Equity

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Equity Monday: Welcome to bigtech hardware week Oct 18, 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.

This week, the week of October 18, 2021, kicked off with a mixed markets picture. Asian stocks were mixed, down in Europe, and set to fall in the United States. China remains a concern.
There are hardware events this week from Apple, Samsung and Google. Along with earnings from Netflix, IBM, and Qualtrics.
Amazon is in hot water with American regulators, China may force its tech giants to allow for cross-platform search, and Facebook wants to hire lots of Europeans.
From startup-land, Enpal landed a huge dollop of cash for its solar work, while OfficeRnD made bets on a hybrid working future. Notes to come shortly on the Expensify IPO filing.

The show is back on Wednesday! Chat then!

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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LinkedOut Oct 16, 2021

Show notes

In today's episode, talk our way through some big breaking news from the technology world so that we can better understand just what is going on.

Danny and Alex got together late Friday on a Twitter Space to discuss Microsoft's decision to pull LinkedIn from the Chinese market, a move that lit up headlines around the world. That LinkedIn was still in China in 2021 may feel more surprising than the news that it will exit that particular market, but the moment matters all the same as it marks the end of an experiment -- could a mega-tech company have a US HQ and a first-party service live in China?

Er, no, it turns out. Not really.

Microsoft found itself jammed between its own ethics, and governmental censure. It was a lose-lose for the company, so pulling the plug was the smart move. The company isn't going to miss the revenue.

For startups, the Microsoft decision is a good reminder that doing business in China is at a minimum very hard for non-Chinese companies, and perhaps impossible. Recall that Microsoft had to work with a Chinese company (21Vianet) to get Azure into the country at all, and that the Chinese government is using a few companies to build a new OS for the country so that it can replace Windows.

Precisely how good that OS will prove is not yet clear, at least from a consumer perspective.

And then we riffed on GitLab's IPO. My favorite topic of the week. You'll see why it came up when you hit play. Chat Monday!

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Coinbase goes fishing for Opensea’s catch Oct 15, 2021

Show notes

This week was one of our strongest shows yet, with a wide diversity of news items that were genuinely fun (and complicated) to chew through. And even though we started off kind of grumpy, we laughed through tech difficulties, crypto puns, and fintech CAC. It's called coping.

Here's what we got into:

Magic Leap raised $500 million about which we have thoughts, Mindbody's acquisition of ClassPass caught our eye for obvious reasons (and the fact that it also raised $500 million), and we dug into SoWork's fascinating business proposition.
mPharma and the race to horizontal, holistic mental health: Telehealth is great and useful but no panacea. However, in the realm of mental health it's potentially life-changing for millions.
OpenSea went from being one of the main characters in our fraud show, to being the underdog that we're rooting for - now that Coinbase is building a copycat.

Since we tried to keep the show tight, a ton of news was left on the cutting room floor. The good news, though, is that we're back tomorrow with a spicy bonus episode about Microsoft pulling LinkedIn from the Chinese market. Oof.

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How to sell clothes online and actually make money Oct 13, 2021

Show notes

This is our Wednesday show, the time of the week when we niche down to a single topic. Today? Fashion.

Natasha and Danny and Alex got together to dig into the world of fashion resale and rental. It's no small market, giving birth to both public companies, unicorns, and startups. Most recently, well-known fashion rental player Rent the Runway filed to go public, giving us a window in its own numbers.

Those figures led us to a few questions about how best to go about making money from clothes in a retail context. From our chat:

Selling vs. Renting vs. Reselling: To start, we wanted to help you group startups into three buckets: those who sell customers to people, those who rent goods to customers, and those who resell pre-owned goods to customers.
Rent the Runway's numbers: We had some issues with Rent the Runway's business model given that it appears that the company is simply underpricing its clothing items given its cost structure. How Wall Street will price the company, or whether Rent the Runway is hoping to sell to a larger company came into the conversation.
Who else should we have an eye on: To close, Natasha detailed a number of startups including Queenly, Curtsy and Rebag. Oh, and Depop (which recently sold to Etsy $1.6 billion).

Startups are tearing up old retail models, which we are here for. We are less here for adjusted EBITDA that reads like magical realism.

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Equity Monday: I hear this fintech thing is going to be big Oct 11, 2021

Show notes

Markets were busy, with Chinese tech stocks rallying and the rest of the world posting a mix of gains and losses. If you are bullish on public markets, excellent. But if you are bearish, don't worry -- there are diverse enough signals out this morning to satisfy any investing thesis.
Facebook goes on American political TV: To talk about changes it is going to make to its product. A product that it built. It wants point for fixing the thing it made broken. Sure.
And Tesla, after delaying the roll-out of a beta for Full Self Driving, is also being asked by some in India to build cars in that country.
CRED is raising even more money, at an even higher valuation.
Mono gets the Tiger imprimatur, which matters as the startup could prove that the Plaid model will spawn regional players.
French mobile gaming company Homa Games raised $50 million on the back of huge download numbers.
And ahead we have the GitLab direct listing, and AvidExchange IPO.

Chat you on Wednesday!

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Community is the new AI Oct 08, 2021

Show notes

Natasha and Mary Ann and Alex were all aboard this week with Grace on the dials, which meant that we had a flat lovely time recording Equity for you. Of course, Equity is TechCrunch's venture capital focused podcast where we dig into the most critical funding rounds, and natter about the key news items impacting startups.

Before we hop into this week's topics, you can follow the show on Twitter, where we rather often host impromptu Twitter spaces that sometimes become episodes. Come hang!

Here's the rundown for this week:

Chalo raises $40M to improve bus transit in India: This startup wins name (and startup) of the week. Chalo wants to tackle inefficiencies in India's bus system, so we noodle over why that makes sense and what challenges could be ahead.
Masterworks raises $110M for fractional art ownership: Call it a Series A if you must, but the megaround that Masterworks just raised helps underscore the global shift towards alternative investing, and fractional ownership. How long until we get Masterworks on the blockchain? That would be the real IRL-NFT crossover we are kinda waiting for.
CostCertified wants to save your next home reno project: CostCertified, which just participated in Y Combinator's summer cohort, raised $8.45M in seed funding. The Canadian company's end goal is to build the “Amazon for construction.” CostCertified allows contractors to send a shoppable interactive estimate to homeowners so that they can choose their selections during a project, and see the effect on price instantly.
All about community: Community has been watered down, there's no doubt about it. But, there is still arguments for why it works - and we make them (often).
Google invests in Africa: American tech giant Google is putting capital to work in Africa, but in the form of infra investment and early-stage investing. Frankly both make good sense given the advertising giant's business model.
Edtech goes B2B: Udemy is going public! We have dug through the numbers already, but thankfully with Natasha on the show we got to go a level deeper on where edtech revenues may come from next.

And that's our show! We are back bright and early on Monday!

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The metaverse is coming for Squid Game Oct 06, 2021

Show notes

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, the time of the week when we niche down to a single topic. Today? Gaming.

Natasha and Danny and Alex got together to discuss the gaming world from a few perspectives, including those of startups and the largest platform players in tech. Alex is a gamer. Danny is a board gamer. And Natasha isn't big on digital games. So, we had a good array of viewpoints. The goal of our episode was to understand why gaming is garnering more interest from Big Tech and startups alike, and how the business model and environment has evolved over the years.

Here's what we got into:

A new gaming fund from a16z, and recent venture capital totals, as compiled by our friends over at Crunchbase News.
Amazon's new hit game, and Apple's epic gaming profits.
It appears, by our read, that the gaming industry has evolved from single-sale titles to games with recurring incomes that studios have become venture-backable; this is testament to both business model evolution and general gaming popularity, as much as it is indicative of how much money it is possible to earn supporting the games industry as a tech shop as well.
Still, we wanted to spend a few minutes on the challenges that still await those trying to spin up a game overnight.
After we talked through the context and challenges, we riffed on the why! It includes just what a metaverse is, how NFTs can slot into the conversation, and more.

All we need now is a release date for Royal Court, Paradox.

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Equity Monday: Byju's raises more money, somehow, as tech stocks fall Oct 04, 2021

Show notes

Sorry that the show is so delayed today, it's utterly my fault. Regular service returns Wednesday, and we'll make to not be late on a Monday again this year! Here's what we got into on the show:

Tech shares are falling in America in a larger domestic selloff -- but once again we're seeing high-valued technology stocks lose the most ground. Software companies are having a particularly rough morning.
The Facebook whistleblower situation remains the biggest news item in the technology world this morning, dominating aggregators and conversation. Precisely what comes next isn't clear, I reckon, but Facebook shares haven't lost enough ground yet to be a worry for the firm; that could change with another few days' declines, however.
What else was on our mind? Apple's epic gaming profits, new AI guidelines from China, and data concerning just how much money semiconductor startups are raising. It's more, but is it enough?
Byju's raised $300 million, this time at an $18 billion valuation. Its upcoming IPO will help set the tone for global edtech valuations.
Ladder raised $100 million, proving that the insurtech market is still active. Sure, shares of public insurtech startups have taken a pounding in recent quarters, but there's still plenty of private capital ready to make bets on the market.
And the Vision Fund 2 is even more Vision Fund-y than we anticipated!

Chat soon!

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Why did the Zoom-Five9 deal eat %#*& and die? Oct 02, 2021

Show notes

To cap the week off, Danny and Alex and Chris got together live on Twitter to chat through the demise of the Zoom-Five9 deal. Those of you who remember how recently the deal was announced are likely a little surprised -- how did it fall apart so quickly? Well, a few reasons:

There could be inherent risk in all-stock transactions provided a rapidly-changing market.
It may be the case that Zoom simply did not bid enough for Five9.
And there's a mix of anti-trust and national regulatory issues to the deal that never got fully hammered out.

So, you can pick your poison, even though the answer appears to be some of each above point.

https://techcrunch.com/2021/07/19/the-zoom-five9-deal-is-a-big-bet-for-the-video-conferencing-company/

Those of you who caught the Friday episode will wonder, and fairly, what the end of the Zoom-Five9 deal will have on other M&A activity. We talked about it.

That's enough for now. Hit play and have a laugh with us. Thanks for sticking with the show!

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Here for influencer-branded mac and cheese Oct 01, 2021

Show notes

Natasha and Mary Ann and Alex were all aboard this week under the guidance of Chris and Grace, meaning that we were running full-strength for our roundup of this super busy week.

Before we hop into the topics, you can follow the show on Twitter -- all the cool kids do! -- and keep in mind that on Mondays Equity provides a short kickoff to the week, we chat a single topic on Wednesdays, and Fridays are when we go through the full week. Make sense? Hell yeah:

Fiveable
Cobalt raised $2.8 million to help creators build and sell more stuff. As part of our continuing focus on creators more broadly, we had a few questions!
Found came out of stealth with $32 million in total funding from GV, Atomic and Define Ventures. The startup is focused on "weight care management" and it's notable that the co-founder of Atomic, which incubated this company, also co-founded hims and hers -- which also has a telehealth component. Found's new CEO is the former COO of Bumble, who drafted its S-1 while getting chemo treatment for stage 3 breast cancer.
From there we dug into trends! First up was the trend of startups going full-stack, which we kicked off with a look at AngelList's new Stack -- har har -- product. It's a bit like what Carta and Stripe offer, which gave us some good angles to chat about the news from.
Next up was consolidation, which echoed our first conversation. Discussing a recent deal in the RPA space, the Equity team made predictions about which sectors in the startup world are the most likely to see consolidation in the coming quarters.
And we closed with climate tech, a startup niche that could bring a small sliver of hope to our heating planet.

WITTY CONCLUSION

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