Equity

By TechCrunch, Rebecca Bellan, Kirsten Korosec, Anthony Ha, Sean O'Kane, Theresa LoconsoloBusiness Entrepreneurship News Technology Business News

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Equity episodes

February 05, 2022 Making sense of the Paypal and Alphabet earnings
Hello and happy weekend from the Equity crew! We had a busy week, including a Twitter Space with Natasha and Alex taking to the mics to dig into some tasty public-market news. Naturally our show is more startup-focused than public-market centered. But! We can learn a lot from the world of public companies that have a wide footprint inside particular tech niches that matter for younger companies.
So when we digest PayPal's results and what investors did to its value this week, we are not super interested in PayPal per se, but more what its results can tell us about the fintech world more generally. After all, around a fifth of all venture capital dollars invested last year went to fintech startups. And Alphabet, it has deep ties to the public cloud space, and the advertising market, both places where startups live and play.
https://techcrunch.com/2022/01/31/come-hang-with-us-for-live-recordings-of-techcrunch-podcasts-equity-and-found/
We do the occasional live taping on Twitter, so make sure you are following us on the Big Blue Bird App. Hugs! We are back Monday morning!
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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23 min
February 04, 2022Taxing crypto only makes it stronger
We had the full crew aboard today, headed by our killer production team Grace and Chris, and hosting crew Mary Ann, Natasha and Alex.
Last week we promised Cute Farming Robots, and this week we delivered, along with a lot more. But first, the Equity team along with our sister podcast Found are doing live recordings starting soon. You can find out more here, but Equity will be live-taped on Hopin next Thursday. Come hang out, it should be fun!
https://techcrunch.com/2022/01/31/come-hang-with-us-for-live-recordings-of-techcrunch-podcasts-equity-and-found/
Now, the show rundown:
Funding rounds from Pluto (corporate spend in the Middle East), Free Agency (agents for tech talent), and Metafy (video game coaching) got us started. From a host of rounds this week, we chose the most interesting for your delectation. If you want more on gaming, check out our Wednesday show where we niche down into the universe, or in this case, the metaverse.
The new Seven Seven Six fund got us into the crypto investing beat, which Alex explored here earlier in the week. In short: Expect more crypto deals. We also touched on the Indian crypto tax rule, which is a revelation of a regulation.
From there we dove into the fintech realm through the lens of the Bolt fiasco/drama/truth-telling saga. More tweets, please.
And then, we end with a section on autonomous vehicles, that has nothing to do with cars. Yep, we're talkinig Cute Farming Robots, including rounds from Vecna, Electric Sheep, and MongoDB founder doing this, which reminds us that the AWS of robots isn't too far away.
So far, 2022 is feeling good. Along with our soon to be standing live show circuit, we're working hard on making the show more focused on tension and nuance, while still sticking to our love for numbers and nerdy networks. Let's annoy some people this year, and teach you something in the meantime.
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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34 min
February 02, 2022 F*ck creator funds, we need a creator index fund
This is our Wednesday show, where we niche down to a single topic, think about a question and unpack the rest. This week, Natasha and Alex brought on the Most Online™ reporter at TechCrunch, Amanda Silberling to talk about one of her recent pieces, "maybe creator funds are bad."
The column, mixed with the recent saga between Spotify and Joe Rogan, helped us ask a bigger question for this week's episode:
What makes a platform economically viable for creators?
It's no small question. Creators are a key plank in every platform's success, from TikTok to YouTube to Instagram to, well, wherever you watch or listen to stuff made outside of major studios. But the financial relationship between platform and provider -- creator, in other words -- is often fraught and broken.
Creator funds are some proposed fix to the situation, but we find the to be more band-aid than holistic solution. Rev splits are good, and seemingly more sustainable, but with YouTube's ad load reaching truly epic proportions, they may not be a fix-all. So we sat down to chew the fat and try to work towards a solution.
Which we mostly did, except for Alex, who decided that a return to feudalism is the only way forward. We're back Friday! Talk soon!
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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28 min
January 31, 2022Equity Monday: If you don't want to be criticized for your editorial choices, don't make editorial choices
This Monday show actually felt a bit old-school, in that the weekend controversy in tech has spilled over into the working morning, meaning that we need to talk about it. But first, markets:
After the somewhat punishing start to last week, today's trading is somewhat more staid. Global equities are moving, but nothing suicidal, and cryptos are off a bit in the last 24 hours, but up in the last seven days. Naturally, given what has happened in recent trading sessions, all that could change in a moment but at least we're starting in un-choppy waters.
The Joe Rogan furor continued. After several musicians decided to take their music off the service in protest of Spotify's decision to pay for material that those artists viewed as undercutting public health, Spotify made some of its rules public and said that it will append COVID-19 notes to podcasts that discuss the pandemic. We talk about why.
In startup-land, FTX has raised another huge round, TCV is putting more late-stage money into early-stage rounds, and Bamboo raised.
Closing out, changes are afoot in China's venture capital market.
So yes, there's going to be a lot of Twitter drama this week. But don't worry! You can compensate for that by hating on people posting Wordle scores, as that appears to be the latest way to lose friends online.
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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10 min
January 28, 2022Membership, mentorship or just messy
What did we get into? Well, a host of pretty awesome stuff, even if we had to leave Cute Farming Robots in the tank for another few days:
We had funding rounds from Anyplace, which is building a way to make the digital nomad life work in a WFH world, notes on Frost Giant's Series A, which Alex really needs to finish writing up, and Parthean, which Natasha covered and did a great job explaining. Here's to better financial literacy in general. We need it.
Then we chatted through what Mark Cuban is doing with his generic drug play, which we think is at once great (cheaper meds for the folks who need them!) and somewhat sad (how did we get here as a society?). Which of course led us into a conversation about public and private money, and the role that billionaires play in reshaping society.
Next up was a YC credit union DAO that is collecting money from graduates of the accelerator to invest in cyrpto startups. So its a founder rolling fund, right? Kinda.
MENTOR COLLECTIVE
And that's a wrap on another busy week. Good luck in the snow if it's coming your way!
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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33 min
January 26, 2022 Is today's market sad or sane?
This is our Wednesday show, where we niche down to a single topic, think about a question and unpack the rest. This week, Natasha and Alex brought on Bessemer partner Mary D'Onofrio to chat about the public market slump, but more importantly, its trickle down impact on private companies. Our big question was a broad and important one, built off of our most recent three views column for TechCrunch+.
How is this change in market conditions going to affect startups?
As a trio, we chatted about the obvious and non-obvious impact on startups as companies like Peloton, Netflix and indexes like the BVP Nasdaq Cloud Index, flash warning signs. We asked questions like what is ahead for startups that raised at premium valuations during the market peak and how the exit market may shape up in the coming quarters. D'Onofrio gave two particularly hot takes on the future of due diligence and the nearly-shuttered IPO window, so make sure to tune in.
We don't do too many guests on the show these days due in part to our all-virtual recording setup thanks to COVID. But D'Onofrio was a blast to have on, so we'll be asking her back before too long. Enjoy!
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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31 min
January 24, 2022Is the party over?
If you own stuff, I am sorry to report that you are probably poorer today than you were on Friday, and even less wealthy than you were the Friday before. Things are selling off and we had to talk about it:
Stocks are down, and cryptos are getting utterly hammered. It's a bad time to own equities, but worse if you are invested in digital assets. Bitcoin, ether, and Solana are taking body-blows while the stock market wilts. I guess this means that all our 401k contributions will be cheaper in February? Small wins, but still.
Swiggy raised a huge round at a simply enormous price, which is good for the company but has us asking questions. OfficeSpace raised $150 million, which caught our eye, and the recent Spectrum Labs appears to make good sense.
And to close out we asked is the party over? This MG Siegler piece was in our brain as we chewed over the situation. The dissonance between the public and private markets feels peak, and we aren't sure how quickly their diverging velocities can keep up the tension.
Regardless of how the selloff is impacting you, we hope that you have a lovely week and stay warm. Hugs!
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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10 min
January 21, 2022Wordle's Blizzard of transparency
Despite the fact that it is a holiday week here in the United States, tech news was, well, as nuts as it usually is. At this point anything else would be a shock.
So what did we get to? All of this and more:
Rebundle's incredibly neat startup idea, and funding round. We love a Midwest startup here on the show thanks to Alex's roots, which means that when we got to talk about banana fiber, hair extensions, venture capital, and St. Louis all at once, we were hype.
Wheel reinvented itself again with a $150 million Series C, while Gale Health played matchmaker with understaffed shifts and nurses.
Plaid's buy of Cognito, a fintech startup, for around $250 million. The deal had us thinking about the power of APIs, the future of fintech, and why we don't hear about more startup M&A.
Part of the why to that question could be anti-trust pressures, the sort of which that Microsoft is going to hit with its purchase attempt of Activision Blizzard, a gaming company. Microsoft already owns several gaming studios (Mojang, Bethesda), its own gaming platform (Xbox), and has long owned and operated the key PC gaming operating system (Windows). How much more does it need to own?
We also touched on Wordle, free gaming, and the open web in our gaming chat, so lots to unpack there, frankly! Send us your go-to starter word.
Finally, no time like the present to return to no code. At times tech is a bunch of shiny rebrands, but at other times, basic angles become non-negotiable strategies. No code, like AI and ML, is one of them. And companies like Walnut and Softr are snapping up the resulting rewards.
Whew! What a week. If you are tired already, do not look at the calendar. It will only terrify you.
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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30 min
January 19, 2022 How many unicorns are just piñatas filled with expired candy?
This is our Wednesday show, where we niche down to a single topic, think about a question and unpack the rest. This week, Natasha and Alex dared to refresh perhaps the most common conversation in startups these days: the ubiquity, and resulting irrelevance, of unicorns. Our big question wasn't a simple one:
Do we care that the meaning of unicorns has been hollowed out?
The conversation ran the gamut, starting with information on unicorn creation rates, startup hit success and of course, funding booms leading to aforementioned ripple effects. The majority of our time was spent asking more meta questions about the moniker, like how the quality bar has changed for $1 billion dollar companies and why late-stage thinks it needs to act like early stage?
On TC+, we've recently written about the changing characteristics of unicorns, and how public markets may bring a not-so-private reckoning to tech's stars. (For more on the software valuation thing, head here.)
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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23 min
January 18, 2022Equity Tuesday: What to make of the Microsoft-Blizzard deal
This is our Monday (Tuesday) show, our short ramp into the week where we talk about the larger picture to get our feet wet. We're a day late due to an American holiday, and I can say later in the day with this thanks to my schedule. But, better late than never, here's what we got into:
Yet another bad day for assets: Stocks around the world were broadly lower, with software shares taking yet another hit in the key US market.
Microsoft wants to buy Activision Blizzard for nearly $69 billion dollars. It's a lot of money for a gaming studio that was so recently covered in, well, scandal? And really, does Microsoft need to get any bigger? Come on. It has already consumed several gaming companies, and is worth north of $2 trillion. At what point will regulators, you know, regulate?
Clockwise raises $45 million! This is a very neat round from a very cool company, which Aisha Malik covered for TechCrunch earlier today. Her post is here if you need more.
We're back to our normal schedule starting tomorrow, now that the new year and holidays are behind us. To work!
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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7 min

About Equity

From the publisher's feed

The intersection of technology, startups, and venture capital touches everything now. That’s why Equity, TechCrunch's flagship podcast, digs into the business of startups for entrepreneurs and…