Equity podcast
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Can you beat Google with Google’s brains?
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 coverage gives readers 5 takeaways from the Coursera IPO.
- Language learning has a market, and it’s big. We talked about Preply’s $35 million raise and why tutoring marketplaces make sense.
- Dropbox is buying DocSend, which makes pretty good sense. Even if the exit price won’t matter much for bigger funds. We’re still witnessing Dropbox and Box add more features to their product via acquisitions. Let’s see how it impacts their revenue growth.
- Zapier buys Makerpad. We struggled to pronounce Zapier, but did have some notes on the deal and what it might mean for the no-code space.
- Sticking the acquisition theme, PayPal bought Curv. If you were looking for more evidence that big companies are taking crypto seriously, well, here it is.
- And to close we nerded out about Neeva. Can a Google-competitor take on Google if it was founded by ex-Googlers?
The show is back Monday morning. Stay cool!
Equity drops every Monday at 7:00 a.m. PST, Wednesday, and Friday at 6:00 AM PST, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts!
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Equity Monday: More money for fintech, Deliveroo’s IPO and AI 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 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 some financial numbers on its path to going public in short-order.
- Postscript raised $35 million for its Shopify-SMS service; Praava Health raised $10.6 million to bring better healthcare to Bangladesh.
A packed kickoff to what promises to be a packed week!
Equity drops every Monday at 7:00 a.m. PST, Wednesday, and Friday at 6:00 AM PST, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts!
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SoftBank makes mountains of cash off of human laziness
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 we 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 providers in what could be a new trend.
- And sticking to the insurtech beat, Hippo is going public via a SPAC. Because everyone else is?
- Compass filed its S-1, which triggered a debate on how it’s different than Opendoor.
- Coupang’s IPO is also coming, replete with huge growth, an improving profitability picture and a massive valuation. This is one to watch.
- There was also a whole global news circuit around grocery delivery startups, with Instacart raising at a $39 billion valuation.
- And we wrapped with the Surreal seed round that we found to be more than a little spicy. As it turns out, commercialized deepfakes are not merely on the way; they are here.
And with that we are back on Monday. Have a rocking weekend!
Equity drops every Monday at 7:00 a.m. PST, Wednesday, and Friday at 6:00 AM PST, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts!
Early Stage is the premier “how-to” event for startup entrepreneurs and investors. You’ll hear firsthand how some of the most successful founders and VCs build their businesses, raise money and manage their portfolios. We’ll cover every aspect of company building: Fundraising, recruiting, sales, product-market fit, PR, marketing and brand building. Each session also has audience participation built-in — there’s ample time included for audience questions and discussion.
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The Equity podcast is growing
Equity is celebrating its fourth birthday in a few weeks and closed 2020 with its biggest quarter to date. To celebrate and say thank you to our wonderful listeners who tune into us each and every single week, we’re growing upward and outward!
First, as many of you have noticed, we’ve expanded the Equity team. Grace Mendenhall joined the production crew this year, initially helping cover for Chris Gates while he was out on paternity leave. But now Chris is back and so we’ve doubled our producer team.
In classic startup fashion, a bigger team means we can make more swings at R&D, or in this case, add on a new show to our semiweekly cadence.
Today, the whole Equity team — Chris, Grace, Danny, Natasha and Alex — are super proud to announce that we’re expanding the podcast’s show lineup. We’re going to add a new show each week, which will rotate around a particular theme, geography or supermassive news event. It’s your midweek chance to listen to a show about one trend, whether that’s space tech or the growth of community as a competitive advantage. Sometimes it will be an exact topic you’ve cared about for so long (insert Alex and SaaS joke here) and sometimes it will be about a topic you know nothing about. We’re here to convince you to care anyway. Regardless, you can depend on the Equity trio to give you a trifecta of shows that helps you stay up to date on startup and venture capital news in a consumable way.
Starting, well, now, here’s what Equity looks like:
- Equity on Monday: Our weekly kickoff show is not changing. Except Alex has promised to learn how to speak with better diction.
- Equity on Wednesday: Our midweek show focused on a single topic or theme. Expect to hear from other TechCrunch reporters about their beats, investors on what they are seeing in the market and reporting on countries and cities where startup activity is blowing up.
- Equity, now on Friday: The main Equity episode is not changing, other than that we’re going to tighten it up a little bit and release it Friday mornings like we used to. While it was a blast to get out the door Thursday afternoon, we’re going to give Equity Wednesday a little more time to breathe. And since so many of you listen to this episode on Friday anyway, most folks won’t notice a change.
As COVID-19 fades thanks to the rollout of vaccines around the globe, we’ll eventually get back into our studio. That could mean more video down the pike. And we’ll still do the odd Equity Shot for big events that we can’t help but chat about.
Our goal was to double-down on what we think is the best part of Equity: A group of friends hammering through the news as a group, learning, joking and having fun with the world of startups and venture capital.
So, we’ll see you one more time each week. Cool? Cool. Hugs from here and chat soon. — The Equity Team
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A16z doesn’t invest, it manifests
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. In very good Show News
, Chris is back! He’s working on the next iteration of the show, something that you will be able to see starting Very Soon. Get hyped!
Today though, we had a delectable dish of dynamic doings, namely news items of the following persuasion:
- Bitcoin broke the $50,000 barrier, something that we wanted to talk about. Especially in light of Coinbase’s $77 billion valuation. Natasha walked us through some growth metrics, and Alex was sad that he isn’t already retired. Danny remains a full-on crypto bull.
- And on the blockchain thing, Blockchain.com raised $120 million, proving that there are huge amounts of capital available for the guts-and-bolts tooling of the bitcoin world.
- Li Jin, who coined the term “passion economy,” has closed her debut $13 million fund for startups within the same category. She joined other investors in our latest survey on the creator economy’s changing tides.
- Off of $1 million in ARR, Circle has brought on $4 million in funding at a valuation north of $40 million.
- A16z invested in Stir, which helps creators manage and view their various income streams. The funding total was not disclosed, but is reportedly valuing the company, still in beta, at $100 million.
- TalkShopLive brought on new cash for live video shopping.
- Pipe17 closed an $8 million round that caught our eye. By building a service to help smaller e-commerce operations connect their tooling to one another, the company is betting on smaller e-commerce needing pipes to link up their various software services. This reminded us of Alloy, another neat company in e-commerce automation that also recently raised money.
- From there we riffed on the software market itself, its size and the potential for investors to loosen their rules of intra-portfolio competition.
- Public raised $220 million, OutSystems raised $150 million and Ally.io raised $50 million.
- Finally, a wave of edtech startups is over Zoom University and hopes to create much, much better. alternative.
And that’s our show! We are back early Monday morning for a packed week. So keep your podcast app warm, we’re coming for it.
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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Does SoftBank have 20 more DoorDashes?
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 week felt oddly comforting from a tech news perspective: Facebook is copying something, early-stage startup data is flawed enough to talk about and sweet DoorDash is buying robots for undisclosed sums.
So, here’s a rundown of the tech news we got into (as always, jokes aren’t previewed so you’ll have to listen to the actual show to get our critique and Award Winning Analysis*):
- Ethena raising $2 million more for corporate training that is not awful, and Zeta raising $1.5 million for couples’ banking. Natasha has been killing the early-stage beat lately.
- How seed data could be getting harder and harder to parse from Alex’s desk, and why VC data in general is dicey, from Danny’s. We discuss if directional data is useful, and why the limited numbers could have a cultural impact on signal.
- Reddit raises $250 million, but doesn’t tell us who the investors are and what the money is precisely going to. Still, the company has had quite a year so far, so the capital comes at an interesting time.
- Justo, an online grocery based in Mexico, raises $65 million as the pandemic continues to shake up the way we live and shop.
- DoorDash buys a salad robot, which brings Natasha nostalgia and Danny anger.
- The inverted SoftBank J-Curve thesis is a must-listen and read.
- And from the world of dating, a big M&A deal that caught our attention, and the latest from the Bumble IPO.
In good news, long-time Equity producer Chris Gates is back starting next week, which means we’ll have our biggest crew ever helping get the show put together. And, in other good news, there’s going to be more Equity than ever for you to hear. Coming soon.
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.
*OK, so not award-winning yet. But soon enough, because manifestation works.
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Equity Monday: Tesla buys bitcoin, Nexthink raises and Bumble
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 be sure to check out last week’s main ep that dug into Robinhood, Miami and a host of other topics.
This morning we had a pile of news to get through. Here’s the rundown:
- Pony.ai raised another $100 million, which underscores our growing thesis that there is no amount of money yet that will produce the tech required for self-driving cars to work. Perhaps we will get there, but it is going to cost a pretty penny or two.
- Sticking to cars, the Apple-Kia tie-up is kaput, which we should have known the moment it became known. Apple previously bought startup Drive.ai back in 2019, of course.
- Vroom, a 2020 IPO, bought a Super Bowl ad. Who would have expected that? Its shares are up, however, after the ad.
- Still on the car beat, Tesla bought $1.5 billion in bitcoin, and may accept the stuff as tender to buy its vehicles in the future. The move sent the price of bitcoin higher.
- Clubhouse got banned in China.
- Phable raised $12 million, Nexthink raised $180 million and Bumble is targeting a higher share price in its impending IPO.
- And we may have figured out the ∆ between what investors are saying about the seed market, and what data has largely said.
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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A lake house architect, a Miami VC and a homeowner walk into a wine bar
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. The good news is that we managed to fit it all into a single episode this week. The bad news is that that means the show is pretty long. Sorry about that!
So, what took us so much time to get through? All of this:
- Robinhood raised $3.4 billion after its trading hiccups, and we also chatted over what we know about the company’s Q4 2020 numbers. In short, the company is growing nicely.
- RPA is big and UiPath is cashing in on the trend, raising $750 million at a $35 billion valuation. That’s a lot of cash for very little dilution.
- Databricks raised $1 billion at a $28 billion valuation, after reaching $425 million in ARR. The company’s growth is hot, but its valuation may be even hotter.
- Bumble is going public, so we chatted about its results, and how founder- and venture-friendly the dating market may be in the future.
- In a big exit for the Boston startup ecosystem, alcohol delivery platform Drizly has sold to Uber for $1.1 billion.
- Sticking to the alcohol beat, Danny talked us through the Vivino news, describing himself as a wine sophisticate with a distaste for sommeliers, which is just about the most Danny thing he has ever said. But the company really is neat.
- Divvy homes raised a $110 million Series C to make it easier to buy a home, after financing five times as many homes in 2020 as it did in pre-pandemic times.
- And then there were some neat early-stage rounds to chat about: Balance raising $5.5 million to bring B2B payments to the modern world, Alloy Automation raising $4 million for e-commerce automation and Beam raising $9.5 million to build a new browser.
- Make sure to read Natasha’s profile of the new Expectul CEO here.
- And, we closed on some Miami news.
And somehow we still have another entire day before the week is up! So much for 2021 calming down after 2020’s storms.
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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Why calendar invites are worth $3B
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 hopped online for our weekly show, sans Gamestop news (which you can find here) to talk about all the other busy news happening in startup world right now.
Here’s a taste of what we got into:
- Qualtrics IPO pricing, and the future of major acquisition pricing schemes. This company’s path to the public markets has been a long-time coming, so we had plenty to say.
- How Atlanta’s Calendly turned a scheduling nightmare into a $3 billion company. This story was not only neat, but also operated as a sort of palate cleanser for the team.
- Rhino‘s interesting insurtech play, and how it is pre-IPO pretty damn early. Revenue questions, the power of insurtech, and public markets impacting startups? This story had it all!
- Alex talks about how Fast is raising fast money ($102 million to be exact). Even more, the Fast story fits into a broader narrative of online checkout startups raising a zillion dollars in recent weeks.
- A boom in food delivery and restaurant startups, and why Danny is bearish on a plastic-free play. Natasha is in favor. Alex gets a company’s model mixed up with Spoon Rocket.
- Natasha explains how Clubhouse isn’t the first company to raise millions off of millions of users with no known near-term monetization plan. Her piece on ClassDojo illustrates how a quiet edtech giant finally turned its 51 million users into a profitable base. There’s also a new edtech investor survey for you to check out (Discount code: EQUITY).
- TCV’s record fund, and a female-focused angel fund coming out of Africa.
As always, it was a ton to get through because there is just so much going on. More Monday morning, until then stay cool!
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: Clubhouse, Taboola and why the SPAC wave will get worse
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 last week’s main ep, which was super-packed and a real treat.
This morning the news was heavy, so here’s your rundown to get you into the show:
- New funds for Clubhouse! TechCrunch has the story here, but I wonder why the app needs more money this soon. You can lay your own bets on how it performs, but at least it’s fun to see consumer stuff get funded.
- Postmates staff are heading for the exits, and there’s an IPO coming up that is both huge and under your radar.
- Chamath is doing the SPAC thing again. Again. And Taboola is also going public via a SPAC.
- IMVU raised $35 million
- Pula raised $6 million
- Wolt raised $530 million
- And the hungry SPAC market is only going to get more busy in the coming months. Brace yourself, we are merely a boat on the waves of the news. And this is the latest squall.
Hugs, and we are back Thursday, if not before. Stay safe!
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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