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The rules of VC are being broken
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast (now on Twitter!), where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
As ever, I was joined by TechCrunch managing editor Danny Crichton and our early-stage venture capital reporter Natasha Mascarenhas. We had Chris on the dials and a pile of news to get through, so we were pretty hyped heading into the show.
But before we could truly get started we had to discuss Cincinnati, and TikTok. Pleasantries and extortion out of the way, we got busy:
- E-commerce and fintech stay hot as Square reported big earnings, Shopify and Etsy do well, and more. We tied this to recent VC results in the fintech space, which saw a record number of $100 million rounds in Q2. There were some signs of weakness elsewhere, but the general state of things in tech is surprisingly hot, given the pandemic and recession.
- Gumroad founder Sahil Lavingia has a new seed fund that he built in collaboration with AngelList.
- D2C women’s-health startup Stix raised a $1.3 million seed round.
- Quantum-computing startup Rigetti raised a $79 million Series C.
- Rippling raised $145 million at an eye-popping $1.35 billion valuation; the company’s last value, set a year ago, was $270 million.
- AgentSync put together a $4.4 million seed round to help bring APIs to insurtech.
- Turning away from funding to some neat product news, India-based Statiq is building a bootstrapped EV-charging network.
- And as we wrapped, the Byju’s-WhiteHat Jr. deal was neat, JIO is soaking up a huge amount of Indian VC, and Natasha’s latest piece on learning pods had us arguing about what things are worth.
It was another fun week! As always we appreciate you sticking with and supporting the show!
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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More thoughts on growing podcasts
Julian Shapiro is the founder of BellCurve.com, a growth marketing team that trains startups in advanced growth, helps hire senior growth marketers and finds vetted growth agencies. He also writes at Julian.com.
More posts by this contributor
We’ve aggregated many of the world’s best growth marketers into one community. Twice a month, we ask them to share their most effective growth tactics, and we compile them into this Growth Report.
This is how you stay up-to-date on growth marketing tactics — with advice that’s hard to find elsewhere.
Our community consists of startup founders and heads of growth. You can participate by joining Demand Curve’s marketing training program or its Slack group.
Without further ado, on to our community’s advice.
More thoughts on growing podcasts
Insights from Harry Morton of Lower Street.
Podcast growth is all about relationships. To increase your listenership, consider partnering with:
- Other podcasters. Do an episode swap where you play an episode of your show on theirs, and vice versa. Make sure the two podcasts share similarly minded audiences.
- Curators. Every podcast aggregator has someone responsible for curating their featured content. Look them up on LinkedIn. Reach out via email. Be their friend. Send them only your best stuff.
- Subscribers. You rise in Apple’s podcast charts (which account for 60% of podcast listenership) by having a subscriber growth spurt in a concentrated period of time (24-48 hours). So, when you release an episode, immediately run your audience promotions aggressively and all at once.
Increasing referral incentives might not increase referrals
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Where is voice tech going?
Mark Persaud is digital product manager and practice lead at Moonshot by Pactera, a digital innovation company that leads global clients through the next era of digital products with a heavy emphasis on artificial intelligence, data and continuous software delivery.
2020 has been all but normal. For businesses and brands. For innovation. For people.
The trajectory of business growth strategies, travel plans and lives have been drastically altered due to the COVID-19 pandemic, a global economic downturn with supply chain and market issues, and a fight for equality in the Black Lives Matter movement — amongst all that complicated lives and businesses already.
One of the biggest stories in emerging technology is the growth of different types of voice assistants:
- Niche assistants such as Aider that provide back-office support.
- Branded in-house assistants such as those offered by BBC and Snapchat.
- White-label solutions such as Houndify that provide lots of capabilities and configurable tool sets.
With so many assistants proliferating globally, voice will become a commodity like a website or an app. And that’s not a bad thing — at least in the name of progress. It will soon (read: over the next couple years) become table stakes for a business to have voice as an interaction channel for a lovable experience that users expect. Consider that feeling you get when you realize a business doesn’t have a website: It makes you question its validity and reputation for quality. Voice isn’t quite there yet, but it’s moving in that direction.
Voice assistant adoption and usage are still on the rise
Adoption of any new technology is key. A key inhibitor of technology is often distribution, but this has not been the case with voice. Apple, Google, and Baidu have reported hundreds of millions of devices using voice, and Amazon has 200 million users. Amazon has a slightly more difficult job since they’re not in the smartphone market, which allows for greater voice assistant distribution for Apple and Google.
Image Credits: Mark Persaud
But are people using devices? Google said recently there are 500 million monthly active users of Google Assistant. Not far behind are active Apple users with 375 million. Large numbers of people are using voice assistants, not just owning them. That’s a sign of technology gaining momentum — the technology is at a price point and within digital and personal ecosystems that make it right for user adoption. The pandemic has only exacerbated the use as Edison reported between March and April — a peak time for sheltering in place across the U.S.
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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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The 3% gap in no-code
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast (now on Twitter!), where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
Up top the crew this week was the regular contingent: Danny Crichton, Natasha Mascarenhas and myself. As a tiny programming note, we’re going back to posting some videos on YouTube in a few weeks, so make sure to peep the TechCrunch channel if that’s your jam.
And we did a special episode on the SPAC boom, if you are into financial arcana. For more on SPACs –> here.
The Equity crew tried something new this week, namely centering our main conversation around a theme that we’re keeping tabs on: The resilience of tech during the current pandemic-led recession.
Starting with the recent economic news, it’s surprising that tech’s layoffs have slowed to a crawl. And, as we’ve recently seen, there’s still plenty of money flowing into startups, even if there are some dips present on a year-over-year basis. Why are things still pretty good for startups, and pretty good for major tech companies? We have a few ideas, like the acceleration of the digital transformation (more here, and here), and software eating the world. The latter concept, of course, is related to the former.
After that it was time to go through some neat funding rounds from the week, including:
- Dumpling raising $6.5 million to help individual shoppers build their own Instacart.
- Kibbo’s shot at making the #vanlife happen for more folks, something that we think is a good fit for the pandemic and the mobile professional.
- Sora’s $5.3 million raise for no-code HR connective tissue, something that I was rather bullish on but drew some chat about no-code itself, and if the trend is more hype than substance.
All that and I have a newsletter launching this weekend that if you read, you will automatically be 100% cooler. It’s called the TechCrunch Exchange, and you can snag it for free here.
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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Spotify launches video podcasts worldwide, starting with select creators
Spotify today announced the global launch of video podcasts. The new feature at launch will allow users, including both free users and paid subscribers, to watch the video content from a select group of creator podcasts. But unlike on YouTube, where only paid subscribers can listen to YouTube video content in the background while they do other things on their device, Spotify says its users will be able to seamlessly move between the video version and the audio. When multitasking, audio content will continue to play in the background, as you use other apps or even if you lock your phone.
The video podcasts are supported on both the desktop and mobile app — and video will serve as an additional component, not a replacement for the audio. That means you’ll still be able to stream the audio or download the podcast for offline listening, if need be.
For creators, the launch of video podcasts represents an opportunity to grow their audience, says Spotify. Often, podcasts already have a video option — but until now, Spotify offered no way for creators to share it on its platform. That meant podcast creators would distribute their audio podcast on Spotify and other podcast distribution services, but would publish their videos to YouTube. They may continue to do, of course — especially if they’ve built a YouTube fan base for their work and no deal prevents it.
But being able to publish directly on Spotify means creators will be able to connect more directly with podcast listeners, rather than having to compete on a broader platform that pits their shows against a wide variety of other content. Video also gives Spotify a new place to sell advertising, but the company declined to comment on its ad strategy, saying it was still in the “early stages” of its video efforts.
Only a handful of podcasts are offered starting today, including Book of Basketball 2.0, Fantasy Footballers, The Misfits Podcast, H3 Podcast, The Morning Toast, Higher Learning with Van Lathan & Rachel Lindsay and The Rooster Teeth Podcast. These are only available in the markets where podcasts are already supported, Spotify says.
These podcasts include a combination of originals, exclusives and third-party podcasts. Their creators are the only ones that today have the ability to upload their own video content. In the future, Spotify will continue to expand the feature.
The company’s move into video was almost inevitable. In February, Spotify acquired The Ringer to boost its podcast sports content. The deal came with a YouTube-based video operation, which signaled an interest in an expanded media footprint.
Spotify has since inked high-profile podcast deals that could also easily translate to video, too, including one with Warner Bros. focused on DC superheros, which Spotify said in June could later include “new programming from original intellectual property.” It also landed an exclusive deal with Kim Kardashian West, The WSJ reported last month. It brought The Joe Rogan Experience in-house, in yet another exclusive. And just yesterday, Spotify booked a podcast deal with TikTok star Addison Rae.
Spotify didn’t announce video plans in these areas today, but it definitely has access to talent — and offering video could allow it to better negotiate future deals, as well.
Spotify was spotted testing video podcasts earlier this year, but it was with YouTube stars Zane Hijazi and Heath Hussar, of Zane and Heath: Unfiltered, who weren’t mentioned in today’s news announcement.
Video podcasts will begin rolling out today in supported markets. So you may not see the addition immediately, but should soon.
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Give us your seed round and we will send back double
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
This week was full of news of all sorts, but as we recorded, both Danny and Natasha “not Tash” Mascarenhas were still locked out of their Twitter accounts after a proletariat revolution on the social platform saw the ruling Blue Checkmark Class forced into silence. That’s not really what happened, but it sounds better than what actually went down at Big Social.
Anyway, Twitter accounts or not, the three of us gathered to parse through a wave of news:
- The new TechCrunch List that Danny spent a very long time compiling has arrived! It’s live! You can find it here. It is good.
- And, if you want to know which VCs were even more fêted by founders, head here. (If you are irked that you did not make either list, please email Danny, not the show!)
- Moving on, Google is putting billions into Reliance Jio after every other company in the world did the same. Google is buying a bit less of the Indian telecom than the search giant, but between the two of them it’s been more than $10 billion in dealmaking. Perhaps Reliance Jio is done raising money? At last?
- Udemy is hunting up more capital at a higher valuation, reports say, providing Natasha with the perfect moment to let us know what is going with edtech.
- Turning to funding rounds, I was hyped about the Macro round that TechCrunch covered this week, Danny wanted to chat about The Browser Company’s similarly sized $5 million round and Natasha talked us through LiteBoxer’s combined $6 million in new capital.
- Closing, we talked about IPOs for a hot second. The IPO window is open, and now that nCino and GoHealth have gone public, we want to know who is next.
It was a lovely time and there is a bit of show news. Namely that Equity is coming back to YouTube either this week or the next. So if you want to see us talk, soon you will be able to! Again!
Oh, and follow the show on Twitter. If you can, that is.
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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Spotify debuts new podcast top charts across 26 markets
Spotify is today introducing a new feature aimed at helping people discover interesting and popular podcasts. The company this morning announced the launch of two brand-new podcast charts, Top Podcasts and Trending Podcasts, which will showcase both the overall most-listened to and the biggest movers, respectively. The new feature will arrive in the Spotify mobile app across 26 markets. In addition, category-level charts will be available in 7 of the 26, including the U.S., U.K., Mexico, Brazil, Sweden, Germany and Australia.
The new charts will replace the existing “Top Shows” chart to offer a better discovery experience that separates popular from trending and offers, in some cases, category-level detail.
Music services have long since used top charts to help users find new music and discover artists, and Spotify hopes the same will be true for podcasts. Like its music charts, Spotify’s podcast charts will also be updated regularly to help users keep up with which podcasts are seeing the most engagement and growth.
Image Credits: Spotify
The Top Podcasts charts will include the overall most popular audio programs, geared for stability and integrity, as determined by recent listener numbers, Spotify explains. This chart will be updated on a daily basis, giving users a look at which shows have longer-lasting influence. Users will also be able to view the top podcasts for any market where they’re available, not just their own.
Meanwhile, the Trending Podcasts charts use an algorithm that will blend for discovery of newly-launched shows along with the fastest-climbing shows. This will be focused more on helping creators secure a place on the charts to help reach a new audience.
In the seven markets where category-level data is available, Spotify will also separate out the Top and Trending Podcasts by genre — like True Crime, Comedy, News, Lifestyle & Health, TV, Educational, Business & Technology, Celebrities, Sports & Recreation, and others. At the category level, the Top Podcasts charts will list the top 200 overall shows in the selected region and the Trending chart will show the top 50 rapidly rising shows.
Image Credits: Spotify
Related to this, podcasters will also see an updated experience in Spotify’s online dashboard, Spotify for Podcasters, which will now alert them when their podcast is charting. They can then turn this notification into a visual card to share across social media to help further market their podcast.
Podcasts have been of significant interest to all streaming services, and particularly Spotify, in recent years. The company has acquired podcasting software and studios, made deals to secure exclusive and original content (including Joe Rogan) and it has invested in software features like podcast playlists and algorithmic recommendations to introduce podcasts to Spotify’s millions of users.
Today, the service offers over 1 million podcasts, up from the 700,000-plus it was reporting in March. And despite the coronavirus impact on where users listen to podcasts, Spotify said podcast consumption was up by “triple digits” in the first quarter of the year, compared with Q1 2019.
Updated 7/14/20, 11:20 AM ET: Spotify PR originally told us the Top Podcasts chart was “updated monthly.” They corrected this later to say daily. We’ve also updated the article to reflect this change.
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Spotify tests in-app offers, an interactive ad format for podcasts
Spotify is testing a new, more interactive ad format designed for podcasts: the in-app offer. Instead of prompting listeners to remember a coupon code or visit a specific website address, the in-app offer allows users to redeem an offer at a time that’s convenient for them. This is done by way of a visual reminder within the Spotify app, which displays the sponsors on the podcast episode’s page.
Below the podcast and description, a new section titled “Episode Sponsors” will appear, allowing listeners to then click through on the offer to redeem the coupon or other special deal. This will open the user’s browser to the advertiser’s landing page for immediate redemption, says Spotify.
“The average podcast listener has heard a countless number of ads ending with promo codes or show-specific websites, carefully repeated three times so as not to forget it. In-App Offers makes it vastly simpler for listeners to redeem deals whenever they come back to the app, and we can all benefit from one fewer ‘w-w-w-dot’ spelling lesson from our favorite podcast creators,” says Joel Withrow, senior product manager of Podcast Monetization at Spotify, in a statement.
The product is designed to better fit with the way users actually listen to podcasts — usually, while they’re doing something else, like cooking, cleaning, working out or driving for example. That means they often have to make a mental note of the offers they hear and want to research later. But this can be challenging.
The new product is in early alpha testing in the U.S. with Harry’s in Last Podcast on the Left and in Germany with HelloFresh in Herrengedeck. There isn’t yet a way to sign up to participate.
Image Credits: Spotify
The new feature builds on Spotify’s existing Streaming Ad Insertion (SAI) technology, introduced at the beginning of 2020 at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. SAI technology makes key data — like ad impressions, frequency, reach, plus anonymized age, gender and device type — available to podcasters and advertisers on Spotify for the first time. This sort of data was more difficult if not impossible, to collect via podcasts that were served only as downloads from RSS feeds.
The company explained at the time of launch the problem it aimed to solve was on the advertiser’s side — they didn’t know whether or not the ad they purchase is being consumed by the user.
SAI will be widely available to advertisers in the U.S. starting this summer, and is now available to select advertisers in Germany.
The addition of in-app offers to Spotify’s suite comes following a continued heavy investment in podcasts, podcast tools and podcasting ad technology on the company’s part. The company recently announced an exclusive audio partnership with DC & Warner Bros. and the launch of podcast playlists, for example. Spotify also just landed a podcast deal with Kim Kardashian West, focused on criminal justice, and brought top podcast The Joe Rogan Experience to its platform exclusively.
Meanwhile, Spotify says it’s seeing triple-digit growth in podcast consumption, year-over-year, on its platform, while podcasts, more broadly, are reaching 1 in 3 or 100 million Americans every month.
Spotify didn’t say when the new in-app offers ad experience would be publicly available.
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It’s not just about e-mail, stupid
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
Your humble Equity team is pretty tired but in good spirits, as there was a lot to talk about this week. But, first, three things to start us off:
- First: Read this piece from TechCrunch’s Megan Rose Dickey about Juneteenth and tech companies. This podcast is going out on Juneteenth, so before you hit play, please take a minute to learn more about the day and its significance.
- Second: Danny and Arman from the TechCrunch team have finally launched TechCrunch List, a huge effort to determine which investors are really willing to write early checks. You can find out more here.
- Third: Equity is now on Twitter. Follow us here or understand that you are not cool.
All that said, here’s what we talked about on the show:
- Epic Games is looking to raise a huge stack of cash (Bloomberg, VentureBeat) at a new, higher valuation. We were curious about how its lower-cut store could help it gain inroads with developers big and small. That part of the chat, the take-rate of the Fortnite parent company on the work of others was very cogent to the other main topic of the day:
- Apple vs. DHH. So Hey launched this week, and the new spin on email quickly overshadowed its product launch by getting into a spat with Apple about whether it needs to add the ability to sign up for the paid service on iOS, thus giving Apple a cut of its revenue. DHH and crew do not agree. Apple is under fire for anti-competitive practices at home and abroad — of varying intensity, and from different sources — making this all the more spicy.
- Upgrade raises $40 million for its credit-focused neobank.
- Degreed raises $32 million for its upskilling platform.
- And, at the end, our take on the current health of the startup market. There have been a sheaf of reports lately about what is going on in startup land. We gave our take.
And that’s that. Have a lovely weekend and catch up on some sleep.
Equity drops every Friday at 6:00 am PT, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts.
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