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 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 Friday’s episode that we wound up titling “Th O’s r ptinal, th dllrs r mndtry," a joke that if we observe the weekend's podcast analytics, was a mistake.

Lesson learned!

But in better news there was lots to get to this morning, so here's a digest of what we talked about:

• More good vaccine news is scrambling the stock market yet again, dinging tech stocks and bolstering non-tech shares. This also happened last Monday, but was swallowed up by terrible COVID-19 numbers by Friday.
• ProfitWell data on SaaS and the pandemic proves to be largely good news.
• C3.AI filed to go public, more on that shortly on the main site.
• UIPath could go public early next year at a $20 billion valuation.
• SpaceX pulled off its latest rocket launch, sending four humans into space.
• Parler is partially living off ultraconservative cash.
• MindTickle raised $100 million from the second Vision Fund. Its revenue growth is impressive, at 170%.
• Thoughtexchange wrapped its Series B at a total size of $34 million.
• Pharmapacks raised $250 million from Carlyle. That's a big check.
• Catch up on our DoorDash IPO coverage, if you need to. Here's our overview, here's the VC winners' list, and here's what COVID-19 did for the delivery company.

Do not sleep on the fact that our own Chris Gates is posting Equity videos from every main episode over on YouTube. He does a great job and it’s fun to be on video, as well as audio platforms.

We hope you are rested and ready to go for the rest of the week. Chat as soon as Airbnb files.

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.

The full Equity crew was on hand to debate the current venture capital market, curious about how risk-on, or risk-off things really are today. Danny, Natasha and I framed the conversation around a number of news items from the week, including:

• Wrkfrce has launched, and we wanted to chat more about the future of niche media, bringing The Juggernaut's own recent round, and the Quartz shakeup into the conversation.
• And on the media front -- always a risky venture capital investing domain -- Spotify has snapped up another podcasting company, this time paying $235 for Megaphone. Our take? A string of small exits probably won't encourage VCs to take on more risk in the space (Hunter Walk said the same thing here.)
• Turning to risk more generally, I asked Natasha to weigh in on the earlier-stages of the venture market, and Danny on its later tranches. There's still lots of money, but it appears more focused on chasing winners than bolstering or supporting less-obvious startups.
• That market is not slowing a risk-on move towards more venture capital players, as the Spearhead news showed a new focus for the firm to invest in emerging fund managers.
• And there's still plenty of risk tolerance in remote-work solutions like Hopin, which just raised $125 million at a $2+ billion valuation. We're torn on the round, but Danny likes it and he's a former VC.
• And we wrapped with a chat about upcoming IPOs, and the recent SoftBank results. If DoorDash, Airbnb and others are going to go this year, they need to go soon. So far, no dice.

It was a busy week, despite the month. Expect more of the same next week.

https://techcrunch.com/2020/11/12/how-softbanks-vision-fund-turned-losses-into-gold-this-summer/

Finally, don't forget that our own Chris Gates is cutting Equity videos out of every episode that you can find over on YouTube. He does a great job and it's great to be on video, as well as audio platforms.

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 Friday’s episode that we wound up titling "Fortnite is actually a SaaS company."

It makes sense in context, I promise.

Anyway, here's what's on today's show:

• Joe Biden was elected President and the stock market is not mad about divided government.
• Positive vaccine news sent many stocks sharply higher this morning, but not all. Some pandemic-favored tech companies instantly dropped double-digit percentage points of value.
• Esign raised $151 million, showing strength in the Chinese startup market, and the esignature space.
• And this neat Series B for Cellwize caught our attention this morning.
• Finally, a warning. The stuff that is changing lately may begin to change a bit less. We've lived in the pandemic economy long enough now that it's hard to recall what life was like before. But, we'd best start remembering as there's a lot that is going to change in the next few quarters.

This has been a wild to start the week, but with good news.

I suppose a vaccine was always going to eventually make it to this step, but, that said, the United States is seeing record COVID-19 cases today. So mask up and let's get as many of us across the line as we can.

Equity drops every Monday at 7:00 a.m. PDT and Thursday afternoon as fast as we can get it out, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts.

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.

What a week from us here in the United States, where the election is still being tabulated and precisely zero people are stressed at all. But, no matter what, the wheels of Equity spin on and so Danny and Natasha and Alex and Chris got together once again to chat all things startups and venture capital.

• Up top there was breaking news aplenty, including a suit from the US government to try and block the huge Plaid-Visa deal. And, it was reported that Airbnb will drop its public S-1 filing early next week. That IPO is a go.
• Next we turned to the gaming world, riffing off of this piece digging into the venture mechanics of making and selling video games. Our hosting crew had a few differences of opinion, but were able to agree that Doom 3 was a masterpiece before moving on.
• Then it was time to talk Ant, and what the hell happened to its IPO. Luckily with Danny on deck we were in good hands. What a mess.
• Prop 22 was passed, which effectively allows Uber, Instacart, and Lyft to keep their gig workers labeled as independent contractors, instead of employees. As a result, Uber and Lyft stocks soared, while gig worker collectives said that the fight is still on.
• Natasha scooped a series of Election Day filings from venture capital firms. In the mix: Precursor Ventures Fund III, Hustle Fund II, and Insight Partner's first Opportunity Fund.
• And finally, despite Election Day turning into an entire week, the public markets are rallying. Will we see a boom of IPOs?

And, as a special treat, we didn't even mention Maricopa county for the entire episode. Take care all!

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 Friday’s episode that was honestly very good fun.

This morning was a somewhat odd episode of our Monday show, in that the American election is tomorrow. Still, some things happened. So, here they are:

• Match, Uber, Alibaba, Square, Dropbox, EA, and Roku are expected to report earnings this week.
• The UK's venture capital industry is even less focused on investing in diverse founders than you thought, with our own Natasha Lomas reporting that "all-ethnic teams received an average of just 1.7% of the venture capital investments made at seed, early and late stage" between 2009 and 2019.
• The edtech boom is lifting all boats, it seems, not just those that belong to startups. Chegg's growth is picking up media attention.
• Marshmallow raised $30 million for its auto-insurtech product. The insurtech market is super hot these days, after the Lemonade and Root IPOs.
• Tencent led $50 million into Zego, another company that wants to provide video communications services to other companies.
• Warren raised $1.4 million to help regional cloud providers sell globally.

The American election reaches its zenith tomorrow, before a period of vote counting begins. It's going to blot out the sun this week, news-wise. But then it will be over.

Equity drops every Monday at 7:00 a.m. PT and Thursday afternoon as fast as we can get it out, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts.

https://techcrunch.com/2020/10/31/equity-shot-boo-its-the-halloween-earnings-special/

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.

As promised, the whole gang is back, this time to chew on the biggest, baddest, worstest, and most troubling earnings reports from the current cycle. This week saw Amazon and Alphabet and Microsoft and Apple and Facebook report, along with a host of smaller companies.

Spoiler alert: there were more tricks than treats.

• Danny, Natasha and Alex wanted to get to the bottom of the big tech results, asking what really mattered from each of them?
• Then it was time to dig into themes. We saw plan price increases coming from Netflix and Spotify, advertising getting a boo-st from politics and 2020's overall meltdown, and boo-ming billions of consumer interest in...desktops.
• After that, a dive into the results of smaller SaaS and cloud companies, picking out trends that might help us see around the corner a bit; is the tech boom slowing, or is corporate growth merely failing to keep up with inflated investor expectations?
• This week felt like a shudder ran through the spine of our economy. The earnings paint a neutral picture, which isn't exactly an exhale to rejoice over. The coronavirus continues to be a threat that poses a risk to public businesses. For startups, that could mean a less frothy exit market nad lower valuations. And for the public, it means that the uncertain is still ahead of us. So wear a mask.

And with that, the show is back Monday morning. Have a good weekend, everyone.

Equity drops every Monday at 7:00 a.m. PDT and Thursday afternoon as fast as we can get it out, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts.

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.

A few notes before we get into this. One, we have a bonus episode coming this Saturday focused on this week's earnings reports. And, second, we did not record video this week. So, if you like watching the show on YouTube, this is not the week for that!

Right, here's what Natasha, Danny, and your humble servant got into this week:

• The huge COVID-related hit that public markets took this week, with tech getting hit extra hard.
• An antitrust brouhaha! As the Vista-Plaid deal and others gets a hard look, we wondered what it could all mean for startups were a bit more suited for M&A than an IPO.
• Up next we dug into how founders are raising money before they even quit their jobs, a trend that Natasha is digging into.
• From there it was a Danny segment, riffing on his 2020s piece, and dive into where he sees the most ripe chances for startups to truly change the world. We just hope the capital follows the opportunities.
• Then it was time to talk accelerators, with Natasha detailing on the Indie Bio class, and my taking of the show through some recent Techstars companies.
• VCs raised too, with the three of us talking about The Engine and Impact America raising fresh new funds.
• And then we chatted about the Yuanfudao round, and a Series B that The Wanderlust Group just put together.

We capped off with the latest from R2c, and then got the hell off the mics. Catch you all Saturday, and then back to regular programming on 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.

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 Friday’s episode that includes some high-quality Quibi jokes, if I recall correctly.

This was a busy morning, with lots to talk about it. Here's what we got into:

• Headlines this morning that caught our eye included falling global stock markets in the wake of rising COVID-19 cases; SAP torched tens of billions of market cap by missing earnings expectations and cutting its forecast; and Ant Group will raise a bajillion dollars in its impending IPO.
• In unicorn news, Databricks is prepping an IPO that we already know a lot about. And Airbnb's shares are splitting ahead of its own IPO, a deal that we are expecting any day now.
• The PrimaryBid round was super cool, with TechCrunch covering the $50 million deal. I spoke with the company's CEO last week about the deal, sharing some of those notes on the show. And VSPN raised nearly $100 million in an esports round that was more than cool.
• On the SAP front, here's the question: Is the earnings miss and forecast miss a one-off, or something that a number of tech companies are going to suffer from? If the former, it's not that big of a deal. If the latter, SAP could be the harbinger of a reset in tech valuations.

Shoutout Lewis Hamilton and that G2 series. Ok, 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.

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

Myself, along with Danny and Natasha had a lot to get through, and more to say than expected. A big thanks to Chris for cutting the show down to size.

Now, what did we get to? Aside from a little of everything, we ran through:

• The fall of Quibi, and who lost money in the mix. TechCrunch has a bit more on the video service's downfall here.
• The Netflix quarter, and why its shares lost ground after its report. The Quibi-Netflix stories show that it's not smooth sailing in the market for online video.
• If Netflix stumbled, Snap soared with stronger-than-expected growth. The company still loses lots of money, but it's getting closer to reasonable results, and has lots of cash.
• Then we turned to a few media startups that raised, including $4 million for Stir and $2.5 million for Quake. Quake the podcasting company, mind, not the excellent FPS.
• Next was a handful of housing rounds, including the very neat Abodu and the somewhat controversial RVshare, which split the three of us about whether or not it was going to work out.
• Then we had some great reporting from Natasha to parse through, including her piece on startup hacker houses, and her report on a new women-focused accelerator class.

Whew! It was a lot, but also very good fun. Look for clips on YouTube if you'd like, and we'll chat you all next 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.

It's a big day in tech because the US Federal Government is going after Google on anti-competitive grounds. Sure, the timing appears crassly political and the case is not picking up huge plaudits thus far for its air-tightness, but that doesn't mean we can ignore it.

So Danny and I got on the horn to chat it up for about 10 minutes to fill you in. For reference, you can read the full filing here, in case you want to get your nails in. It's not a complicated read. Get in there.

As a pair we dug into what stood out from the suit, what we think about the historical context, and also noodled at the end about what the whole situation could mean for startups; it's not all good news, but adding lots of competitive space to the market would be a net-good for upstart tech companies in the long-run.

And consumers. Competition is good.

You can read TechCrunch's early coverage of the suit here, and our look at the market's reaction here. Let's go!

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.