Equity

Latest Episodes:

Equity Monday: TechCrunch goes Yahoo while welding robots raise $56M May 03, 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 and myself here.

This morning was a notable one in the life of TechCrunch the publication, as our parent company's parent company decided to sell our parent company to a different parent company. And now we're to have to get new corporate IDs, again, as it appears that our new parent company's parent company wants to rebrand our parent company. As Yahoo.

Cool.

Anyway, a bunch of other stuff happened as well:

Flywire, a Boston-based payments company filed to go public. More on the site about this shortly.
Earnings this week are coming from Uber and Lyft and PayPal and Square and more.
Dell is offloading Boomi to private equity as it wants to de-lever. Again.
Cloud market share numbers are out, but what matters is that the growth of the cloud market helps explain the growth that we're seeing in the startup game. (Our own Ron Miller dug into some rival cloud metrics here.)
The Chinese government's crackdown on its tech giants continues. And it's impacting valuations.
And Wealthsimple raised an epic CAD$750 million round, while Ohio-based Path Robotics just raised a $56 million Series B. Super cool.

We're back Wednesday with something special. 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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The second shot is kicking in Apr 30, 2021

Show notes

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

First and foremost, Equity was nominated for a Webby for “Best Technology Podcast”! Drop everything and go Vote for Equity! We’d appreciate it. A lot. And even if we lose, well, we’ll keep doing our thing and making each other laugh. (Note: we are in last place, which is, well, something.)

Regardless, the Equity team got together once again this week to not only go over the news of the week, but also to do a little soul searching. You see, some news broke yesterday, so we figured that we had to talk about it in our usual style. So, here's the rundown:

Do you want to buy TechCrunch? Apparently you can? Albeit probably along with a few billion dollars worth of other assets -- whatever is left of Yahoo and AOL -- you can now own an NFT. A non-fungible TechCrunch. What is ahead for us? We don't know. So if you do know, tell us. Until then we'll just yo-yo gently between panic and optimism, as per usual.
We also dug into the latest All Raise venture capital data, and the results were abysmal.
Next up was the news that fintech startups are setting records in 2021, raising more capital than ever before. That brought us to the latest from Brex.
And then there was a suspicious trend when three fintech companies focused on teen banking raised in one exhale. We talk Step, Greenlight, and Current.
Natasha talked about her last Startups Weekly post, in which she unpacked The MasterClass effect's impact on edtech.
And to close, we discussed the latest cool-kid venture capital funds. Sure memes are cool, but did you know that they can help you raise a $10 million fund? They can!

We are back Monday morning with our weekly kick-off show. Have a great weekend!

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In a room with no smart speaker, Alexa can't hear you scream Apr 28, 2021

Show notes

For this week’s deep dive Natasha and Alex and Danny and Chris dove into the world of audio. Sure, you've heard of Clubhouse, but there's lots more going on than just a single app's cultural rise. So from the biggest companies to niche startups, we compiled all the recent audio news into a single show for all our delectation.

Here's the rundown:

Facebook is building a number of audio products, including a Clubhouse clone and a short-form audio service that we think could be neat.
Reddit is also building a Clubhouse-like service, and Alex is excited about it.
It's not just the established social networks that are trying out live audio. Peanut, a social networking app for women, added live audio "Pods" to its platform. It kicked off a conversation on what it takes to win this market, and what's a smart versus silly bet.
While a drop in downloads doesn't necessarily mean a drop in active users, it's worth pointing out that Clubhouse's monthly downloads dropped 72% in March. Where is that gosh darn Android app?
And Alex explained why the Clubhouse-NFL deal matters for the company, as it could molt into something more akin to a platform over time.
Danny explained how Apple and Spotify are building paid podcast services -- more here, and here, respectively -- and we have thoughts about which service is being more fair with the money. Natasha tied in how sentiment around the creator economy might be driving some of these individual-friendly business models.
Alex brought up TWiT's new business model.

All told there's quite a lot of excitement around the spoken word. Which is good as Equity is a podcast? Right?

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Equity Monday: Social media crackdowns, earnings, and a funding deluge Apr 26, 2021

Show notes

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

This weekend had a key story, earnings are on the way, and there is a huge number of funding rounds to talk about. Ready?

The Indian government's move to remove a number of social media posts critical of its handling of COVID-19 was the key news item this weekend. As the country's healthcare system buckles, and deaths spike, the move by the current administration to censor the Internet was just about as bad a look you could imagine. At least in terms of a tech response.
Also this weekend conversation continued about Substack's recent push to hire away well-known writers from traditionally-respected publications continued, with Insider reporting that six-figure offers to join the paid newsletter platform are the norm.
This morning we're focused on the impending earnings deluge. Major American tech companies, along with some key social media and ecommerce names will report, giving us a look into how tech companies performed in the first quarter of 2021. We already know that the venture market was hot during the period. How business fared, however, is less clear.
On the funding round beat, Mighty Networks raised $50 million, LEAD School raised $30 million, Kidato raised $1.4 million, StashAway stashed away $25 million, and Kyligence put together a $70 million Series D of its own.

The Honest Company also set an early IPO price range after we stopped recording. More to come on the IPO front. Chat Wednesday!

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No one is talking about remote work from space Apr 23, 2021

Show notes

First and foremost, Equity was nominated a Webby for "Best Technology Podcast"!!! Drop everything and go Vote for Equity! We'd appreciate. A lot. And even if we lose, well, we'll keep doing our thing and making each other laugh.

Natasha and Danny and Alex and Chris got together to chat through the week's biggest news. And like every other week in recent memory, it was a busy one. But we did our best to hit some M&A news, some unicorn news, and some funding news from smaller startups.

Now, onto the show rundown, here's what we discussed:

The Discord-Microsoft deal is done, and Danny has a hot take. Namely, in his view, the deal was mostly banker chatter more than a real possibility. More chaff than wheat, in other words. Agree or not, we're stoked for the Discord IPO in a few years (quarters?) time.
Mastercard bought Erkata, and Danny was on hand to hand to explain why we care about the deal. Sure, it was $825 million in value, but some venture data from Finledger helped explain just how much capital is flowing into similar companies. Let's see how that math works out.
Clearbanc rebranded itself into a fintech unicorn, providing services along with sweet, sweet capital.
The UiPath IPO finally priced and started to trade. It had a good first day, and you can check out what we learned talking to its CFO here.
Over in China, a country that we've not covered enough lately, Laiye raised $50 million more. Like UiPath it competes in the RPA world.
Deel, for one, had a good 2020. It hit 20x growth in revenue last year, and recently raised at a $1.25 billion valuation.
And then we closed with two seed rounds raised by recent Y Combinator grads: Here's the Queenly round, and here's the Albedo deal!

We'll see you on Monday.

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The rise of the next Coinbase, thanks to Coinbase Apr 21, 2021

Show notes

For this week’s deep dive Natasha and Alex and Danny wanted to chat crypto. No, not cryptography, but cryptocurrency. The topic has been hot in recent months thanks to Coinbase, recent weeks thanks to the rapid price appreciation in the value of many coins, and in recent days because dogecoin went crazy.

Vote for Equity to win a Webby so that our parents are proud!

So with our minds tuned to the future of money, and commerce, and content, here's the show's rundown:

Recent crypto news has been more than busy, with Venmo adding crypto support, Brian Brooks joining Binance, and the Coinbase direct listing.
But that's not all, there have been a host of NFT marketplaces that have raised millions in the past week. We talk about Rarible, SuperRare, OpenSea, and Dapper Labs. We talk about differentiation, UX, and if more than one marketplace can win.
Dogecoin's to the moon moment had reached a new price high and come down some before our show recorded, but the cryptocurrency's joke apparently is still funny after all these years. Here's a tweet and an article about it.
And the idea that Coinbase's successful direct listing will matter for investors betting on crypto-focused startups is true, at least according to investors. More on that here, and hit us up if you want a sweet discount code to get past that paywall.

Equity is back on Friday with our weekly news roundup. It's going to be a treat. Chat soon!

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Equity Monday: Clubhouse, UiPath, and the crypto flash crash Apr 19, 2021

Show notes

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

First, our news roundup from last week was probably the most fun I've had in a few months, so make sure to catch up on that if you haven't. That said, here's a rundown of what we got into on the show this morning:

The new Clubhouse round has us thinking about what is a good venture-style bet, and what isn't. At least you can't fault the Clubhouse crew for not having conviction.
UiPath raised its IPO range, as expected.
There's an Apple event this week, which caused us to wonder why more startups aren't competing with the giant.
Cryptos have recovered from the flash crash, which had us thinking.
Druva raised $147 million as TechCrunch will report later today, and Razorpay raised even more capital at a newly refreshed valuation.
Finally, DoNotPay had some news, but it's corporate ethos proved even more interesting.

The week is here, everyone! It's Monday! We can do this!

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Do you need a SPAC therapist? Apr 16, 2021

Show notes

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

Natasha and Danny and Alex and Grace were all here to chat through the week’s biggest tech happenings. It was yet another busy week, but that just means we had a great time putting the show together and recording it. Honestly we have a lot of fun this week, and we hope that you crack a smile while we dig through the latest as a team.

Ready? Here's the rundown:

The Coinbase direct listing! Here's our notes on its S-1, its direct listing reference price, and its results. And we even wrote about the impact that it might have on other startup verticals!
Grab's impending SPAC! As it turns out Natasha loves SPACs now, and even Danny and Alex had very little to say that was rude about this one.
Degreed became a unicorn, proving yet again that education for the enterprise is a booming sub-sector.
Outschool also became an edtech unicorn, thanks to a new round led by Coatue and everyone's rich cousin, Tiger Global. The conversation soon devolved into how Tiger Global is impacting the broader VC ecosystem, thanks to a fantastic analysis piece that you have to read here.
Papa raised $60 million, also from Tiger Global. What do you call tech aimed at old folks? Don't call it elder tech, we have a brand new phrase in store. Let's see if it catches on.
AI chips! Danny talks the team through grokking Groq, so that we can talk about TPUs without losing our minds. He's a good egg.
And, finally, Slice raised more money. Not from Tiger Global. We have good things to say about it.

And that is our show! We are back on Monday morning!

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Why expensive workout gear is actually cheap Apr 14, 2021

Show notes

For this week's deep dive Natasha and Alex wanted to dig into the Tonal EC-1, a huge document spread across a number of posts. Our goals were pretty simple: To better understand Tonal's journey, and also to get into the mind of its author.

So we corralled JP Mangalindan into firing up his computer, microphone, and recording software for a chat. Here's what we covered:

What is Tonal, why is it interesting, and why did JP spend so much time learning about the company?
What did he have to leave out of the final report?
His views on fitness gear, and the Peloton effect more broadly
What was it like to write something so gosh darn long?

The Tonal EC-1 comprises four main articles representing about 10,600 words and a reading time of about 43 minutes:

As Natasha is currently -- shh, it's a secret -- working on an EC-1 of her own, we had more than a usual amount of interest in the project. Use code Equity for a super sweet discount to access this story and all of our premium content.

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Equity Monday: Microsoft buys Nuance, Uber isn't dead, and Austin has a new unicorn Apr 12, 2021

Show notes

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

There was a lot to get through, so, in order that we discussed the topics on the show, here's our rundown:

Microsoft is buying Nuance Communications today. The deal is worth around $19.7 billion. The transaction could be viewed as pretty good news for AI startups and the broader private healthtech space. That said, how much bigger should Microsoft be allowed to get by absorbing rival public companies?
Tiger Global is making a wave of bets on Indian startups.
And from the political realms, read this Buzzfeed News story on India and its tech ecosystem, this piece on what's happening with Alibaba, and, finally, this entry discussing the growing divide between the American business and regressive politics.
This morning's headlines: Uber isn't dead! Senator Josh Hawley has an idea. And Darktrace is going public.
On the funding round front, make sure to read about The Zebra's latest, and this neat investment from Africa.

Don't forget that Coinbase is listing this week, yeah? Chat soon!

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