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.

• American equities are set to rise, which is good news for the startup-VC world as it means that the current up-cycle will continue. But the good public market is not landing evenly, as Europe sees its VC-backed IPO tally lag the rest of the world.
• The biggest recent news stories in tech and venture were Alibaba's enormous Sun Art deal that echoes the Amazon-Whole Foods deal at first blush, and SpaceX's latest success. The quiet weekend could herald the return of a slower, holiday news cycle as we close in on November.

On the funding front, we found three super cool startups: 

• AiFi raised $14.5 million in a round that Crunchbase News covered. Autonomous, checkout-free stores? Count us in.
• Lawmatics raised a $2.5 million Seed round. The startup does vertical SaaS (CRM, marketing) for lawyers. That just sounds lucrative.
• And then there was Chiper, which put together a $12 million round to help build out its ecommerce service in Latin America. Investors Monashees, Kaszek Ventures, and WIND Ventures put the money up.

And to close we took a look at some Q3 2020 data from CBInsights and Crunchbase News.

That's all we got. The show is back in just a few days. 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.

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

The whole crew was back today, with Natasha and Danny and I gathered to parse over what was really a blast of news. Lots of startups are raising. Lots of VCs are raising. And some unicorns are shooting to go public. It's a lot to get through, but we're here to catch you up.

Here's what we got into:

• A Media Roundup: The Juggernaut raised $2 million in a round that we found to be both cool and timely. The news of a media startup raising money was paired with rumors of an exit for email media darling Morning Brew for a price-tag of up to $75 million. Undergirding each story was recent reporting concerning the revenue success that Axios is enjoying. It's nice to report on some media news that isn't fresh layoffs.
• A cluster of wellness startups raising capital: If you like to work out your mind and body, it was a good week of news for you. Calm is looking for new funds at a frewh, higher valuation. TechCrunch has coverage here. Coa did raise, adding $3 million to its coffers for mental health group classes. And Playbook put together $9.3 million for its fitness instructor platform.
• VCs raised lots: It's a hot time for VCs themselves to raise money, with OpenView, Canaan, True Ventures, Lead Edge Capital, First Round, and Khosla either closing rounds or announcing new fundraises.
• Also on the VC beat: Terri Burns was made an investing partner at GV.
• Finally, we got into the recent GetAround funding and turnaround story, which segued us into Airbnb's own recovery. TechCrunch has more here.

And with that, we're off until 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.

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.

So, what was on our minds this morning?

• Headlines: The Twilio-Segment deal is real, happening, and is priced about where we expected. Big names in the ex-China Internet want to make encryption worse. And, how the United States government would break up Google is becoming clearer by the week.
• On the Twilio Segment deal, as TechCrunch and Forbes anticipated, the transaction came in around $3.2 billion, forming something of a API monster from their combined form. As we noted on the show, a lot of investors made a mint from the transaction.
• Airkit has raised $28 million while in stealth since 2017. What does it do? Per Forbes, it's a "low-code platform" that wants to "improve customer engagement." That's notably similar to what Segment does.
• Flash Express raised $200 million, as the on-demand and delivery spaces stay hot.
• And Razorpay raised $100 million at a valuation of $1 billion, meaning that we have just witnessed the birth of yet another fintech unicorn.
• And, finally, warm public markets mean that the startup and VC game will stay afoot, even if we see a pre-election dip in IPOs.

We hope that you are well and warm and fully of good spirits. Back 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.

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

This week Natasha was on vacation, so Danny and your humble servant had to endeavour alone. She's back next week, so we'll be back to full strength as a collective soon enough.

But even with a depleted hosting crew, we had a mountain of news to get through. And to joke about, as Danny was in the mood for a laugh. Here's the rundown:

• Reddit Co-founder Alexis Ohanian’s New Venture Fund Invests in Disposable Camera App: Danny and I are arbiters of what is cool, so we were the perfect pair to discuss influencers and new social applications. This one is actually neat, and Ohanian's inclusion in the investment viz his new fund was noteworthy.
• Zira raises $3.1M for its shift-scheduling service that helps manage hourly workers: This is a round that I covered, looking into Zira.ai and its product. Our take? It's neat, but operates in a competitive market.
• Shogun raises $35M to help brands take on Amazon with faster and better sites of their own: This is a similar story. A neat company with a neat product in a space where the is proven demand (TAM, in other words), and competition.
• Unqork's $207M Series C underscores growing enterprise demand for no-code apps: Another round worth mentioning is the Unqork deal. Unqork is a no-code service that helps other businesses create apps for their companies. It's growing like a weed, and is thus something worth knowing a bit about.
• Mmhmm, Five-Month-Old Video Startup Making Virtual Meetings More Fun, Raises $31 Million Pre-Launch: Yes, mmhmm has raised more money, and, we're excited to learn, could be launching this very month.
• Remotion raises $13M to create a workplace video platform for short, spontaneous conversations: Following the Slack news, this round stood out to us. Who will build the remote work comms platform of the future that people like to use?
• And then there was a host of other stuff to get through, like the FirstMark SPAC news, Root's impending IPO, and more on Airbnb's impending public offering.

That was a lot. We did our best. Hugs and chat with you next week!

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.

Starting the day American stocks are set to rise despite the country's president spending the weekend in a military hospital to combat his COVID-19 infection. The weekend itself was marked with national turmoil as information was incomplete, and shifting when it came to the health of the current administration.

Over the weekend a few stories caught our eyes:

• The Ola-London dustup that shows what regulatory risk remains for ride-hailing companies.
• This DappRadar report on the boom in DeFi that is boosting ethereum.
• Facebook's leaked plan to combat a push by government to break it up into smaller pieces.

And there were a number of interesting funding rounds to look into. We selected two for your pleasure this morning: 

• Einride raised $10 million for its autonomous freight system. The company has a big reveal coming on the 8th.
• Cooler Screens raised $80 million for a technology that I already hate.

What else was on our mind? We're getting mentally ready for Q3 earnings. Now that it is Q4 that's what's coming up. What will the cycle bring? A clearer image of what happened in the quarter to companies that are not COVID-accelerated. What has happened to them, and can their results match investor expectations? The v-shaped recovery is actually a k-shaped recovery and, in time, it's going to show. So, buckle up for one hell of an earnings cycle.

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 VC-focused podcast (now on Twitter!), where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.

This week, Alex is on a much deserved vacation (but not from Twitter, it seems) so Danny Crichton and I chatted through the news and happenings of the week. Somehow we winded our way through the latest tech controversies, gave Chris Wallace a shout out, and ended with some funding rounds. I'll be out next week so don't miss me too much, but expect the entire Equity team to be back full-speed in mid-October. Thanks, as always, to our producer Chris Gates for his patience and diligence.

Now, onto a sneak peak of what we got into:

• Moderation continues to be the root of all problems. We got into the the anti-semitic comments that were spewed on Clubhouse, and what that means for the future of the audio-only platform. As Danny so eloquently put it: if Clubhouse is having moderation problems even with an exclusive invite-only user base, the problem will grow.
• We also talked about Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong's blog post, which triggered a debate between us on whether tech companies can even choose to not be political. For the record, Black Lives Matter is not a political statement. It's a human statement. Read this op-ed for more.
• I wrote a piece about how a new program wants to be the Y Combinator for emerging fund managers. The whole "YC for X" model usually makes me roll my eyes, but listen to hear why I'm actually optimistic and bullish on programs like these taking off within tech.
• Silver Lake added a $2 billion 'long-term' hedge fund backed by Abu Dhabi to its tech finance toolkit. The strategy is a signal to privately-backed startups, and potentially a slap in the face to SoftBank.
• For a quick edtech note, I caught up with Duolingo's CEO this week in one of his rare press interviews. Luis Von Ahn explained the app's surge in bookings, and there's one key metric we pull out to noodle over.
• Danny explained Gusto's latest product launch with, wait for it, Gusto. In all seriousness, he brings up interesting points about the future of fin-tech feeling more full-suite, and free.
• Funding round chatter continued when we unpacked Lee Fixel's latest investment in India's Inshorts
• Finally, we ended with LiquidDeath, which is not the name of a drinking game, but instead the name of a startup that has succesfully attracted millions in venture capital for mountain water.

And with that, we will be back next week. Vote like your life depends on it, because it does.

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.

Two direct listings in one day. Lots to talk about.

Asana started trading just a bit after noon Eastern today, quickly zooming to roughly about $29 a share in early trading this afternoon. Meanwhile, Palantir is running like a herd of bulls straight out of the gate, jumping to almost $11 a share in the first trades — a first day jump of nearly 50%.

Asana’s reference price was revealed yesterday by the NYSE, and it was set for $21 a share. The company had roughly 150 million shares of stock outstanding on a fully diluted basis, which gave it a pre-market reference value of $3.2 billion. Palantir for its part was assigned a reference price of $7.25 a share, giving it a $16 billion implied valuation. At its current share price, Asana is valued at roughly $4.4 billion, and Palantir comes out to about $24 billion give or take.

The two companies trade on the NYSE, with Asana under ticker ASAN and Palantir under the ticker PLTR. Early trading is heavy according to Yahoo Finance, with 156 million shares of Palantir and nearly 32 million shares of Asana already changing hands.

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. I subbed in for Alex this week, so send your love over to the show on Twitter here and fan mail to me right here. Also, don’t forget to check out last Friday’s episode.

This week, we couldn't help but weigh into the latest TikTok drama, but we got into why it's worth following these budgets and moves (and a whole host of other fascinating news):

• Reminder that life makes 0% sense right now, so give yourself grace if you don't feel 10/10 every single day always.
• TikTok's latest is that it's not (yet) getting banned in the States.
• The New York Times has published data on Donald Trump's tax returns.
• Register to vote.
• Alexis Ohanian has filed paperwork for his new fund, 776, eyeing a $150 million close. The name is fun to noodle over.
• Poshmark confidentially filed its S-1.
• Bill Gurley fans can put their party pants on because Palantir and Asana are direct listing this week, both potentially with a Wednesday debut.
• Chinese fitness tech startup Fiture got a $65 million Series A, Philippines payment processing API startup PayMongo landed $12 million, and another API startup, Noyo, raised the same plus $500,000 to focus on healthcare.

All that, and we didn't even get to make fun of LinkedIn stories.

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.

This week Natasha Mascarenhas, Danny Crichton and your humble servant gathered to chat through a host of rounds and venture capital news for your enjoyment. As a programming note, I am off next week effectively, so look for Natasha to lead on Equity Monday and the both her and Danny to rock the Thursday show. I will miss everyone.

But onto the show itself, here's what we got into:

• Zoom's earliest investors are betting millions on a better Zoom for schools: Built on Natasha's reporting, we took a look at a neat company that wants to make Zoom better for the educational environments where it had suddenly taken the center stage. Teachers need more.
• The first rule of BookClub? No boring book clubs. Another Natasha story this week, this time about a startup that we somewhat like but can't decide how its market will be. Still, the biblophiles in your life should read this piece and get hype about rising access to authors.
• Robinhood raised $460 million more, extending its preceding $200 million Series G to a $660 million total investment. Chime also added $485 million at a new, $14.5 billion valuation. We dug into what's up with the pair and why they are raising so much money.
• The short answer is hella growth, leading us to a question and this week's headline: Why isn't Robinhood a verb yet?
• Willow, the startup making the wearable breast pump, raises $55 million: Natasha talked us through some of the issues with the phrase femtech, before Danny explained to us the need for what Willow offers. Here's to more tech being used to help more folks at more stages of life.
• Then we turned to VC media, namely our notes on a new venture capital gameshow, and, a16z launching a podcast network. We also worked what Casey Newton is up to into the same conversation.

Bon voyage for a week, please stay safe and don't forget to register to vote.

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.

What a busy morning. We had to cover TikTok. We had to talk VC rounds. So, this is what we got up to:

• US tech stocks are poised to sell off further this morning.
• The Oracle-TikTok-Walmart-ByteDance deal is either coming into focus, or a period of even less clarity. It's hard to tell.
• Nikola founder Trevor Milton is leaving the board of his own company in the wake of fraud allegations. Shares of the company are sharply lower in pre-market trading.
• Turning to TikTok, this primer represents the best over-the-weekend roundup that we could find. But, of course, things are still breaking as we come to print.
• Since recording, Oracle has said that "upon creation of TikTok Global, Oracle/Walmart will make their investment and the TikTok Global shares will be distributed to their owners, Americans will be the majority and ByteDance will have no ownership in TikTok Global." And, President Trump said this morning that China has to give up control of TikTok or the deal is off. ByteDance has said that it will retain control. You figure that out.
• But there was some good stuff to chat about. Including the super-neat Mobile Premier League round worth $90 million, growth news from EU-based Babbel, a new London-based Seed fund that got raised, and a Swedish healthtech Series B.
• As you guessed from today's title, it was fun to see such a concentration of EU VC activity.
• Finally, will the Nikola mess discourage more SPACs from taking companies public? If the rest of the stock market wasn't selling off, we would have said no. But today? Is the answer maybe?

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.