term efforts to build in-house innovation instead of stapling on a startup to one division or another.)
Also: How many deals didn’t get done in 2017 that got close to being done? More than you might have thought, and, according to our guest, that fact means that we could see more M&A in the first quarter or two in 2018.
(All that and Intel-MobileEye came up, Amazon-Whole Foods got a mention, Target-Shipt got a mention and more!)
This is the second, and final 2017 wrap-up episode we have for you. Starting next week, it’s back to the regular show! Catch you all next week.
This episode, the first of 2018, saw our own Katie Roof and your humble servant (Alex) joined by Atish Davda, CEO, and founder of EquityZen. Matthew Lynley is off this week.
(Davda's firm put together a landing page for Equity, which we thought was neat.)
This week saw the culmination of a huge number of stories that we have discussed in 2017. Namely that Spotify has finally filed for its direct listing, and the Uber-Softbank deal is done.
Regarding Spotify, we got into why it would pursue a direct listing instead of a traditional IPO. And, of course, we are curious as to when the popular music streaming company actually does get out the door. With a private filing in December, the answer is essentially whenever, from our outside perspective.
And now, in the wake of the SoftBank-Uber deal finally getting itself done, what is Uber worth? There are a few numbers you can use. There's one around $50 billion and one around $70 billion. We pick over both to figure out which one we think is fair.
All that and we riff about the rapid rise of the public markets in the last few years.
Hit play, and we'll be right back in a week's time.
This week the crew — Katie Roof, Matthew Lynley, Alex Wilhelm — were joined by Barrett Daniels, the CEO of Nextstep Advisory, an IPO shop that helps companies go public.
Guess what we talked about?
Yes, we went back through the biggest debuts of 2017, several of the quiet hits and the laggards. We also answered critical questions like "what was the worst IPO of 2017?" (For more results, check the spreadsheet here.)
And, it being our holiday episode, we played a bit of what if. Or what may be, looking into 2018. After all, some IPOs that we expected to see have yet to appear (Vice, Pinterest, Dropbox), while some have cropped up before we thought that they were probably fully-cooked (Snap, Blue Apron).
So, what's to come? You'll just have to listen.
This is the last 2017 Equity episode. Thanks to all of you for tuning in this year. Equity was a bit of an experiment that has taken on a life of its own.
It's super delightful to bring it to you each and every week. Here's the podcast team:
Christopher "The Beard" Gates who handles the mics, editing, and more. He keeps the show running day-to-day. Without Mr. Gates, there is no Equity.
Henry "What's Wrong Now?" Pickavet keeps the upper-level glue in place so that we can keep the show rolling.
Yashad "Wedding Bells" Kulkarni, who keeps All Things Video And Audio in ship-shape for us so that we can record without exception.
Also: Extra thanks to Katie, Lynley, and the Crunchbase News team for putting up with me leaving every week to go play. (And you, for reading this far.)
This week the crew -- Katie Roof, Matthew Lynley, Alex Wilhelm -- were joined Jeff Richards, a managing partner at GGV. (GGV has raised nearly $4 billion to invest, according to Crunchbase.)
This week we turned our eyes to Stitch Fix's first-ever earnings report as a public company. As you may recall, we've spent time on the Stitch Fix IPO given that it drove a bit of disagreement regarding if, or if not it was a success. The firm's financial miss but market disappointment in its financial report did little to quell the discussion.
Moving ahead, the stock market is doing something silly that we wanted to touch on. Back in the dot-com boom, non-tech companies would boost their share price by adding ".com" to their name. Billy's Mega Roofing.com, for example, and so forth. We're back to that again, but this time it's blockchain that companies are stapling to their name tags, in hopes of attracting bitcoin bulls to their equity.
It's gross and bad.
And finally, we went back to the heart of the show, digging into recent data showing that venture capitalists haven't disbursed more money this cycle. And that the number of rounds funded per-quarter is dramatically calling.
That means that fewer rounds are happening at higher dollar-amounts. That sounds like unicorns, right? Yes it does.
Normally, happenings are slow this time of year. But, living up to its reputation as a year-apart, 2017 is not delivering the normal news slowdown. So, putting aside the latest from Uber, we started with a look at Apple's massive $400 million Shazam deal, and its other, nearly-$400 million deal in a component company.
Apple, not really known as an overly acquisitive firm, is richer than Croesus. That fact makes its business dealings with smaller firms all the more interesting. Why did Apple decide to open wallet twice for nearly $800 million? We try to find out.
Next, we turned to the Shipt-Target deal, which was a bit of surprise, really. But, it shouldn't have been. Target needs to have an ecommerce strategy that can compete with Amazon and Walmart over the long-term. And, that means it needs to have a strong shipping play. Shipt, for a small $550 million fee, will fill that niche for the retail giant.
All that and we brought up net neutrality at the very end.
We had a blast, and hope your week is going as well. Stay cool, and we'll be right back.
Equity drops every Friday at 6:00 am PT, so subscribe to us on iTunes, Overcast, Pocketcast, Downcast and all the casts.
On the latest episode, we were joined by Nagraj Kashyap, who runs Microsoft Ventures.
Topics this week included Lyft's growing financials and its driverless cars. It looks like the company benefitted during Uber's eventful year.
We also talked about the change of leadership at Blue Apron.The company has had a very unfortunate ride on the stock market since it went public in June.
Then we discussed the latest sexual harassment allegations in the venture capital community. A well-known VC is taking a leave of absence.
And of course, we discussed the recent surge of bitcoin. Is it here to stay?
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-themed podcast where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
This week Katie Roof and Alex Wilhelm were joined by Heather Hartnett of Human Ventures. It has been a surprisingly newsy November, so we narrowed ourselves to just a few topics: Uber, Niantic, Meetup, and Jeff Bezos' checking account.
First up, Uber. We know that we've spent a lot of time on the Uber saga in recent months. We're not enormous fans of the fact, frankly, but as long as the world's most valuable private tech company founders, we'll talk about it. This week, happily, was a good week of Uber news, from a conversation perspective.
The Softbank tender offer is live, and just who is participating and buying and selling is high drama impacting billions of dollars and thousands of people. Katie also broke some news about just who is working to pick up shares in the transaction.
Also, Uber's financials are again loose amidst the press. I put together an overview here, in case you want to look under the hood yourself. But, the rough gist is that Uber is growing and is losing even more money than before.
Finally disembarking from Uber, Niantic raised a Series A fund-sized Series B ($200 million) to build another game. The firm, best known for its Pokémon Go megahit, will turn to the Harry Potter franchise next.
We then kicked over the WeWork-Meetup deal that we broke earlier in the week. Hartnett, a New Yorker, was on hand to explain the local impacts of the transaction. All that and we wrapped up with some Bezos fluff because we all deserve a break during this time of the year.
This week we assembled the full crew — Matthew Lynley, Katie Roof and Alex Wilhelm — along with Stephanie Palmeri from Uncork Capital. Palmeri has invested in Poshmark, Chariot, and ClassDojo, for context.
Her investment in Poshmark made her a perfect guest as we spent the bulk of our time in the podcast room digging through the Stitch Fix IPO, which wound up attracting both positive and negative commentary on Twitter and in the media.
Here’s Katie’s roundup of the fracas, and, here’s something I did before we wound up in the middle of VC Twitter. The two pieces should ground you in what we were working to understand, namely can you call an IPO a success if it has to price under its proposed range?
If that sounds technical, it is, but the conversation is a good catalyst to help us all understand the world that dozens of unicorns need to venture into; the IPO world of today, that is.
At the end, we also talked through the recent SailPoint debut. IPOs! We’ve got them all.
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
And news there was. We first dug into the big Musical.ly deal, working to understand why the company was worth as much as its rumored price tag purports. Anytime things get up to the billion-dollar range, it's eyebrow-raising and worth our time.
Next, Bumble might be selling. Bumble is an important dating app that is, according to Forbes, working toward the $100 million revenue mark this year. That fact puts its rumored acquisition by Match in the same category as the Musical.ly deal: billion-dollar-ish.
Next was the SendGrid IPO, which priced a little above range with a larger number of shares sold in the transaction. And, the firm's initial performance was strong, with its shares rising above its IPO price. Nothing huge, mind, but our guest has an opinion on the topic worth hearing.
(We'll never be done with the "how to price your IPO" discussion. At least as long as there are more IPOs. Sorry!)
And finally, we talked through Lyft's most-recently leaked financial results and projections. In the process, we ask a fun question: How is Lyft surviving if ridesharing was supposed to be a winner-takes-all business?
That's it and we'll chat you all in seven days.
Hello and welcome to another Equity Shot, a quick-hit episode of our venture-capital themed podcast. (Equity, released every Thursday, focuses on the money behind the headlines.) This week Katie Roof and I — Alex Wilhelm — sank our teeth into the story that roiled the tech community’s weekend and continued to cause waves today. Yes, the Uber-SoftBank story — which we might want to call the Uber-SoftBank-Dragoneer story now, but that’s getting ahead of ourselves. A quick refresher is in order, I think.
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
This week Katie Roof, Matthew Lynley, and Alex Wilhelm dug into the recent earnings run and talked through what’s coming next in the IPO pipeline. We were joined by Heidi Mayon from Gunderson Dettmer, perfect company this week to help us understand the next public offerings.
Up first was Snap’s earnings miss. The firm came short on both revenue and user growth, leading to a sharp decline in the value of its shares. The firm’s losses, paired with slower-than-anticipated DAU expansion, were a tough pill for investors to swallow.
Next, we dove into Roku’s solid earnings report. The firm soundly beat revenue expectations, leading to its first quarterly report as a public company being a smashing success. The firm’s shares rose sharply after its news.
Next, we discussed a slew of IPOs, upcoming and recent, from Chinese companies listing in the United States. We’ve discussed Sogou before, to pick one example, but other entrants are close behind. If U.S.-based companies will follow the example remains to be seen.
That’s all for this week. We’ll be right back in seven days.
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
This week was a treat due to the huge news cycle we were following. So, Katie Roof and I — Alex Wilhelm — brought David Golden into the studio to help us carve through it all. Golden is a Managing Partner at Revolution Ventures, an investing shop based primarily in DC.
This week Katie Roof, Matthew Lynley and myself — Alex Wilhelm — took it back to our roots with a show with just us hosts. Which worked out great as we had a lot to unpack. Tech, it never stops.
This week brought an earnings influx, with Amazon, Microsoft, Alphabet, and Twitter reporting today. In order: Amazon beat expectations partially on the strength of AWS, Microsoft beat expectations and reached a cloud milestone early, Alphabet beat expectations and managed to change one of is key metrics in an interesting way, and Twitter not only beat financial expectations but grew its userbase than many had anticipated.
All that and Katie broke some IPO news regarding the Zscaler flotation with Forescout’s IPO on the horizon.
On the latest episode, we were joined by Barry Eggers, co-founder and a general partner at Lightspeed Venture Partners.
There was a lot of IPO news this week. MongoDB debuted and we saw filings on Thursday for both Stitch Fix and SendGrid.
And, of course, there was the inevitable ridesharing news. Uber competitor Lyft is now flush with cash after a $1 billion investment from Alphabet. (Alphabet is also involved in a lawsuit against Uber...go figure!)
Staying in that lane, this week was IPO-heavy. First up we took on the HelloFresh IPO. The German company is following in the footsteps of Blue Apron, an ocean away. We were curious: why go now, when Blue Apron has had such a rough go of it. But, looking at the numbers, there are some encouraging signs that could help this market comp not take a discount at the IPO window.
This week we had no choice but to dive into Uber's most recent headlines and happenings. We did not get into every possible topic -- Uber is a cornucopia of news these days, and our show can't be four hours long. Instead, we focused our attentions on the Softbank situation, Uber's board, and how much new capital the firm may raise in the coming weeks.
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
Today's episode was especially fun, coming during what we might call "IPO Week" for obvious reasons.
Happily, the whole crew was around the table to chew over the latest: Katie Roof, Matthew Lynley and myself — Alex Wilhelm. We were joined by Megan Quinn, a general partner at Spark Capital, who helped us get through the week's mix.
Up first we went into the big HTC-Google deal that will see the American search company give the hardware giant $1.1 billion in exchange for a cut of its staff and use of certain pieces of intellectual property. Google is now part of Alphabet, a holding company that it gave birth to.
This is not Google's first massive hardware-focused spend, but as we discuss, the sums in question are far smaller this time around.
Moving on, we dug through Roku's epic first day as a public company. Shares in the hardware-software digital media streaming shop flew nearly 70 percent in their first day of trading, after pricing at the top-end of its $12 to $14 price range. For a company in the midst of a business model change, it was an impressive result.
Next up is the MongoDB IPO filing, which presents an interesting mix of revenue growth, persistent -- if stable -- losses, and a New York pedigree. We examine it from the perspective of other open source-centered companies, and Lynley was even kind enough to namedrop a number of acronyms.
Moving along, we dialed into the Rovio IPO pricing, which came in at the upper-end of lowered expectations. You can score that one as you will.
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s weekly venture capital-themed podcast where we work to unpack the numbers lurking behind the news.
This week we have a special episode for you all. We recorded live from Disrupt San Francisco, right in the middle of the main floor.
What did we get into? A host of things, including Slack’s new mega round — and what it means for SoftBank’s massive fund — the potential Alphabet-Lyft tie up and the various intrigues in that space, flying cars, the critical importance of company dogs, and IPOs. On that final front, we discussed Despegar.com, Best Inc, the impending Roku offering, and who is in the pipeline.
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture-capital themed podcast. This week Katie Roof, Matthew Lynley, and myself — Alex Wilhelm — were joined by Accel’s Jake Flomenberg to dig through the biggest news of the week.
Each week Katie Roof, Matthew Lynley, and myself -- Alex Wilhelm -- try to de-obfuscate the opaque and arcane world of startup finance with the help of someone from the industry.
This week Matthew Lynley, Katie Roof, and myself -- Alex! -- sat down with Micah Rosenbloom, an investor with Founder Collective to sit down and chew over the week's news.
We managed to not talk about Uber this episode, which was a welcome respite from the last few months during which we couldn't not talk about the company. However, that didn't mean that there wasn't quite a lot to get through.
First up, Roku dropped its S-1 documentation for what is currently tagged as a $100 million IPO. Next up was some news that TechCrunch broke this week: 23andMe is raising around $200 million at a $1.5 billion pre-money valuation. That should put the genetic testing company worth $1.7 billion, give or take, when the funding event closes. And finally, the company on everyone's lips that didn't make it to very many stomachs, Juicero, is shutting down. As in, the money's probably gone and the product didn't sell and the firm is kaput.
This week Katie Roof, Matthew Lynley, and myself -- Alex! -- were joined by Samuel Angus, a partner on the corporate team of Fenwick & West, where he represents a number of venture-backed firms, including Airbnb and Github.
But before we could bring Angus on, we had Uber to get through. The ridesharing company wouldn't leave us alone this week, as per usual, dropping a sheaf of news items since the last time we came together.
Let's see: Uber has a new CEO, after he accepted the job this week. Also, the Benchmark lawsuit is heading to arbitration. Oh, and one of Uber's early investors lost his dang mind when writing a comical memo at 4 am. That's not all: Uber is apparently under the eyes of regulators curious about foreign bribes. And, the company's new CEO wants to take it public inside the next 18 to 36 months.
But nothing much, really.
With the help of Angus, we then chewed through the dynamics that are keeping a host of private companies private, looking backwards through time to understand how the market got to be where it is today. And, to cap things off, we dove into the ICO pool, discussing what an ICO is, should you invest in them, and just how trustworthy they may be.
Follow us all week!
Katie Roof
Matthew Lynley
Alex Wilhelm
Each week Katie Roof, Matthew Lynley, and myself -- Alex Wilhelm -- try to de-obfuscate the opaque and arcane world of startup finance with the help of someone from the industry.
Each week Katie Roof, Matthew Lynley, and myself -- Alex Wilhelm -- try to de-obfuscate the opaque and arcane world of startup finance with the help of someone from the industry.
Each week Katie Roof, Matthew Lynley, and myself -- Alex Wilhelm -- try to de-obfuscate the opaque and arcane world of startup finance with the help of someone from the industry. This week, Trinity Ventures' Dan Scholnick was in the studio to assist us.
And what a week it has been. First, the Uber goat rodeo continued with investors sending public nasty-grams to one another. According to our guest, this sort of squabble isn't precisely rare, but to see so much aired in public by a company of Uber's scale is not daily fare.
If Uber could have a week in which it didn't have some sort of meltdown, we'd appreciate it, because there are other things to talk about.
Moving along, Rovio, the company behind the massively popular Angry Birds franchise, is said to have an IPO cooking. The firm recently posted quick revenue growth and rising (adjusted) EBITDA. Media reports indicate that Rovio could raise $400 million at a $2 billion valuation. The firm is not expected to list here in the United States, but instead in Europe, where it's based.
Finally, we took a minute to discuss MongoDB's privately filed IPO, something that these pages recently broke. The firm raised modest sums in its youth, including its minute Series A from 2008, a period not known for its venture profligacy. The crew seems bullish on its chances.
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s weekly venture-themed podcast where we dive into the numbers behind the noise.
Forget the summer lull, friends. This week was chock full of news that broke right up until the very last minute. Matthew Lynley was off this week, but Katie Roof and Alex Wilhelm were incredibly lucky to have Kate Mitchell, co-founder and partner at Scale Venture Partners on hand to help us shift the weight.
Picking from among the various conflagrations, mistakes, and Softbank-led boondoggles deals, we dove into Blue Apron's earnings report, which led to a steep decline in its market value. We then turned to Snap's earnings report, which also led to a steep decline in its market value.
Following the two public companies' sheepish reports, we moved on to the brand new Benchmark-Uber-Travis Kalanick lawsuit, which may deter the troubled ride-hailing company from finding a proper new CEO. That Travis wants to come back to the company appears correct. That the company's investors don't want that also seems correct. To the courts with Uber, then.
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-themed podcast where we walk through the numbers driving Silicon Valley each and every week.
This episode, Katie Roof, Matthew Lynley and Alex Wilhelm were joined by NEA partner Rick Yang to dig into the week’s earnings, IPOs, and surprise M&A. It was a packed news cycle, with so much to go over that we left the Reddit deal on the table. Sorry, kids.
This week we had the full crew on deck, including Katie Roof, Matthew Lynley, and myself -- Alex! -- to dive into the biggest news of the week. We weren't alone, thankfully, as Maveron partner Rebecca Kaden joined us in the studio to mull over the latest.
The news of the week was earnings-themed, unsurprisingly, including Amazon's big revenue beat and profit miss, Alphahbet's slightly fretful growth and losses on its "Other Bets," whatever the hell happened to Twitter during the San Francisco dawn, and Facebook's continued triumphal parade.
Cord-cutting was a theme of the latest Equity episode. We were joined by Bloomberg Beta's Roy Bahat and TechCrunch's Silicon Valley editor Connie Loizos joined the crew this week. We talked about Roku's upcoming IPO and Netflix's earnings. We also talked about the challenges facing on-demand shipping company Shyp, which is closing shop in three markets.
Snap’s share price has fallen dramatically in recent weeks, adding to its woes sourced from a lackluster Q1 earnings report. Snap now trades below its IPO price. Its declines are worrisome for other unicorns looking to defend private valuations in the public sphere.
The venture capital sexual harassment scandal continued this week, with allegations leading to the ouster of Frank Artale from Ignition Partners. More on that, and a round-up of the rest of the mess here.
Uber grew about 10 percent last quarter and is now working with a former competitor in Russia. If that sounds familiar, just repeat the word ‘China’ in your head about seven times until you recall.
And, très surprise, WeWork raised more money. Because why not. What asset-light coworking startup shouldn’t be worth $20 billion, right?
This week was a fun one. Matthew Lynley is out on vacation, so TechCrunch's own Megan Rose Dickey (the current host of Bullish and general badass) joined Katie Roof and myself -- Alex Wilhelm -- to dive into the news of the week.
And news there was. We kicked off with a deep dive into the continuing venture capital harassment scandal, which has already brought down one firm, led to a number of smashed reputations, and most recently led to dramatic shakeups at 500 Startups.
We also dug into Blue Apron's recent market woes, Tintri's slack performance, and what those disappointments could mean for other unicorns looking to go public.
We wrapped the week staring at the day's breaking news, that Jawbone is over. The firm, which burned through hundreds of millions of dollars of capital, and torched billions of dollars in value on its descent, is now kaput.
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s recurring venture capital-focused podcast that, against odds laid by its arcane subject matter, is still on the air.
This week was a corker. To help out our regular contingent Matthew Lynley, Katie Roof and myself -- Alex Wilhelm -- Charles Moldow, a general partner at Foundation Capital swung by the studio. And help out he did as we took on topics technical, serious and whimsical.
We also dove into the Binary Capital mess. After six women (three by name) came forward alleging serial sexual harassment by a partner at Binary Capital, the accused has all but quit, a new partner has left the firm, and from today's vantage point it looks like the firm's new fund is kaput, and likely that the firm itself is effectively over.
Follow the Equity crew: @Katie_Roof, @mattlynley and @alex
Hello and welcome back to Equity, a weekly podcast of high finance gossip and low GAAP intrigue. It's TechCrunch's show focused on all things venture capital.
This week, Katie Roof, Matthew Lynley and I — Alex Wilhelm — were joined by Cyan Banister, a prolific investor on her own (Uber, Postmates, the list goes on), and partner at Founders Fund, a team with more than $3 billion under management.
This week we hit on three core topics: Uber's turmoil, Amazon's epic M&A moves, and Slack's appetite for more cash.
Follow the Equity crew: @Katie_Roof, @mattlynley and @alex.
We've got an Equity Shot for you, an irregular extra hit from the Equity podcast crew.
Today the big news is the potential Amazon-Whole Foods deal, which has led to rampant media speculation, depressed grocery stocks around the nation, and allegations of intelligent corporate strategy.
It's the sort of day that forces you to sit back and re-cast your views of the technology world. It demands answers to questions like "Why is Amazon buying a grocery store?" And "if it makes sense, why?" That, of course, raises the final query: "If the why makes sense, will the price of tomatoes go down?"
This week, the Equity crew was lucky enough to have Charles Hudson join our little crew. Hudson is both a managing partner at Precursor and a venture partner at SoftTech.
The week was busy. We started with a quick unpacking of the Uber situation, including the exit of its executives, its CEO’s temporary departure, the loss of a board member of a sexist joke, and more. It’s Uber’s world in a way, and we are stuck in it.
Uber aside, tech stocks were on our minds, as a number of firms in the industry skated up and down last week. Notably, Hudson claims that among the venture class, chatter isn’t overly negative. We also almost coin the phrase “SaaS crash.” You are welcome.
Our little quorum this week, which included Indy Guha from Bain Capital Ventures, dove into critical stories, including Pinterest's new capital event which saw the firm bring in a comparatively modest sum for a comparatively modest valuation bump; Snap's purchase of Placed to, in the words of TechCrunch's Josh Constine "prove geofilters drive store visits"; ShotSpotter's debut; and, as you must have guessed, the Tintri IPO filing, which left us with a few questions.
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s premier venture capital-focused podcast.
This week the News Gods disbursed unto the crew a juicy morsel: Blue Apron filed to go public minutes before we sat down to chew over what’s been happening. As you can imagine, it took up a chunk of our time.
But no episode of Equity is complete without our own Katie Roof, Matthew Lynley, myself — Alex Wilhelm — and a fresh victim, or guest, depending on your perspective. This week Ted Smith, an M&A banker and co-founder of Union Square Advisors, sat with us to dive into the news, and try to figure out what the hell is going on with Travis and company.
Yes, we took a dive into the recently disclosed Uber financials, which showed booming bookings, quick revenue growth, and persistently staggering — albeit partially diminished — adjusted losses.
All that and we still had a minute of time to take a gossip at the U.S. M&A market and what we might anticipate for the rest of 2017. Hint: dollars.
Equity drops every Friday at 6:00 am PT, so subscribe to us on iTunes, Overcast, Pocketcast, Downcast and all the casts.
This week we take a dive into IPOs, what constitutes a good pop and who might be next. We also drilled into the massive new Softbank fund and what it might mean for tech rounds both big, and small. Oh, and Peloton remains something that we can't get enough of. Some of us even Soul Cycle.
This week we pulled off our very first live episode, taping the session during the last day of TechCrunch Disrupt NY 2017. For our inaugural public show, Ellie Wheeler of Greycroft joined our merry band of nerds: Katie Roof, Matthew Lynley, and Alex Wilhelm.
In honor of the venue and time, we kept the format the exact same, focusing this time around on Apple’s double $200 million dosh disbursements, the Lyft-Waymo tie up and all its irony, Facebook’s recent Snap Xerox and Crowdstrike’s neat $100 million round.
We talk Snap's dramatic share price decline following its first-quarter earnings. The report, its first as a public company, missed on revenue, profit, and active users. And we hit on the rest of the week's troubled waters, detailing what happened to Yelp's own share price, and why Pandora is telling the market to buy it now or wait a moment. On a happier note, we touched on a profitable company's recent mega-raise.
Celebrating the continuing earnings fête thrown by the various public tech companies, we dug into Tesla's results and ensuing (modest) correction, Facebook's big quarter and its rivalry with Snap, Square's own financial tally, and recent IPOs Cloudera (which after its conservative pricing has had a solid run) and Carvana (which has mostly fallen apart since its debut). Join the conversation with Katie Roof, Matthew Lynley, Alex Wilhelm and our guest, Roelof Botha of Sequoia.
This week has been a delightful clown car of technology earnings, so we dove into Twitter’s surprisingly strong report that drove its share price higher, Alphabet’s results -- largely from a Google-focused perspective -- Amazon’s stellar cloud incomes, and Dropbox’s improving financial performance.
Whether the Dropbox drip of released financial data points to an IPO was our main question. Place your bets now.
This episode Katie Roof, Matthew Lynley and myself were joined by Ethan Kurzweil of Bessemer Venture Partners for a lively-as-heck conversation covering the biggest financial news of the week.
First up was Uber’s newly disclosed financials. The company has a history of leaks and losses, but this time around we read corporate-approved numbers detailing quickly growing revenue (expected), stiff losses (expected), and some interesting accounting results (unexpected) that skew the company’s profile slightly as 2016 came to a close.
This week we discussed the interesting and slightly disappointing $630 million RetailMeNot acquisition, Yext's above-range IPO pricing and strong first day's trading, what's going on in global venture capital, and the investing thesis of Arlan Hamilton and her diversity-focused firm, Backstage Capital.
With analyst-turned-VC Gene Munster we dug into Lyft's new half-billion dollar fundraise and what light it may shed on Uber's valuation, spent just enough time to properly vet the current crop of tech IPOs and, of course, talked through what's new at Apple.
This week we discussed the massive Dropbox debt facility (and its historical echoes), the rough situation at Munchery, and the M&A market including Katie’s scoop on the Rover-Dogvacay tie-up, and all things Amazon.
It was a fun episode, so subscribe, pour a drink, and hit play.
Hear what the latest Apple and Amazon acquisitions mean for tech M&A, how the Uber scandals will impact its business, and what one of the industry's top LPs thinks of the state of venture capital right now.
Tesla raises another $1 billion, IPOs are back and what's the deal with M&A? On our debut episode of "Equity," hosts Katie Roof, Matthew Lynley and Alex Wilhelm chat with investor and SaaStr founder Jason Lemkin about the week's news and venture trends.
Equity is TechCrunch's weekly podcast focused on all things money when it comes to startups. Massive rounds, notable acquisitions, and credulity-stretching IPOs are the fodder for hosts Katie Roof, Matthew Lynley, and Alex Wilhelm. They'll help everyone understand the dollars behind the hype.