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

March 05, 2021SoftBank makes mountains of cash off of human laziness
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 crazy week, but did our best to get through as much of it as we could. Here's the rundown, in case you are reading along with us!
Square is buying Tidal in a deal that some are skeptical of, but one about which we found quite a lot to like.
How capital-as-a-service can get you your first check in 2021, and a nod to Indie.VC, a pioneer in alternative financing for startups that announced it is shutting down net new investments this year.
Oscar Health priced its IPO above its raised range, which was good for it in terms of fundraising. However, since its debut the company has lost pricing altitude. Its declines mimic those of other public neo-insurance proivders in what could be a new trend.

And sticking to the insurtech beat, Hippo is going public via a SPAC. Because everyone else is?

Compass filed its S-1, which triggered a debate on how its different than OpenDoor.
Coupang's IPO is also coming, replete with huge growth, an improving profitability picture, and a massive valuation. This is one to watch.

There was also a whole global news circuit around grocery delivery startups, with Instacart raising at a $39 billion valuation.

And we wrapped with the Surreal seed round that we found to be more than a little spicy. As it turns out, commercialized deepfakes are not merely on the way; they are here.
And with that we are back on Monday. Have a rocking weekend!
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
March 03, 2021$100 million for mealworms
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the number behind the headlines.
This is our Wednesday show, where we niche down and focus on a single topic, or theme. This week we're talking agtech, a surprisingly cool bit of the technology startup world. But Chris and Danny and Natasha and Alex were not alone in their quest to take a look into agtech, we brought alone TechCrunch climate editor Jon Shieber for the ride.
With his help we got through a number of pretty damn interesting things, including:
SESO Labor raising $4.5 million to help farms secure the labor they need, and navigate the American immigration system.
Future Acres looking to raise $3 million for its farming robots. And Farmwise, which last raised $14.5 million and has an idea regarding how to rent robot labor to farms.
We also chatted about Anuvia's epic $103 million raise that could help boost farm yields while cutting carbon emissions.
And Better Origin, which wants to help farmers raise flies to feed to chickens. Which we had a few ideas about.
And that's that! We're back on Friday with our long-form, newsy episode. Thanks to everyone checking out our newest show. Oh, and don't forget about TechCrunch Early Stage and TechCrunch Justice. They are going to rock.
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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20 min
March 01, 2021Equity Monday: More venture money for Europe, and public companies blast off
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 — and be sure to check out our most recent Friday episode, which featured news on Finix and Coinbase and Reddit, among others.
(Also don't forget that Equity is growing! And TechCrunch events are about to kick off and kick some butt.)
Here's what we got into this fine Monday morning:
Skydio raises $170 million, a huge sum for the drone company. Will its market prove large enough, quickly enough for the company to stay VC-ready?
The UK government is putting together a venture fund of sorts? That's mostly cool.

Klarna raises lots of money at a new, bigger valuation. More here on its industry.

Space SPAC one, space SPAC two

And then on the funding round side of things, here's Axonius' very interesting round, and this fun pre-seed deal from Europe!

And finally we chat Oscar Health, a company whose IPO is all sorts of confusing.
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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8 min
February 26, 2021Why are we still dating LinkedIn in 2021?
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. Before we get into this week's show, make sure to check out all the news here about how Equity is expanding, and becoming even more of a thing in 2021! We are beyond hyped about it.
Coming on the back of such a wild news week, we had to cut and cut from the notes doc to get the show to size. So, here's what made the cut:

Coinbase filed to go public. Alex wrote about its S-1 filing here, and Danny riffed on a fascinating nuance regarding its cap table here.

Hopin is raising more money, at an even larger valuation. Every time we cover the latest version of this story, we think it must be the last time. And then it happens again. So, check back here in October for when Hopin raises again.

Reddit also picked up more money. Again. Our take is that the capital must mean that Reddit is a better business than we anticipated.

Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian backed a new community tool proving the monetary value of the community. That led us into a conversation about a professional network for independent workers, and a collaborative workspace for interior design fans.
Toast is said to be on the road to an IPO, and so we riffed on what Olo's IPO can tell us about the Boston-based unicorn.

Shippo raised more money after a big 2020; can the company double again in 2021?

Finix raised $3 million through an SPV filled with over 80 Black and LatinX investors.
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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29 min
February 24, 2021SpaceX is really just SPAC and an ex
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
This is our first-ever Wednesday episode. If you want to learn more about the latest edition of the podcast, head here for more. This week we talked about space, an increasingly active part of the global economy, and a place where we're seeing more and more young tech companies place their focus.
We were lucky to have TechCrunch's Darrell Etherington join us for the show. He's our resident expert, so we had to have him on to chat about the space startup ecosystem. Here's the rundown:
SpaceX has raised a bunch more money, at a far higher valuation. We chat about why it didn't raise more, and how much capital there is available for the famous rocket company.
Starlink came up as well, as the satellite array just put another 60 units into orbit. What is it good for? We have a few ideas.
The second crew member of first all-civilian SpaceX mission revealed, and of course there is an IPO and startup angle involved.
Which brought us to a side conversation on which one of us are most interested in going to space commercially. It's the raised hands feature no one asked for, but take your guesses on who wants to go first and see if you're right.
Regardless, Axiom Space raises $130 million for its commercial space station ambitions
And then there was the Astra SPAC. You can read its deck here. What matters is that we get a look into how fast it plans to ramp future launches. And the answer is fast.
As we get more comfortable in our Wednesday episodes, we'll tinker with the format and the like. As we do, we're always taking feedback at [email protected], or over on Twitter. Hit us up, we're having a lot of fun but are always looking for ways to sharpen the show!
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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20 min
February 22, 2021Equity Monday: Everyone is going public so what's wrong with your startup?
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 — and be sure to check out our last main ep, in which Natasha coins a slogan for a16z that I both hate, and became the headline of the show!
But enough of all of that, we have a lot to get through this morning. Here's what we talked about:
The Weekend: Coinbase at $100 billion? More on that to come. Toast is going public! Probably! Wait Toast the company that laid off staff last year? Yep that Toast! It's not toast! And new rules on online lending in China.
This Morning: Oscar Health put together an IPO price range that is interesting, and Apex Clearing is going public via a SPAC.
Funding Rounds: Gophr raises money! Ageras Group raises money! Promise raises money! It was hard to pick just three, but each of those rounds has something notable about it. Enjoy!
Deeper Dive/Riff: If the public markets will float even the most leaden of startup via a SPAC-balloon, any late-stage startup that doesn't take the ride out of the private markets must either be perfect or too heavy to lift. And if it's the second, we can write it off? Maybe?
And, finally, this is precisely what I feel like this Monday morning. Chat soon and stay safe!
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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9 min
February 18, 2021A16z doesn't invest, it manifests
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. In very good Show News™, Chris is back! He's working on the next iteration of the show, something that you will be able to see starting Very Soon. Get hype!
Today though, we had a delectable dish of dynamic doings, namely news items of the following persuasion:

Bitcoin broke the $50,000 barrier, something that we wanted to talk about. Especially in light of Coinbase's $77 billion valuation. Natasha walked us through some growth metrics, and Alex was sad that he isn't already retired. Danny remains a full-on crypto bull.

And on the blockchain thing, Blockchain.com raised $120 million, proving that there is huge amounts of capital available for the guts-and-bolts tooling of the bitcoin world.

Li Jin, who coined the term 'passion economy', has closed her debut $13 million fund for startups within the same category. She joined other investors in our latest survey on the creator economy's changing tides.
Off of $1 million in ARR, Circle has brought on $4 million in funding at a valuation north of $40 million.

A16z invested in Stir, which helps creators manage and view their various income streams. The funding total was not disclosed, but is reportedly valuing the company, still in beta, at $100 million.

TalkShopLive brought on new cash for live video shopping.

Pipe17 closed an $8 million round that caught our eye. By building a service to help smaller ecommerce operations connect their tooling to one another, the company is betting on smaller ecommerce needing pipes to link up their various software services. This reminded us of Alloy, another neat company in ecommerce automation that also recently raised money.
From there we riffed on the software market itself, its size, and the potential for investors to loosen their rules of intra-portfolio competition.

Public raised $220 million, OutSystems raised $150 million, and Ally.io raised $50 million.
Finally, a wave of edtech startups is over Zoom University and hopes to create much, much better. alternative.
And that's our show! We are back early Monday morning for a packed week. So keep your podcast app warm, we're coming for it.
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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27 min
February 15, 2021Equity Monday: The electric car boom, tech regulation, and some sad American VC data
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 — and be sure to check out our riff on whether SoftBank has another 20 DoorDashes waiting in the wings.
This morning was a more relaxed Monday than I can recall in months, thanks to a holiday in many parts of the world. But that didn't stop us from parsing the news:
The Weekend: This investigation into Clubhouse's data security is getting results, while over the weekend Dispo got huge in a hurry, and the Apple-Facebook dynamic got a better explaining. Increasingly the tech giant world feels like ad engines (Facebook, Alphabet) in opposition to software-and-hardware shops (Microsoft, Apple).
This morning: GM has new electric cars, TechCrunch reports. VW isn't worried about Apple. And every EV company in the world is going public via a SPAC. Who will win? You can place your own bets. And India is loosening some tech regulation. The American stock market is closed.
Funding Rounds: We chatted about the recent Libeo round, and the latest on Nymbus, both of which are more than cool.
And, finally, read this if you want feel let down by American VCs. (American media, to be clear, has similar issues.)
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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9 min
February 12, 2021Does SoftBank have 20 more DoorDashes?
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. This week felt oddly comforting from a tech news perspective: Facebook is copying something, early-stage startup data is flawed enough to talk about, and sweet DoorDash is buying robots for undisclosed sums.
So, here's a rundown of the tech news we got into (as always, jokes aren't previewed so you'll have to listen to the actual show to get our critique and Award Winning Analysis*):
Ethena raising $2 million more for corporate training that is not awful, and Zeta raising $1.5 million for couples' banking. Natasha has been killing the early-stage beat lately.
How Seed data could be getting harder and harder to parse from Alex's desk, and why VC data in general is dicey, from Danny's. We discuss if directional data is useful, and why the limited numbers could have a cultural impact on signal.
Reddit raises $250 million, but doesn't tell us who the investors are and what the money is precisely going to. Still, the company has had quite a year so far so the capital comes at an interesting time.
Justo, an online grocery based in Mexico, raises $65 million as the pandemic continues to shake up the way we live and shop.
DoorDash buys a salad robot, which brings Natasha nostalgia and Danny anger.
The inverted SoftBank J-Curve thesis is a must-listen and read.
And from the world of dating, a big M&A deal that caught our attention, and the latest from the Bumble IPO.
In good news, long-time Equity producer Chris Gates is back starting next week, which means we'll have our biggest crew ever helping get the show put together. And, in other good news, there's going to be more Equity than ever for you to hear. Coming 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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32 min
February 10, 2021 Equity Shot: What's next for the startup software market
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 noticed last week that we had a bevy of software-as-a-service (SaaS) stories that we wanted to chat about. So we decided to break them out into their own episode.
What came out of the conversation is a mix of optimism, sarcasm, and healthy doubt regarding what's next for SaaS. SaaS matters as it is an incredibly popular business model for startups, a way to generate high-margin recurring incomes. Indeed, it's almost the default method for revenue generation amongst startups today.
But precisely what SaaS is, and how it works, appear to be moving targets.
This piece by our own Danny Crichton, for example, digs into a trend that he has noticed in the broader software space, namely startups taking a single task, or feature, and providing it in a manner that ascribes to best practices. For example, online checkout tech has been around since the dawn of the Internet. And yet Rapyd and Fast and Checkout.com and others are raising oceans of capital to provide checkout solutions to other companies. Why? They offer best practices-like services.
From there we talked about the inclusion of humans into software, which isn't a radical concept but has new weight considering the information overload world we live in. The whole concept of having an Airtable hotline to answer each and every random question we have seems like music to our ears, what about yours?
And finally we discussed the growing use of on-demand pricing over traditional SaaS. Danny asked if this is really something new, which we discussed. Perhaps we're seeing more on-demand pricing in modern software companies thanks to not only the success of companies like Snowflake, but also growing ranks of API-delivered startups.
Overall it was fun to niche down to a single theme, something we rarely get to do on the main show. Expect more of this from us in the following months!
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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15 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…