Equity

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 Surf

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 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 produc

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

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! Credits

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

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 t

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 w

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, hov

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 p

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

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 India

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 mo

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

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 i

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,

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 d

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 li

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 analyt

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

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 ch