Equity Monday
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Equity Monday: No, tech news doesn’t stop over the holidays
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 e-commerce 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 Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts.
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Equity Monday: Billion-dollar deals, JetBrain’s epic profitability and our favorite new VC rounds
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 to 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.
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 Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts.
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Equity Monday: Vaccine news scrambles the stock market, shakes up startups
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 e-signature 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 day 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.
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Equity Monday: SAP’s warning, and IPO updates for both Airbnb and Databricks
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.
Shout-out to Lewis Hamilton and that G2 series. OK, chat Thursday!
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.
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Equity Monday: Twilio buys Segment, and Airkit raises $28M for its low-code platform
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 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 an 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 full of good spirits. Back soon!
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.
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Equity Monday: The TikTok mess, and a grip of neat European VC activity
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:
- U.S. 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 health tech 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”?
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.
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Equity Monday: YC Demo Day, two funding rounds and where’s Palantir’s 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.
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?
Equity drops every Monday at 7:00 a.m. PT and Friday at 6:00 a.m. PT, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts.
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Equity Monday: A good time for ambitious startups to take on Big Tech
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 Big Tech 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!
Equity drops every Monday at 7:00 a.m. PT and Friday at 6:00 a.m. PT, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts.
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Equity Monday: The TikTok saga rolls on as earnings season starts to wrap
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!
Equity drops every Monday at 7:00 a.m. PT and Friday at 6:00 a.m. PT, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts.
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Equity Monday: SAP, Qualtrics and oh boy are we excited
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 and Asian markets were mixed while the U.S. 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.
Equity drops every Monday at 7:00 a.m. PT and Friday at 6:00 a.m. PT, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts.
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