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 — and be sure to check out last week's main ep that dug into Robinhood, Miami, and a host of other topics.

This morning we had a pile of news to get through. Here's the rundown:

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.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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. The good news is that we managed to fit it all into a single episode this week. The bad news is that that means the show is pretty long. Sorry about that!

So, what took us so much time to get through? All of this:

And somehow we still have another entire day before the weeks is up! So much for 2021 calming down after 2020's storms.

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.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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 make sure to check out last week’s main episode and companion chat about Robinhood.

This morning we ran into quite a lot of the same material, with Robinhood back in the news and the stock market looming large. Here's what we talked about:

All that and we are back Thursday, if not before. Hugs and hellos from the Equity crew!

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.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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 hopped online for our weekly show, sans Gamestop news (which you can find here) to talk about all the other busy news happening in startup world right now.

Here's a taste of what we got into:

As always, it was a ton to get through because there is just so much going on. More Monday morning, until then stay cool!

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.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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

This week the team — Natasha and Danny and Alex and Grace — recorded a bonus Equity Shot to help our listeners make sense out of the Gamestop trading bonanza happening all over the internet. The story is fast-moving, and news continues to break (twice during our recording, in fact) about how trading apps such as Robinhood are responding to the tear. Still, this type of story is worth a temperature check and timestamp because it feels like it's a pivotal moment in many ways.

Here's our coverage on the site so far for people playing catch up:

• How Trading Apps are responding to the Gamestop fustercluck - This piece from yesterday started our coverage of the response from trading apps concerning GameStop
• Gamestop, meme stocks, and the revenge of the retail trader - This piece dug into what the initial story was about, with some jokes
• Could meme stocks like gamestop kill bitcoin’s rise? - This piece looks at what the other side of the stonk coin could be
• Robinhood restricts trading in GameStop after retail brouhaha shakes markets - This piece looked into Robinhood's moves from this morning, as the larger story went from huge to tectonic
•  And, we gave a shout out to a good post by The Margins, which gave perspective on how the unescapable Gamestop stock crash will have tough, and not meme-y consequences.

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.

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 make sure to check out last week’s main ep, which was super-packed and a real treat.

This morning the news was heavy, so here's your rundown to get you into the show:

• New funds for Clubhouse! TechCrunch has the story here, but I wonder why the app needs more money this soon. You can lay your own bets on how it performs, but at least it's fun to see consumer stuff get funded.
• Postmates staff are heading for the exits, and there's an IPO coming up that is both huge and under your radar.
• Chamath is doing the SPAC thing again. Again. And Taboola is also going public via a SPAC.
• IMVU raised $35 million
• Pula raised $6 million
• Wolt raised $530 million
• And the hungry SPAC market is only going to get more busy in the coming months. Brace yourself, we are merely a boat on the waves of the news. And this is the latest squall.

Hugs, and we are back Thursday, if not before. 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.

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

This week we — Natasha and Danny and Alex and Grace -- had more than a little to noodle over, but not so much that we blocked out a second episode. We try to stick to our current format, but, may do more shows in the future. Have a thought about that? [email protected] is your friend and we are listening.

Now! We took a broad approach this week, so there is a little of something for everything down below. Enjoy!

• Hims is going to SPAC itself onto the public markets, which should prove interesting for other D2C startups eyeing the same move.
• The final quarter of 2020 and the full year brought an ocean of capital to bear on US startups, something that we delighted in chewing on. Fintech is also hot as all heck.
• Plaid is building a fintech accelerator, which we thought was cool.
• An edtech startup based in Nigeria raised a $7.5 million Series A on the back of a really neat distribution model. The march of live, tech-powered tutoring lives on!
• TripActions raised a pallet of new capital despite having had a somewhat rough 2020 due to the pandemic. It's a fascinating wager, and one that we will track as it earns out.
• There was lots of news in the movement space, including Microsoft helping put $2 billion into self-driving startup Cruise, electric vehicle startup Rivian raising $2.65 billion from Amazon and others, and Bolt Mobility expanding to new markets.
• Danny's GPS story.
• Wattpad exits for $600 million, leading to Alex detailing his love of science fiction.
• a16z is doubling-down on its in-house media project, and Forbes is building out a paid newsletter service that we think is very neat.

Like we said, it's a lot, but all of it worth getting into before the weekend. Hugs from the team, we are back early Monday.

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.

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

This is Equity (Monday) 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 — and make sure to check out last week's two episodes, covering all the news sans ecommerce, and then all the ecommerce news.

We're here on a Tuesday due to an American holiday, but that short break did not mean that the world's news volume slowed down in the slightest. Here's the rundown:

• From the weekend: The story of a fired GitHub employee ended as you expected it would, with a small twist; the Microsoft company's head of HR is leaving. Not sure from this remove is this is a firing, or merely finding someone to axe over the error, but the fact that they are leaving stood out.
• Auto1 Group is going public, and Sequoia wants a piece.
• In more news from German, Personio has put together a $125 million round at a $1.7 billion valuation.
• And Grab, the Southeast Asian food delivery and ride-hailing goliath could raise $2 billion in a 2021 US IPO.
• Turning to this morning: The WhatsApp-India saga continues, Citrix is buying Wrike for $2.25 billion, and American stocks are looking up this morning.
• On the funding round front: LeoCare raised €15 million from Felix Capital, Ventech and Daphni. PPRO raised $180 million at a valuation of more than $1 billion. And Darwinbox raised from Salesforce Ventures, something that we did not know that the American corporate VC did.
• Finally, read this crypto piece.

And that's that for today, we are back in short order on Thursday afternoon!

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.

Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture-capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines. We’re back on this lovely Saturday with a bonus episode!

Again!

There is enough going on that to avoid failing to bring you stuff that we think matters, we are back yet again for more. This time around we are not talking Roblox, we're talking about ecommerce, and a number of rounds -- big and small -- that have been raised in the space. Honest question: do y'all plan to release news on the same week? Are trends a social construct?

From Natasha, Grace, Danny, and your humble servant, here's your run-down:

• Webflow raised $140 million in a round that it says it did not need. This is not a new thing. Some startups are doing well, and don't burn much. So investors offer them more at a nice price. In this case $2.1 billion. (Webflow does no-code
• Checkout.com raised $450 million. The rich really do get richer. In this case the founders of Checkout.com, whose company is now worth around $15 billion Checkout.com does, you guessed, online checkout work. Which as Danny explains is complicated and critical.
• We also talked about this Bolt round, for context.
• And sticking to the ecommerce theme, Rapyd raised $300 million at around a $2.5 billion valuation. There is infinte money available for late-stage fintech.
• Early stage as well, it turns out, with Tradeswell raising $15.5 million to help businesses improve their net margins.
• Finally, ending with a chat on infrastructure, Nacelle closed an $18 million Series A. 

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.

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

This week we -- Natasha and Danny and Alex and Grace -- had a lot to get through, as the news volume in early 2021 has been rapid, and serious. Sadly this means that some early-stage rounds missed the cut, though we did make sure to have some Series A material in the show.

So, what did we the assembled crew get to? Here's your cheat-sheet:

• The demise of the Plaid-Visa deal, our chat with the CEO of the fintech unicorn, and what the failed transaction could mean for startup valuations more broady.
• Why the $1.4 billion Nuvia exit to Qualcomm is impressive in scale, and puzzling. This topic also gave Danny a chance to talk about chips, his favorite thing.
• Auto-insurance rates can often depend on highly variable demographic data like marital status, income, and education. Loop is a new seed-stage startup that wants to make the process more equitable. It landed millions this week, underscoring a broader insurtech wave.
• SuperCharger Ventures pivoted its fintech accelerator into an edtech accelerator! We discuss why the shift and its surprising focus on B2B makes a ton of sense.
• Crypto's going up and down, ahead of the anticipated Coinbase IPO and the known Bakkt SPAC. More on that here.
• Sticking to the SPAC front, SoFi joined the list of companies using black-check companies to approach the public markets.
• As is Talkspace, the tele-therapy startup that you've heard of.
• And then there was SoftBank, of course, which has its own SPAC in the market now, confirming earlier reports. Which makes perfect sense.

There are so many SPACs and bits of IPO news and funding rounds to pick through and cover that we're already straining the time limits of the show to even cover half of the material. This week that meant that we excised a chunk of the show to a forthcoming Saturday episode that is focused on e-commerce.

So, we will talk to you again 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.