Equity

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Men are a niche demographic Aug 20, 2021

Show notes

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

Danny was back, joining Natasha and Alex and Grace and Chris to chat through the week's coming and goings. But, before we get to the official news, here's some personal news: Danny is stepping back from his role as co-host of the Friday show! Yes, Mr. Crichton will still take part in our mid-week, deep dive episodes, but this is the conclusion of his run as part of the news roundup. We will miss him, glad that his transitions and wit will continue to be part of the Equity universe.

Who will take the third chair? Well, stay tuned. We have some neat things planned.

Now, the rundown:

Funding rounds: Maven has built a women's health unicorn, Monte Carlo raised $60 million for data observability, and Launch House wants to scale venture community with a fresh $3 million in its accounts. The last round is probably the most controversial one of them all, so each of us took a side and discussed what's new and old about hacker homes.
The next crop of key IPOs: Please say hello to the rising seniors of the startup world, companies that are the next IPOs that we are excited about. The list includes Discord, Databricks, Chime and Carta, which made headlines this week after setting its own valuation with its own tool. Will investors and startups turn to a third-party to value companies? What happens if secondary investors aren't as into your product as you are? We had a ton of questions.
Brazil's burgeoning startup and exit market: In the wake of Nuvemshop raising a zillion dollars, it was time to sit down and talk about Brazil. Alex and Anna Heim have been rigorous in their reporting on the fascinating exit market. Who knew dual-listings were so dramatic?
After traveling overseas, we went very close to home to speak about the news industry. Danny had a piece about informed., which a trio of media veterans believe could fix the economics that plague subscription-based publications. The nuts and bolts are in the episode, but prepare to debate if you're the kind of reader that likes a snack, or the whole lip smackin' meal.
Finally, we discuss the wack reality that YikYak is indeed back.

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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The hottest fintech market you aren't paying attention to Aug 18, 2021

Show notes

For our Wednesday show this week, Natasha and Alex and Danny had colleague Tage Kene-Okafor on the show to chat about the burgeoning African startup scene. Tage has become TechCrunch's key correspondent in the area, chronicling the continents expanding venture capital totals, public company performance, and startup ecosystem.

Given that we've paid attention to just how much money African startups are raising, we wanted to have Tage on to give us a better, deeper understanding of the continent's technology activity. Here's what we got into:

The power of Y Combinator in Africa: Is the well-known American accelerator a kingmaker in Africa? Or are we merely seeing more of its activity thanks to our own information biases?
Fintech as core focus: As in many markets, fintech investment and startup activity stand out in Africa. We wanted to better understand why that's the case in Africa, and what startups are building in the realm of financial technology.
African ecommerce: The continent's ecommerce market is perhaps best known through the lens of Jumia, a public tech company that works in the sale of goods online, and their delivery. How quickly is ecommerce growing in Africa, and which startups could be the next breakouts? We asked Tage.

Equity is back on Friday with our weekly news roundup!

Equity drops every Monday at 7:00 a.m. PDT, Wednesday, and Friday

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Equity Monday: Hacks, IPOs, and the next generation of American tech giants Aug 16, 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 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.

It's a surreal day to talk about technology, but here we are. If you can pull your eyes away from the greater geopolitical tragedy that is our world today, here's what we talked about:

T Mobile may have suffered a material breach. If this bears out, it could be a leading tech story for the week. Vice has confirmed that at least some of the data in the leak appears genuine.
Indian travel service ixigo is going public. The company's IPO follows Zomato's own domestic debut.
And speaking of IPOs, the Tencent Music offering in Hong Kong could be on hold until next year.
And a trio of American tech companies raised a raft of capital as last week concluded. Carta put together $500 million in a huge deal, as Chime raised $750 million. And as the week closed, Discord was reported to be hunting up a new round at a $15 billion price tag.

And stocks are set to open lower this morning. That's the morning report. Equity is back on Wednesday.

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Crypto's coming of age moment Aug 14, 2021

Show notes

This week Danny and Alex and Chris took to Twitter Spaces to chat about the current state of the crypto economy, and hang out with friends in a live Twitter Space. We're doing more of these, so make sure that you are following the show on Twitter.

As a small programming note, I forgot to tell the folks who chimed in during the chat that we were recording it, so we had to cut most the Q&A portion of the show. We got Ezra's permission, thankfully. The mixup was a bummer as we learned a lot. In the future, we'll not make that mistake and keep all the voices.

So, what did we talk about? The following:

The current state of crypto regulation in America, and how the government may screw everything up. In short, tech moves fast, and government moves slow. This creates friction.
Coinbase kicked the ever-loving shit out of its Q2 earnings. But as it turns out the future for trading-powered companies could include a few quarters of slower results.
And everyone wants to fund the next Coinbase. You can understand why. The company is printing cash lately, helping drive more investment into localized exchanges in different markets.

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Don't give your weed dealer all your data Aug 13, 2021

Show notes

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

Our beloved Danny was back, joining Natasha and Alex and Grace and Chris to chat through yet another incredibly busy week. As a window into our process, every week we tell one another that the next week we'll cut the show down to size. Then the week is so interesting that we end up cutting a lot of news, but also keeping a lot of news. The chaotic process is a work in progress, but it means that the end result is always what we decided we can't not talk about.

Here's what we got into:

A little URL to IRL update from Natasha, who just got back from an edtech conference.
How one VC got hit by ransomware, and why stolen LP data could be a wake up call for investors.
The crew chatted through some Cloud 100 numbers, and riffed for a minute on Figma, Gusto, and Mailchimp, companies all reportedly worth around the $10 billion mark.
From the early-stage funding round side of things, we noodled on Surfside's $4 million raise, and the capital that Pave recently attracted. Felt also raised money to make maps more mainstream, which had us thinking about use cases galore.
In unicorn-land, Trendyol raised a mountain of cash, while UpGrad became India's newest unicorn.
Climate change is going to mean lots more companies needed to handle disaster prep, Danny argues. His recent EC-1 here about RapidSOS got into the deep and complex world of three simple numbers: 911.
And we ended the show with a riff on Salesforce+, which we had fun with but also tried to take seriously because we are journalists after all.

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When the economic tide goes out Aug 11, 2021

Show notes

This week we were back to full strength, with Danny Natasha and Alex joined by Chris to chat through the latest venture capital brouhaha. Namely whether or not venture capital is about to get shaken to its core, or if we're really parsing some long-term economic trends that will eventually revert.

Here's a rundown:

Sam Lessin kicked off the Twitter conversation by positing that venture capital as we know it is kaput, with software and later-stage investing possibly seeing the most disruption.
Both Alex and Crunchbase News posted responses to the concept, which could best be summarized as yeah, but.
However, the point that there is a lot of non-venture money flooding into startups is both real and material, and worth chewing on. So, masticate we did, parsing which areas of startup investing might be the most winsome for the VCs we spend so very much time talking to,

The direction and future of the venture capital world has largely been lost amidst a sea of large numbers. New megarounds. New unicorns. That sort of thing. But inside the rising tide of capital available to private companies has been a mix-shift of sorts. The question is where that goes long-term. We tried to posit a few things that could happen next.

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Equity Monday: Apple's privacy flap continues as crypto regulation looms Aug 09, 2021

Show notes

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

It's going to be a busy week, with a Samsung event and a host of earnings reports that we'll have to pay attention to. But more important there are a few stories still dominating the news cycle:

Apple's privacy choices: The American hardware company's plans to scan iPhones for some illegal material is once again raising the issue of privacy versus safety.
China's tech crackdown: The continued clampdown by regulators continued this weekend with Tencent once again under the spotlight.
The American crypto regulatory push: This is still causing waves this morning as Congress works to pass a major bill that could include crypto regulations that are opposed by industry leaders.

All that and we also riffed on the Siemens-Sqills deal, Cornerstone OnDemand going private, and Delivery Hero buying a piece of Deliveroo.

And, for added flavor and fun, Canopy Servicing just raised a $15 million Series A, while Siga OT Solutions raised a $8.1 million Series B.

All that, and we got to talk stocks! Hugs and love from the Equity crew — chat Wednesday!

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Found: Sara Spangelo, Swarm Aug 06, 2021

Show notes

Sara Spangelo's startup Swarm now has nearly 100 of its satellites in orbit, but the journey to get here has had plenty of challenges. After a track record that included working at Google X, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and plenty more, Sara realized with her co-founder Ben that including low-bandwidth network capabilities on tiny satellites was not only possible, but offered massive cost-savings vs. the usual way of doing things. But our talk focuses on the challenges of being a first-time founder and CEO, and creating a whole new business model.

Links for this episode:

Connect with us:

On Twitter
On Instagram
Via email: found@techcrunch.com

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When the goals of PR and journalism don't align Aug 04, 2021

Show notes

For our Wednesday show this week, Natasha and Alex hosted a PR roundtable. Yep, our promise back when Alex Konrad came on the program to chat funding rounds is being fulfilled. Here's who joined us:

Amy Widdowson, VP Corporate Communications at Zeno Group and newsletter writer extraordinaire
Kelsey Cheng, PR Director at Walker Sands
Creighton Vance, Media Strategist at Mission North and maker of music

We had a few things to chat about, so we broke the show into a few sections:

Today's PR world: The impact of COVID-19, burnout, what their work entails, and some tips for startups.
The sheer pace of news today: The evolution of client expectations, managing clients themselves, and burnout.
Tech vs. Media: We chatted content marketing, sharing details with the press, and why the media never shares drafts of stories before they go out.

Frankly it was a very good time and a fun chat. Shoutout to our guests for arriving early and being very put together. May all podcast guests in the future learn from such efforts. One guest was even wearing a shirt with a collar! In 2021! We were impressed.

Recall that Equity is off the rest of the week so that we can recharge and retool a bit. Hugs!

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The tale of two edtech IPOs Aug 02, 2021

Show notes

Last week, Natasha and Alex jumped on Twitter Spaces to discuss the tale of two edtech IPOs: Duolingo, the consumer language learning company, and Powerschool, the enterprise K-12 software platform. It was a rare moment in the sun for the recently-revitalized sector, which saw two companies list on the NASDAQ on the same dang day.

Special shout out to our producer Chris Gates for handling this impromptu live chat, tech difficulties and all, and bringing it to your ears on this lovely Monday. Don't forget that Equity is largely on break this week!

Here's what we got into, featuring some edtech entrepreneurs nice enough to drop on by:

China's edtech crackdown and how it is impacting startups both internationally and domestically. The regulations, one of which will force for-profit tutoring companies to turn into non-profits, are also getting the cold shoulder from U.S. edtech VCs, it seems.
As Lightspeed Ventures investor Mercedes Bent so aptly put it, the news is somewhat ironic: "[T]he US edtech IPO market is on fire (after being dormant for so long) and the China edtech market is crumbling (after being on fire for so long)."
Evidence of that can be found in the Duolingo IPO pricing arc. The company first posted a strong estimate of its worth, raised its range, priced above that raised interval, and still managed to trade higher. The company is still up more than $30 from its IPO price.
Powerschool was a bit different. It priced at $18 per share, the low-end of its $18 to $20 range. The company is up from its IPO price, albeit a much more modest two, or three percent in today's early trading.

In the second half of the show, we brought on the following host of edtech founders to share their hot takes about the current state of edtech:

- Philip Cutler, the founder & CEO of PAPER gave us an enterprise perspective. The startup recently raised $100 million in a Series C round led by IVP.
- Taylor Nieman, the founder & CEO of Toucan spoke language learning -- and how she's using Duolingo's S-1 as a competitive advantage.
- Anada Lakra, the founder & CEO of BoldVoice, a startup that wants to help non-native English speakers hone their accents. TechCrunch covered the company here.
- Yeva Hyusyan, the founder of Sololearn, a Duolingo-like company that wants to teach coding instead of languages. The company recently raised $24 million.

Before we go, Equity is on a "break" this week, as we do some soul searching and refresh before our next run of shows. Obviously we still had to shaare this episode, and um, are recording another episode this week too, but you, my dear friend, will hear from us again next Monday.

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