Equity

Latest Episodes:

Finding fraud in a world of fast-moving deals Sep 29, 2021

Show notes

Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture-capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.

We got the crew together — Natasha and Danny and Alex — this time 'round to talk fraud, one of our favorite topics. Sure, we've riffed on the ups and downs at Luckin, and we've spent more time talking about WeWork's implosion than we want to admit. But that's not the most recent stuff. There's been a raft of fraud lately which caught our eye. The heart of today's episode is a question about fraud, and what more of it might mean: Does more fraud indicate that we're in a growing bubble, or that we're in the later-stages of a bubble about to burst?

Here's what we got into to help us understand our question:

OpenSea admits incident as top exec is accused of trading NFTs on insider information -- NFTs are good fun until the market for them is bent in the favor of insiders!
Goldman Sachs, Ozy Media and a $40 Million Conference Call Gone Wrong -- How to not get money from Goldman Sachs and possibly sink your company at the same time!
App Annie and co-founder charged with securities fraud, will pay $10M+ settlement -- If you tell your customers that you won't use their data in a particular manner, and then you do, and possibly commit something akin to securities fraud at the same time, what happens? This!
Turning to historical examples, we also brought up Nikola and Luckin and Theranos to help us draw a line around what its fraud, and what is not.
With definitions out of the way, we ended this episode by trying to answer our complex, core question. We won't spoil the eventual conclusion, but here's a hint: checks are flying fast into startups with minimal due diligence, and it looks like there's much more money is coming.

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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Equity Monday: Instagram pauses youth product as Amplitude, Warby Parker prep public offerings Sep 27, 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.

A few things this morning:

Instagram is pausing work on the kids-focused version of its social service. It claims that the product is the right thing to build, but that it wants to talk to folks about why, first. TechCrunch has more here.
Shares of Box are up this morning, after the company endured a period of time in the wilderness.
Google is cutting its cloud app marketplace take rate as marketplaces more broadly lose their ability to accrete economic value as middlepeople.
Spotify is spending to advertise its advertising solution so that others can spend more money on Spotify.
Swiss startup Frontify raises $50 million, more than double its previous round's size.
And from Sweden, EV company Polestar may go public via a SPAC, as EV company Cake raises $60 million. Nice to see Sweden do so well in a key business category.
Tesla is doing FSD stuff, which confuses us.
And looking ahead, Amplitude will set a reference price this evening and direct list tomorrow. Warby Parker will set an IPO price tomorrow evening, and trade on Wednesday.

And that's that! Chat Wednesday!

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Winner of Startup Battlefield is... Sep 24, 2021

Show notes

And the winner of TC's Startup Battlefield is.... gonna have to listen to find out

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Freshworks, Toast go public and we have Takes Sep 22, 2021

Show notes

Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.

Today we got the gang together -- Natasha and Danny and Alex -- to chat about the most recent IPOs in tech-land, namely debuts from Freshworks and Toast.

TechCrunch has covered their pair of firms somewhat closely during their IPO run, as they each have some notable characteristics:

Freshworks' IPO provided a fresh window into how public market investors are willing to value growth-oriented software companies out the gate. The news is good. Which means that we could see more unicorns looking to list in coming months.
Toast's IPO provided a lens by which we could gauge public-market sentiment for hybrid software-and-payments companies. The answer? That the stock market is pretty dang enthused about the companies in question.

So it's a good news day for unicorns, for tech startups, and for Boston, a city that Danny has many thoughts about. Please send him your complaints, and not the show. We take no responsibility.

It's Disrupt week, so we'll have more in a few days but until then we'll see you at the event!

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Equity Monday: A global selloff to kick off Disrupt week Sep 20, 2021

Show notes

A few things this morning:

I shook up the show format a little, including how the script came together and how it was organized. Hit me up on Twitter if you have notes.
Disrupt is this week, so strap thyself in for the best tech event of the year, coming to your living room. The Equity team is hosting -- between the group of us -- a zillion panels and one of the two stages. Come hang out with us. It's going to be on heck of a show.
On the news front, the global stock market is taking a whacking. US stocks are set to fall after European stocks went lower thanks to concerns that the Chinese property developer Evergrande and its constituent debt issues could spread to other parts of the market, possibly leading to contagion.
Cryptos are also off sharply in the last 24 hours, so there sems to be little refuge in today's markets.
A French hosting company is going public, an Indian used-car marketplace raised a boatload of cash, and Amazon is investigating a bribe.
And we are expecting IPOs from both Freshworks and Toast this week.

It's going to be a very busy few days. Pour some extra coffee, and get hype.

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A knock against bootstrapping Sep 17, 2021

Show notes

Natasha and Mary Ann and Alex were all aboard this week under the guidance of Chris and Grace, which meant we had the full team. And speaking of teams, Mary Ann is joining the Friday show on a weekly basis now. She's been a friend for years, and a colleague now twice-over for Natasha and Alex and we could not be more excited.

That personal news aside, here's the rundown for today's show!

Funding rounds in the logistics and infra markets: We went physical-world with our funding round roundup this week. BridgeLinx put together the largest Seed round in Pakistan's history, Releaf is doing incredibly interesting agtech work in Nigeria, and Stord's huge round from earlier in the week brought us to Atlanta.
And oh boy has Atlanta had a week. TechCrunch did a deep dive into the city's superlative startup fundraising in recent quarters, and, of course, one of its home-grown startups sold to Intuit for $12 billion just a few days ago. We had a few thoughts on the Intuit-Mailchimp transaction, even if we tried to steer clear of territory that we've already tread. For more about the controversy, Business Insider wrote about how some Mailchimp employees are reacting to the deal.
From there we turned to a layoff story. Casper, the DTC mattress company that is now public, had another round of layoffs that cut three C-suite executives. It brought us into a conversation about how Apple's tracking updates are impacting startups in this category more broadly, and if more layoffs are on the horizon.
And then there were IPOs to discuss. Natasha talked us through the news that Quizlet may go public soon, which meant we had to chat edtech for a minute. Rounding out the Going Public conversation was notes on both Toast and Freshworks. Alex does not apologize for his lame joke, we hasten to add.

Disrupt is next week, so expect some possible changes to the regular Equity show lineup if the news cycle gets dicey. Hugs!

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Why bringing you emergency toothpaste could be big business Sep 15, 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, where we niche down to a single topic. This time 'round we took a look into the world of on-demand delivery in Europe, with an especial focus on the so-called "instant" grocery sector, and delivered convenience items. To help Natasha and Danny and Alex get through the subject, we lassoed TechCrunch alum and present-day VP at Zapp, a company in the sector under discussion, Steve O'Hear to chat with us.

We spent time chatting through the following:

Recent news from the sector, including that Turkey's Getir has just raised a bucket of new capital, and that Weezy is looking to exit; the latter item wound up being important we got around to discussing consolidation in the space.
Steve gave us an overview of Zapp, and how its approach to infra could help its economics.
We chatted about GoPuff and its economic fortunes, which in fundraising terms are solid, even if questions regarding future profitability are still in play.
And regarding the ever-present pandemic question, Steve was bullish on consumer behavior staying where it is if -- when? -- the COVID-19 pandemic eventually leaves us.

We are back on Friday! Chat then!

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The Equity crew riffs on the Intuit-Mailchimp news Sep 13, 2021

Show notes

We are back! From this morning, I suppose. But the news cycle doesn't wait for our publishing schedule, so the Equity crew got together to yammer all about the Intuit-Mailchimp acquisition.

A $12 billion deal comprised of stock and cash, it's a big on. And as Mailchimp has both a history of boostrapping and a founding story in a non-Silicon Valley city we had lots to chat about.

As a general reminder, if you do listen to the show, hit us up on Twitter as we are doing more and more of these Spaces. They are good and relaxed fun, so don't take them too seriously. We like to have fun.

Alright, Equity is back on Wednesday with our regularly scheduled programming. Chat then!

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Equity Monday: Market pessimism, new iPhones, and IPOs Sep 13, 2021

Show notes

Vacation was good, and a big thanks to Mary Ann and Natasha -- not to mention Grace and Chris! -- for keeping things flowing while I mostly sat around reading books and playing video games. But enough being maudlin! To the news!

Investors are kinda thinking that the run-up in stocks needs to take a breather. And that the reset could land between 5% and 10%, with another 10% of respondents expecting a correction of more than 10%. Yowza.
China may break up Ant, keeping the pace of its regulatory deluge going as this week starts. And the Chinese government thinks that its country has too many EV companies. If the market or central planning will wind up taking point on solving the "problem" is not clear.
The Apple v. Epic decision is still driving conversation. Here's TechCrunch's coverage, and here's the MG piece I mentioned.
Toast and Freshworks have new filings up. Which is good news if you want to dig into new S-1/A reports. Forge is going public via a SPAC.
And Babyscripts and Commercetools raised rounds, while Jungle Ventures raised a fund.

Got all that? Ok good. Chat you Wednesday!

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BNPL is not a winner-takes-all game Sep 10, 2021

Show notes

Natasha and Mary Ann took over this week's show with Chris and Grace, which meant that our overdeveloped senses of curiosity filled up the script just fine (even on a somewhat short week). Unintentionally, today's episode was built around a theme of inclusion - from auto-insurance to women's health, and from payments to knowledge.

But here are some more specifics on what we got into:

For our funding round section, we discussed UK’s Marshmallow getting unicorn status for its more inclusive, big-data take on car insurance, Women’s health tech brand, Elvie, topping up its Series C to $97M, and an ambitious fintech play from Leap, which wants to give gig workers access to financial products by partnering directly to marketplaces.
After getting past the dollars and the deals, I indulged by bringing up my latest piece: Edtech leans into the creator economy with cohort-based classes. The core of the story gets into a ton of tensions, the biggest of which I'd pose as a question to you: should anyone be allowed to be a teacher?
Then we headed into Mary Ann's world of fintech to understand what I dubbed feels like national BNPL week. If I may, I'd argue that this is the can't miss segment of the entire show, as we made sense of why it's a global phenomenon, which markets are popping off, and what this means for the credit card industry. Below is a smattering of headlines we walked through.
And then we ended by talking about an adorable, but potentially dangerous robot unicorn. Yep. You read that right.