Equity

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

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 m

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,

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://techcrunc

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 pursu

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 ventu

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.  Credits: Equity is produced by Theresa Loconsolo with

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! Credits: Equity is produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. Bryce Durbin is our Illustrator.

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

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 exp

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

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 Bambo

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 COLLECTIVEAnd that's a wrap on another busy week. Good

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-virt

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.Regardl

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, B

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.) Credits: Equity is produced by Theresa Loconsolo with edit

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 need to 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 n

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 tw

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