Equity

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.Our live show is this week! And we're very excited about it! Details here, and you can register here. It's free, of course, so swing by and hang with us.Back on theme, we had a lot to get through this morning, so inside the show you can find the following and more: The Chinese cryptocurrency clampdown is a big damn deal: With lots of the nation's mining capacity heading offline, there's a scramble to relocate rigs and generally figure out what a crypto market sans China might look like. In the wake of the news, the value of cryptocurrencies fell. As did shares of Coinbase this morning in pre-market tradi

Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.This week, Natasha and Danny, otherwise known as your two new favorite Book influencers (inside joke, you'll get if you listen to the show), hopped on the mics to take everyone threw the news, with Grace and Chris in the background.Here's what we got into: Wise announced plans to go public via direct listing, making it the biggest company to use this route to debut on the London Stock Exchange. Andreessen Horowitz goes into publishing with Future, so Danny and Natasha took turns fawning over why everyone has hot takes about a blog, and what could be in the future for Future. Harry Stebbings turned up the volume on 20VC with new $140M fund. Natasha broke down why it matters for emerging fund managers, and why it might quiet some concerns about the growth potential of micro-funds. After we left our usually programmed media and venture conversation, we turned to communi

Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.For this week’s deep dive, Natasha and Danny unpacked the Expensify EC-1, which includes a ton of surprises, building tips, and, as we discuss in the show, some life lessons as well. This is our largest EC-1 to date, and is the result of six months of prodigious work from the inimitable Anna Heim. Of course, we had to add our Equity spin on the feature and boiled down our favorite musings into a succinct episode.Here's what we got into:Expensify's silent period as a fun dynamic to deal with as reportersThere's always an Uber angle, and Expensify is no different when you realize its early roots are tied to entrepreneur Travis Kalanick's persuasionHow Expensify manages to stay slim, focus in a rural town in Michigan, and achieve profitabilityNatasha asked if lack of structure negatively or positive impacts minorities and underrepresented folk, while Danny explained a nifty way that th

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 morning coffee chat with you that is all about the weekend, what to expect this week, and some funding rounds you may have missed. I'm subbing in for Alex Wilhelm today, who is deservedly out on vacation. You can find me on Twitter @nmasc_, and Equity on Twitter (turn on those notifications!) @equitypod. Biden and world leaders are congregating at the NATO summit, which kicks off this week. Also, the Dublin Tech Summit is happening on Thursday with yours truly, other TC folks, and many entrepreneurs making a virtual appearance.Now, onto the news!  The weekend: The seat next to Jeff Bezos as he launches into space just got filled for $28 million. Also, Elon Musk tweeted about how Tesla might start accepting Bitcoin as a payment once at least half of it can be mined using clean energy. The comment sent Bitcoin up more than a few percentage points, hoverin

Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.We're closing our survey soon, so this is your last chance (probably) to get your voice heard!Despite it being a short week, as always, it was a busy, busy time. We had Grace on the dials today, and Danny, Natasha, and Alex making chit-chat about the tech world. As with every week this year, we had to cut and cut and cut to get the show down to size. Here's what made it in in the end: Medium saw more employees depart the company after CEO Ev Williams published a 'culture memo.' While the Medium memo doesn’t wholly ban politics, some allege that the undertone of the statement, timed weeks after a failed unionization attempt, created an unsafe environment. A week later, Natasha covered another controversy, this time at Y Combinator. We riff on the takeaway, and what this story looks like three months from now. The issue of company culture is attracting companies. Or more preci

For this week’s deep dive, Alex, Natasha, and Chris dug into the world of hormonal health, a sub-sector within the massive (and booming) world of digital health.The show was inspired by Natasha's latest Extra Crunch piece: "Hormonal Health is a massive opportunity: Where are the unicorns?". To round out the show, we asked one of the featured founders, Dr. Elizabeth Ruzzo, to hop on the mic and help us understand if hormonal health is at its infancy, or at an inflection point, in tech.The tl;dr before we hop into the show is that hormones -- while constantly evolving and changing -- are center node for a ton of health conditions that disproportionately impact women. These can include mental health issues, infertility, diabetes, and more. If you're someone interested in the world of digital health and always read about the Ro's and Hinge Health's of the ecosystem, this episode will teach you what else there is that deserves equal - if not more - attention.Here's what we got into:We started with landscaping! We

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.It's WWDC week, so expect a deluge of Apple news to overtake your Twitter feed here and there over the next few days. But there's a lot more going on, so let's dig in:The Weekend: A supercharged, supercharged Model S Tesla car is not coming out. Instead, a merely supercharged version will come out. It's still stupid fast and expensive. And Nigeria's war with Twitter continued, with new efforts from the African nation to limit access to the social media service within its borders.This Morning: Flipkart is raising $3 billion at a roughly $40 billion valuation The deal underscores not just how big the Indian tech s

Despite it being a short week, as always, it was a busy busy time. Our regular Friday producer Grace was under the weather today, so Chris stepped in to help out.And as noted at the top of the episode, we're running a survey. The survey is here, dear Equity family. Please fill it out so that we can keep making the show better.That aside, here's what Danny and Natasha and Alex got into:Stack Overflow has a new owner, and a $1.8 billion sale price that is minting 61 new millionaires in the process.Katerra is dying, as in going to zero. As the company has been a regular feature of TechCrunch coverage, we had to discuss its end. You can also catch up on Greensill here if that's your jam.Back on the acquisition front, Etsy is buying Depop for $1.625 billion. Our take is that the deal makes good sense, even if it is not cheap.Amazon is now open to being sued after an overwhelming number of arbiration claims were filed. Also we get to talk about everyone's favorite judge's writing style.Unit raised money to help tea

For this week’s deep dive, Alex and Natasha dug into the burgeoning of sports media, sports gaming, and fantasy sports world today through the lens of some early-stage startups. Naturally, the Equity team is what comes to mind when you consider the correct and right people to discuss sports. We are here to back up your priors.Jokes aside, we had a good time digging into the following:THE GIST raised $1 million. Both Natasha and Alex were very bullish on the company's product, focus, and market. Especially in light of some recent media deals that have kept our hearts aflutter over the last few quarters.Blaseball raised $3 million. Whether it is blah-ZAY-ball, or BLACE-ball, the Equity team thinks that having fantasy fantasy sports is meta, good fun, and perhaps appeal-broadening the larger, somewhat hoary world of baseball. Also baseball could use more whimsy in general.And the fantasy talk continued as we got to cricket, which is a massively adored and obsessed over sport in India especially. Earlier this yea

Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.This is Equity Tuesday, 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.We are back from a long weekend here in America. But not break here in the States can stop the flow of global tech news. So, here's the rundown:The Weekend: Tata bought BigBasket, setting up a fascinating ecommerce war in India. China is cracking down on edtech companies, leading to an IPO freeze. And Wejo is going public via a SPAC. You can read its investor deck here.This Morning: The are a zillion funding rounds in Europe and globally this morning, the start of what could be a super busy week's cycle. Private Equity is buying Cloudera, which is a surprise. Nio had chip shortage issues that impacted its deliv

Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.This week had the whole crew aboard to record: Grace and Chris making us sound good, Danny to provide levity, Natasha to actually recall facts, and Alex to divert us from staying on topic. It's teamwork, people - and our transitions are proof of it.And it's good that we had everyone around the virtual table as there was quite a lot to get through:Team felt all kinds of ways about the Amazon-MGM deal. Some of us are more positive about than the rest, but what gists out from the transaction is that for Amazon, the purchase price is modest and the company is famously playing a supposedly long-game. Let's see how James Bond fits into it. Alex receives four points for not bringing up F1 thanks to the Bond-Aston Martin connection.Turning to the SPAC game, we chatted through the recent Lordstown Motors earnings results, and what we can parse from them regarding blank-check companies, promi

For this week’s deep dive, Alex and Natasha dug into Danny's latest mega-project: A long, fascinating, and deeply-reported series into the world of disaster tech. It's all about the market, startups, and their backers, so it was perfect fare for our Wednesday episode, in which we dive deep into a single topic.Part 1: The most disastrous sales cycle in the worldPart 2: Data was the new oil, until the oil caught firePart 3: When the Earth is gone, at least the internet will still be workingPart 4: The human-focused startups of the hellfireWe were super curious why Danny had picked disaster tech to niche into, as we hadn't heard that much about it, frankly. But past the fact that it's a world where sales cycles can last as long as House Congressional tenures, there was quite a lot to get into:Consumer: Dorothy wants to to provide bridge loans to folks who get rekt by a hurricane. As government, and insurance money can take ages to arrive, the startup could be onto something. and Perimeter wants to take data, and

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.After a somewhat quiet weekend, things are kicking off in rapid-fire fashion this week. Here's what you need to know:The cryptocurrency selloff that was in full-swing on Friday continued over the weekend. Though bitcoin and ether managed to recoup some of their losses since they set new local minima, the value of popular cryptos is vastly depressed compared to recent highs.Looking ahead, it's the final day of arguments at the Epic Games vs. Apple trial. And we're seeing a smaller company try to crack some of the hold that a major tech incumbent enjoys over a huge piece of the digital economy. So, if you like sta

Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.This week was good fun not only because we had the whole team together to record, but also because we are still basking in the endless glory of our winning a Webby earlier this week. Frankly we are still shocked. But happy-shocked, like when you get a new toy and it is covered in static electricity.Anyhoo, we had a packed show with much, much left on the floor as we tried to shoehorn the week into our time slot. Here's what we got into: The world of connections: Fave raised $2.2 million to connect fandoms, Somewhere Good raised $3.75 million to build feedless micro-communities, and both Spokn ($4 million) and Spot ($5 million) are hoping to use the spoken word to connect companies and their staffs. Honestly we think that the overall connection-community world is super exciting. Piano, one of those startups we actually have the luck of using, raised $88 million for analytics,

This is our Wednesday show, where we niche down to a single topic and go deep. This time Natasha and Alex corralled TechCrunch transportation editor Kirsten Korosec to talk to us about the endless parade of EV SPACs, and more. Before we get into the show notes, you can follow Equity on Twitter here.https://twitter.com/kirstenkorosec/status/1394726967203667969And, because we are proud, we won a Webby! Our show! How cool is that? Thank you for love listening, hate listening, all of it. We are so thankful.Ok, here's what we talked about:Why is every electric vehicle company going public via a SPAC, and why is there so much potential fraud in the space? Kirsten has some notes on the matter, but it boils down to money in both cases.The Bird-SPAC deal in all its glory. You can read Alex and Kirsten's dive into the Bird investor deck here. We had questions like why was the shared scooter model ever considered viable, and, how did the company improve its economics during a pandemic? The SPAC world never, ever disappo

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.There was lots to get through today, so, in order, here's the rundown: Early-stage founders can still apply for the impending Disrupt Battlefield even. You can sign up here if that's you. It's going to be a lot of fun tbh. From the weekend: San Francisco real estate is a mess; Twitter Blue is coming and I am hype about it; Elon Musk roiled crypto markets by being himself, which doesn't speak too highly of the asset class. AT&T is getting out of the TV game to some degree, selling media assets to help pay down debt. Just like Verizon did by selling TechCrunch and family to Apollo. We also chat

Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.The fully-vaxxed and officially fully-immune took over the podcast this week, with Natasha and Danny co-hosting the show while the inimitable Alex is out from Shot #2. Grace and Chris, as always, were behind the scenes making sure we sound pretty and don't fall down too many punny board game rabbit holes after vacation.Here's the rundown of what we got into: Crypto crashed -  thanks to either Elon or the guy who created Ethereum and then donated some to relief efforts for COVID-19.  We debated how signal gets lost and rediscovered and lost again in this news cycle, and what that means for anyone in tech trying to get a pulse of. what's actually happening. One symptom of market craze and disconnected booms? A startup named Caplight that wants more people to buy and sell short positions on private startups.  We then pivoted into the last bit of our 'The World Is Melti

For this week’s deep dive, Alex and Danny unpacked Natasha's latest project: The Duolingo EC-1. The 12,000 word four-part series was published last week and is worth a read. But, until you get to it, enjoy our podcast that doubles-clicks into its most interesting bits.[caption id="attachment_2146587" align="aligncenter" width="482"] Duo, Duolingo's mascot, flying around. Image Credits: Duolingo [/caption]Here's how it went, after we got our morning allergy banter out of the way:What's an EC-1? A TechCrunch-style deep-dive into one of the startup world's most promising, and interesting companies.What's with the flying vermin up above? That's Duolingo's mascot. Which is a combination of hypercutness and modest menace. (You will have fun learning a language. Or the owl will visit.)Why did we write about Duolingo? No, it wasn't only because Duolingo is edtech. Natasha dug into the company's product-led growth mode, and its views on gamification, which were fascinating.What's up with today's show name? As it turns

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 weekend was all about memecoins. And I am sorry about that. But Equity doesn't run the world, sadly, it merely notes what is going on: Dogecoin dropped during Elon Musk's SNL appearance. Which was somewhat ironic. Also there's another memecoin that is skyrocketing. Palantir, DoorDash, Airbnb, Alibaba will report earnings this week, amongst others. Clubhouse is finally coming to Android. In the United States. By invite. So, if that's you, congrats, welcome to the app. A major cyberattack and ransom situation in the United States is a data point, yet again, that we're woefully unprepared for c

Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.The whole team was aboard for this recording, with Grace and Chris behind the scenes, and Danny, Alex, and Natasha on the mics. We had to cut more than we included this week, which should give you a good idea of how busy the startup and VC worlds are of late.Make sure that you are following the podcast on Twitter, where we post all sorts of memes and cuts and, perhaps, the occasional video here and there. That aside, here's the rundown:Investing legend David Swenson passed away.Twitter is buying Scroll (neat, very cool) as part of its subscription push, but also killing Nuzzel in the process (bad, very uncool). Natasha and Danny fill us in on why Nuzzel will be missed. Alex has thoughts on why Twitter-Scroll is good.Epic bought ArtStation and cut its marketplace take rate. This is the future, says Danny, who throws his own estimates in, too.Sony and Discord are tying up after the Mi