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Changes at YC, $1.5B more for ride hailing, and Airbnb buys HotelTonight Mar 11, 2019

Show notes

Hello and welcome back toEquity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines. We’re back to basics this week with Kate Clark at the helm, Alex Wilhelm in the sidecar, and a stack of venture capital news and happenings to get through. And to make everyone feel included, we kicked off the episode with a roll-call of new VC funds. Then, of course, we dug into the recent news out of Y Combinator .

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Bird launches platform to let entrepreneurs manage their own fleet of scooters Mar 08, 2019

Show notes

Bird launches platform to let entrepreneurs manage their own fleet of scooters Bird is launching its new program, Bird Platform, in New Zealand, Canada and Latin America in the coming weeks. First up is New Zealand, where Bird has partnered with a local entrepreneur to manage a fleet of Bird electric scooters. Residents of New Zealand will start to see Bird scooters on the streets next week.

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WellSaid aims to make natural-sounding synthetic speech a credible alternative to real humans Mar 08, 2019

Show notes

Many things are better said than read, but the best voice tech out there seems to be reserved for virtual assistants, not screen readers or automatically generated audiobooks. WellSaid wants to enable any creator to use quality synthetic speech instead of a human voice — perhaps even a synthetic version of themselves. There’s been a series of major advances in voice synthesis over the last couple years as neural network technology improves on the old highly manual approach.

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Clari platform aims to unify go-to-market operations data Mar 07, 2019

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Clari started out as a company that wanted to give sales teams more information about their sales process than could be found in the CRM database. Today, the company announced a much broader platform, one that can provide insight across sales, marketing and customer service to give a more unified view of a company’s go-to-market operations, all enhanced by AI.

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Red Cat wants to track drone flight data on the blockchain Mar 07, 2019

Show notes

Red Cat, a startup that wants to store drone flight data on the blockchain to guarantee immutability, announced the second Beta of its drone data platform today. Jeff Thompson, CEO of Red Cat says in 2017 he was looking at what was holding back the commercial drone business and the need for a black-box kind of system became apparent to him. The so-called black box is really a flight recorder that tracks data about a flight.

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The Silicon Valley exodus continues Mar 06, 2019

Show notes

For a long time, it was the norm for founders to haul their hardware to the 3000 block of Sand Hill Road, where the venture capitalists of “Silicon Valley” would be awaiting their pitches. Today, many of the investors that touted the exclusivity of “The Valley” have moved north to San Francisco, where they have better access to top entrepreneurs.

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Eargo raises $52M for virtually invisible, rechargeable hearing aids Mar 06, 2019

Show notes

Eargo wants to become the ultimate consumer hearing brand. The company’s small and virtually invisible direct-to-consumer hearing aids, which come in an AirPods-style chargeable case, are designed to help destigmatize hearing loss. One month after revealing its newest product — the Eargo Neo ($2,550), which can be customized remotely via the case’s Bluetooth connectivity — the startup has closed a $52 million Series D, bringing its total raised to date to $135 million.

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Jupiter raises $23 million to tell businesses and governments how climate change will destroy them Mar 05, 2019

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Jupiter raises $23 million to tell businesses and governments how climate change will destroy them Whether it’s by flood, fire or the fury of a storm, climate-related catastrophes are now impacting most cities and towns across the country.

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Glossier launches its first spin-off brand, a line of Instagram-friendly ‘dialed-up’ beauty extras Mar 05, 2019

Show notes

Glossier, known for its line of understated makeup products and a cult-following of millennial Instagrammers, is getting colorful with the launch of its first spin-off brand, Glossier Play. The company — led by founder and chief executive officer Emily Weiss, who built the nearly $400 million business from a makeup blog called Into The Gloss — has raised a total of $92 million in venture capital funding from top-tier consumer investors Forerunner Ventures, Index Ventures and IVP.

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Ceros raises $14M for its interactive content platform Mar 04, 2019

Show notes

Cerosallows marketers to create animated, interactive content — but don’t call it a content marketing company. “We think content is just a dry, bland, over-leveraged, oversaturated space,” said founder and CEO Simon Berg. “The goal is not to hack the system, the goal is to make a great experience for your customers.” That’s why he describes Ceros as a platform for creating experiences.

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