Equity

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 Mo

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 u

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

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 start

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 o

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 poin

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 the

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 on Apple Podcasts, Ove

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

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

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

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

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 displea

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 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 t

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. Credits: Equity is produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. Bryce Durbin is our Illustrator. We'd also like to thank the audience develo

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 recha

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 differe

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! Credits: Equity is produced b

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