Equity

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

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 broadlyWhat 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 thisBuilding online communities for fun, profit and productCan Tonal become the luxury fitness market champion?As Natasha is curr

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 happen

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 Clubhous

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 friend

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 letti

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 E

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. Credits: Equity is produced by Theresa Loco

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, w

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 f

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 s

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

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 press

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.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.

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

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 cove

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 m

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

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

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