Equity

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Found: Cellino Nov 26, 2021

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Find the Found feed here: https://pod.link/found

Not only is this week's guest the TechCrunch Disrupt 2021 Battlefield winner, but Nabiha Saklayen is also democratizing access to life-saving cell therapies by using—you guessed it—lasers. Nabiha is the co-founder and CEO of Cellino which is a company developing the tech to automate stem cell production that will lower the cost of cell therapies and increase the yield of viable cells. In this episode, Nabiha tells Jordan and Darrell how she built a start-up beginning with the tech and finding a business fit, her evolving leadership style, and why this work is crucial to the biomedical field.

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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.

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Financial flash mobs meet fundraising memes Nov 24, 2021

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This is our Wednesday episode when we niche down to a single topic, looking to expand our understanding of one particular technology trend or another. And this week, it was all about the ConstitutionDAO.

For those who weren't online last week, here's what you missed: a not-so-subtle group of strangers on the internet banded together to try to buy one of the remaining thirteen copies for the constitution. With crypto. The bold bid eventually fell short, but many saw it as an inspiring onramp into how communities can mobilize around a shared goal in a Web3 world. The whole movement, from its meme start to its poetic, and billionaire Ken Griffin-themed, end, was just too interesting for Equity to not dedicate an entire episode to.

So, Natasha and Alex brought on Lucas Matney and Anita Ramaswamy to unpack, decompress, and bond over our shared experience of witnessing this 'financial flash mob.'

We talked about what a DAO is, and what they might be used for. We dug into the question of just how many folks the effort really brought to the larger "Web3" space. And, of course, we had to talk about gas fees, NFTs, and the pace of innovation in crypto more broadly. Lucas even broke out an excellent analogy to explain level-two chains!

The crew were generally bullish on the blockchain economy, if skeptical of some of its current uses. In short, the potential remains potent in crypto even if some of its projects, today at least, are a bit more boring than breakthrough. Crypto, we're told, is going to shake up the world. More of that, we reckon, and less of the meme-wars wouldn't be amiss.

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Equity Monday: Paytm's rocky debut gets rockier Nov 22, 2021

Show notes

Happy Monday everyone, and welcome to a holiday week here in the United States. Yes, we here in the good ol' States will be off the second half of this week. TechCrunch won't grind to a halt, but we will certainly slow down a little bit. But, that doesn't mean that we didn't have a lot to talk about this morning:

Shares of Indian fintech giant Paytm fell further today, after a very disappointing first-days trading last Thursday. The company now has lot of ground to make up just to get back to zero.
Facebook is delaying the rollout of E2E encryption until 2023, which has us a bit bummed.
Also in big tech news, ByteDance is calling it quits on edtech in India.
Turning the page to startups, we chatted through three news items this morning: Jina.ai raised $30 million, Deliverr raised $250 million, and Lydia added equity and crypto trading to its French financial superapp.
And we closed on the just what the point of a DAO is.

Woo! We are back Wednesday morning. Chat soon!

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Co-founder titles aren't a formality, they're a morality Nov 19, 2021

Show notes

Good news, everyone: Mary Ann is back! Yes, after a short absence we have our third Friday host back where she belongs. Namely right in front of a microphone, talking to us.

And it was good to have her back, as we had a small mountain of news to talk through:

OpenSea could be worth $10 billion: Right before we recorded, news broke that OpenSea could raise new capital at a far-greater valuation than it did earlier this year. While we had some jokes, we also did a little math on why OpenSea could really be worth so much money.
Other rapid-fire funding rounds: If OpenSea does raise again, it will join good company in putting together several rounds in under a year. Facily has done the same, as has Justt. In short, the old 18-month cycle for raising capital is so dated it might as well get delivered by telegram.
Lambda School rebrands:
Casper goes private: After a tough time as a public concern, DTC mattress company Casper is going private. Notably its issues have not dampened market interest in taking other DTC companies public.
What makes a founder, a founder:

We're entering the holiday period, so expect the usual disruptions to Equity's production calendar. We'll be taking short breaks as per usual, but will be recharging some ahead of what should prove to be a very, very busy 2022.

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Did Zillow get high on its own supply? Nov 17, 2021

Show notes

This is our Wednesday episode when we niche down to a single topic, looking to expand our understanding of one particular technology trend or another. This week? iBuying.

Zillow made a decision to get out of the iBuying market, with huge costs hanging over its head and a grip of layoffs to manage. Natasha and Alex were curious what went wrong.
So we brought along Ryan Lawler, one of TechCrunch+'s reporting team, who has covered the space for a chat. Ryan helped us use Opendoor earnings as a comparison point -- it turns out that the iBuying model can work, even if Zillow itself struggled with the model. (Opendoor went public via a SPAC, recall.)
We also talked about what the situation could mean for startups in the real estate market more broadly. It turns out that merely having data is not enough to make money in the housing space.

Equity is back Friday morning with our weekly news roundup, and if all goes well, also back on Saturday with something both special and fun.

And if you haven't given our sister podcast, Found, a listen, check it out!

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Equity Monday: Startups rush to announce news before holiday slowdown Nov 15, 2021

Show notes

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. I also tweet.

Tesla shares are off further this morning in the wake of declines following stock sales by Elon Musk. The company retains its $1 trillion market cap, per Yahoo Finance data, but is at risk of losing a comma if it keeps slipping.
Elsewhere in Big Tech, Microsoft is making Windows worse, while bitcoin gets an upgrade
On the startup front, we took a look at Writer.com, Zoomo and Rsquared.
Up ahead, we have the Braze, Usertesting and Sweetgreen IPOs. Nubank and Paytm are also in the queue.

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Wall Street still doesn't get crypto Nov 13, 2021

Show notes

Friday afternoon the Equity team took to a Twitter Space to hit on a topic that we had to cut from our regular end-of-week show, namely crypto earnings and how Wall Street is digesting the results. And to bring in extra mental horsepower, Natasha and Alex lassoed new TechCruncher Anita Ramaswamy to help.

We touched on Coinbase's Q3 financial results and what they tell us about trading incomes, and the company itself. Robinhood's own Q3 results were part of the chat as well, as they showed a similar pattern to what Coinbase disclosed.

More companies than just those two, newly-public entities are reporting crypto trading declines. Square did as well, after its bitcoin revenues slipped in Q3. Simply put, consumers traded less crypto in Q3 than they did in Q2, and a number of companies that were recently riding high on that particular volatility cycle had to deal with a down-cycle period.

We talked about what the results mean for the noisy world of crypto startups, many of which are looking to the highly-visible Coinbase as an indicator of what they can expect as they attempt to scale in a volatile market.

Equity is back Monday!

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Tiger's den of due diligence Nov 12, 2021

Show notes

Hello and welcome back to Equity, a podcast about the business of startups where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines! This is our Friday show, a roundup of the week's biggest and most fascinating stories from startups, venture capital and technology.

Natasha and Alex along with Grace and Chris had to cut and cut and cut to get the show to fit this week, so if we didn't get to your favorite story, we wanted to. We just ran out of space!

Here's the rundown:

Twitter Blue: Natasha is not sold, but Alex is all-in on Twitter's new subscription service. What does it include? What do we hope it adds? We have it all for you.
Seasoned raised $18.7 million for its frontline worker app and matching service, You.com raised $20 million to continue taking on Google's search hegemony, and Helsing.ai raised a huge pile of money for reasons that we like, even if the details of what it intends to do are still a little vague.
INDIAN EDTECH
Tiger Global's investing rush. Thanks to an act of journalism by our Twitter friend Sar Haribhakti, we had fresh perspective on just how the startup investing community is handling Tiger's race to win growth-stage investing. The Information has more, as does FT and Crunchbase News,

And then we were out of minutes! Don't worry, however, Equity is back Monday morning!

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Vertically-farmed wasabi arugula isn't a hypothetical Nov 10, 2021

Show notes

This is our Wednesday show, the time of the week when we niche down to a single topic. Today we spoke about the revolution within agriculture otherwise known as vertical farming.

Alex and Natasha spoke to Hardware editor Brian Heater, who recently wrote a TC-1 about Bowery Farming spanning over 11,000 words and topics such as the taste of sustainable turnips and produce sections at grocery stores. The core of his multi-part exploration, though, was built around a question: Can Bowery Farms bring the newest and most innovative technologies to bear on civilization’s oldest and most optimized industry?

As a result, our episode went down a lot of tasty rabbit holes. We spoke about the current state of vertical farming, the challenges that come with commercialization and our struggling climate, and if your local dairy farm is actually thinking about adding a robot to their staff.

There was more to chew on, including the balance between sustainability and profit, how to think about carbon footprints, the commercialization of vertical farming today, and how some folks are spending $30 on a strawberry. We had lovely time and will have Brian back on the pod.

Here's the TC-1 if you're interested:

Bowery Farming is forcing us all to look up at the future of vertical agriculture (3,500 words/14 minutes) — explores the evolution of vertical farming, it’s expansion in Japan and how Bowery Farming was started to bring indoor farming to the masses in the United States.
Hacking lettuce for taste and profit (2,500 words/10 minutes) — evaluates how Bowery collects data from its farms in order to optimize flavor while also potentially expanding its produce line into new categories like strawberries and turnips.
Can LEDs ultimately replace the sun? (2,100 words/8 minutes) — investigates two of the most important questions about Bowery Farming: Can it develop a competitive moat with its technology (which it dubs BoweryOS) and just how much environmental benefit can the company derive from its farms?
The voracious fight for your salad bowl (3,000 words/12 minutes) — looks at the extremely competitive nature of the produce section at the grocery store and how Bowery intends to build a brand with consumers while finding a route to profitability.

The Equity team will be back Friday morning with our weekly roundup. Our hearts go out to Mary Ann who will return to us in due time, and our general ire is reserved for Danny. Because we are still smarting from his divorcing of us for Lux.

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Equity Monday: Elon Musk reinvents corporate governance Nov 08, 2021

Show notes

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. I also tweet.

The stock market wasn't incredibly dramatic this morning, from an index-viewpoint. Crytpos were slightly more exciting but only moderately. A host of earnings results this week should provide us with fireworks, however.
And on the subject of crypto regulation, news from Congress isn't great for fans of coins and chains. And the rising popularity of NFT games could put consumers in bad tax territory.
The SoftBank Vision Fund 1 posted poor results, harming SoftBank's earnings, and leading to the company promising a huge share buyback.
And Elon Musk made news not only for tweeting some sort of dick joke at an American Senator, but also for polling Twitter regarding whether or not he should sell 10% worth of Tesla shares. That's one way to do corporate governance, I suppose.
Matter Labs raised $50 million, while H2O.ai raised $100 million.
And weekend chat concerning this piece detailing Google's history with AMP underscores just how much trust is being lost between major American tech companies and their communities.

We are back Wednesday! Hugs!

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