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 don't forget to check out the extra episode we dropped on Saturday, as there was just too much to talk about last week.

So, what's on the docket for today? A great host of things:

• Trump was broadly deplatformed, which is controversial not only amongst his political allies and acolytes, but also amongst those worried that fringe-yet-not-wrong views could suffer in the future.
• Parler, a Twitter clone that tried to claim the mantle of free speech -- despite having posting rules -- was cut off by major tech companies over its inability to censor calls for violence. It had recently hit #1 in the App Store.
• Bitcoin and other cryptos are in correction, as the stock market preps to give back some recent gains. All this while the electric car market keeps getting hotter and hotter as Chinese tech companies link up with auto makers to get their own vehicles into the market.
• On the funding round front, Ajaib Group raised $25 million as the low-cost trading boom grows around the world. And, Keep, a Chinese fitness app, raised a megaround.

Closing, I am befuddled by how dissonant the global economy feels, with seemingly two different eras going on at once. It's not clear if I have finally become the softy I have always threatened to become, or merely that the inequality of outcomes in the 2020-2021 economy are merely as heartbreaking as I imagine them to be.

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!

The normal crew assembled, including Alex, Natasha, Danny, and Chris, to chatter about a chunk of creator and gamer news. And some big numbers, the sorts that we always find fun to chat about.

A sneak peek at what we discussed during this second-ever Equity Leftovers:

• Roblox's epic pre-IPO raise, and its decision to go public through direct listing instead of the IPO that it had previously planned.
• Niantic buying a gaming platform with an esports-focus.
• Nintendo buying a gaming studio, leading the crew to declare that the famous company is the Disney of video games.
• Cameo, which allows fans to pay celebrities for personalized messages, is on a hiring spree after bringing in $100 million in transactions last year. The Information says that the company is seeking funding, which isn't entirely surprising. Axios reports that it has brought in a couple high-profile hires, as well.

Back to our regular schedule Monday! Chat then!

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. Happy 2021, or as our own Danny Crichton aptly names it, December 38, 2020.

Equity crew is back to start the new year in full force, with Alex, Natasha, and Danny on the mics and Chris behind the scenes. The reunion led to extreme Dad joke energy from all of us, which helped get through the mountain of tech news that we had in front of us.

In fact, there was so much to talk about that we have a bonus episode coming out Saturday dealing with Roblox and the gaming environment. Stay tuned.

For now, here's what's in today's episode:

• The remote work space is rushing to cure your Zoom fatigue, or at least give you new ways to handle it. This week, we saw GitHub alumni raise millions for a video repository tool, and Teamflow raise more for a virtual platform meant to mimic the serendipity (and productivity) of your currently-shuttered office.
• WeLink raised a $185 million Series A round and, while we could have made financial nomenclature jokes, there was much to unpack on the opportunity of 5G and wireless.
• Divvy locked down $165 million, making itself a unicorn in the process. Consider this one another win for Utah, and a big moment for the company itself, which is working in a very competitive space.
• We also noted a series of new VC funds that closed in the final days of 2020, including One Way, USV, Learn Capital, and Madrona.
• Hopin went shoppin', picking up StreamYard for a quarter-billion because they thought it was boppin'. Please forgive our attempt at poetry. Regardless, Hopin spent $250 million for StreamYard, a livestreaming technology platform that it intends to operate independently. The combined company has around $65 million in annual recurring revenue, with the purchased-entity bringing $30 million of that on its own. A big deal.
• Twitter is also out in the market with a checkbook, picking up a podcasting app and a design studio.
• And on the podcast front, Amazon is also in the market. This brings up the question, what really is Amazon Prime, anyways?
• Finally, we had few words on why P&G backing off from buying Billie impacts DTC startups everywhere. 

As you can tell by our laughs and jokes this week, it is really good to be back. Enjoy the show, and don't forget the Saturday extra!

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 don’t forget to check out the second of our two holiday eps, the most recent looking at what we think might happen this year.

What did we get into today? A great question. Here's the rundown:

• Tesla reported pretty strong deliveries, as did smaller electric vehicle companies. What the strong figures could mean for startups, however, remains to be seen.
• Bitcoin had a pretty good end to the year, which could bolster Coinbase's impending IPO.
• Hundreds of workers at Alphabet want to unionize.
• Didi could go public this year, which means we could see a third ride-hailing company provide us access to its numbers. Please!
• CRED raised $81 million in a huge Series C. Our reporting indicates that the company is now worth more than $800 million.
• Disco, a legaltech startup, has raised $40 million in debt to cap off a $100 million round.
• And here's the Seed link, as promised.

Mostly we're still making sure that our brains still work and that the return of work really is here. Taking a break was nice. Now the news is coming back, so we are as well. Hugs, and chat Thursday.

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.

What could go wrong?

Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture-capital-focused podcast (now on Twitter!), where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines. As you can see, this is our yearly predictions episode. Our behind-the-scenes guru Chris Gates joins us on the mic, we take shots at our prior prognostications, and nosh on what we feel is positively persaged.

As always, this episode is in good fun. If you don't agree with we think is up ahead, that's fine. You're probably right. But we're nothing if not up for a challenge, so we kept the tradition alive this year.

This is the last Equity episode of 2020. And while we can't tell you yet what our plans are for 2021, we can say -- nay, project -- that there are a lot of fun and big things coming for Equity. We're planning our busiest year ever, by far.

And with that, we're out of here. Thanks for several million downloads this year, our biggest annum to date.

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 don’t forget to check out the first of our two holiday eps, the last one talking to VCs about what surprised them in 2020.

Anyhoo, from vacation, here's what Chris and I got up to:

• A report looking at how ecommerce changed during 2020.
• The epic carnage surrounding the Chinese government's clamping down on its tech sector (more here, and here from TechCrunch).
• Lalamove raised $515 million in a Series E.
• Yuanfudao raised another $300 million.
• Indian startups did not have the strongest year of venture fundraising, which felt a bit surprising.
• And it doesn't appear that Japan did either.
• But here in the United States, holy shit things were bonkers.

Tune in Thursday for one more fun episode, and then we're back to regular programming the week after!

Equity drops every Monday at 7:00 a.m. PST and Thursday afternoon as fast as we can get it out, so subscribe to us on

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 (now on Twitter!), where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.

Today is our holiday look-back at the year, bringing not only our own Danny and Natasha and Chris and Alex into the mix, but also five venture capitalists who we got to leave us their notes as well. The goal for this episode was to reflect on a year that no one could have ever predicted, but with a specific angle, as always, on venture capital and startups.

We asked about the biggest surprise, non-portfolio companies to watch, and trends they got wrong and right. There was also banter on Zoom investing (Alex came up with Zesting, but taking suggestions if anyone come up with a better moniker), and startup pricing.

Here's who we asked to call into our super Fancy Equity Hotline:

• Sarah Kunst, Cleo Capital
• Turner Novak, Gelt
• Lolita Taub, The Community Fund
• Garry Tan, Initialized
• Iris Choi, Floodgate

Thanks to them all for participating, and of course you, our dear Equity listeners, for a blockbuster year for the podcast.

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 don’t forget to check out our latest main episode, which spent a good bit of time talking about OnlyFans.

The weekend was busy, as always, so there was a lot of chew over this morning. Here's a partial list:

• SoftBank is going to put together a number of SPACs.
• Indian fintech Pine Labs has raised $75 million to $100 million at a valuation of around $2 billion
• RealPage is selling to private equity for $9.6 billion
• Zoom is under fresh scrutiny here in the US
• Bolt has raised $75 million more in a Series C1. We talk about why that's fun, and its current competition.
• Group14 has raised a $17 million Series B that has us thinking about the future.
• And WorkWhile wants to help hourly workers and employers get along better.

Closing, here's the Owen Thomas piece that I mentioned at the very end of 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.

Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast (now on Twitter!), where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.

For the first time in donkey's years, we didn't have our full crew this week. Instead, we had just Natasha and Chris and myself -- we had to survive without Danny while he took the week "off" to "relax."

But our depleted ranks did not mean that news was waiting for us to reassemble. Indeed, there was a mass of stuff to get through:

• Atlanta-based Presso raised $1.6 million for its in-unit dry cleaning tech, which we thought was neat.
• OpenSensors raised $4 million for its air-monitoring tech after a history of bootstrapping.
• Lantern, which helps folks plan for their death, is having a big year. It raised $1.4 million.
• Public raised $65 million, the same week that Robinhood came under fire by the Massachusetts securities group, and the SEC. Robinhood will pay $65 million to settle the SEC's charges without admitting wrongdoing.
• And then in the world of product, we chatted about Substack's new Reader service, which we seem like. (We also chatted about this Taylor Lorenz piece.)
• It was also prime season to chat a little about what's new in the bitcoin world, and take a peek at the stock market's recent over-success. Roblox, see you in 2021.

And for everyone who made it to the end, here are the pieces from Axios and The Information that we mentioned.

Before we say goodbye, our very own Natasha is taking on Startups Weekly, a long-time TechCrunch Newsletter. Subscribe to it for her debut issue, and while you're at it, check out Alex's The Exchange which goes out the same day and means the Equity conversation can continue well into your weekends.

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 big news, chats 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 don’t forget to check out last Thursday’s episode that dug into the impact of celebrity endorsement, and investment.

This morning we had a lot to get through, so here are the headlines:

• Stocks are set to rise as the COVID-19 vaccine is initially rolled out.
• Vista Equity Partners will purchase Pluralsight for $3.5 billion. Good news for edtech? Kinda.
• Reddit is buying Dubsmash, causing us to ask just what the message board unicorn is building.
• EA is buying Codemasters.
• Appboxo has raised $1.1 million, IntellectoKids has raised $3 million, and Cledara has raised $3.4 million.
• We were also in love with this startup's funding news.
• And, finally, in light of the Roblox IPO delay, we wonder who else might be on track to cut loose their 2020 plans for an early 2021 re-jigger. Not that such a delay is really that bad, but with 2021 expected to be a hot year for debuts, kicking off with delays and pricing worries would be a real bummer.

We didn't get to the Google story or the huge hack news. So, there's more to read if you are so inclined.

And that is the show! Hugs and good vibes 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.