Equity

Get the full interview here: https://techcrunch.com/2020/03/25/monday-com-passe…remote-work-boom/

As efforts to flatten the spread of COVID-19 pushes employees from their offices, remote work is undergoing a surge in popularity.

Well-known remote-work friendly companies like Zoom have seen a rise in usage, while Slack has already reported that it is successfully converting new users into paying customers, which is pushing up its growth rate.

The pandemic is creating economic and social upheaval, but for a specific cohort of software companies that help distributed teams work together, it’s proven useful in business terms. But even before the outbreak of the novel coronavirus, execs from a standout project management company swung by TechCrunch HQ to chat with the Equity crew about their business and growth: Monday.com. 

What does an interview with Monday.com’s Eran Zinman (co-founder and CTO) and Roy Mann (CEO) have to do with COVID-19? Well, if remote-productivity-friendly services Slack and Zoom are seeing usage spikes amidst the changes, Monday.com is likely benefiting from similar gains. And during our chat with the company’s brass, the pair told TechCrunch that their company had crossed the $130 million annual recurring revenue (ARR) mark by mid-February. Add in a COVID-19 usage boost and perhaps Monday.com (which doesn’t have a free tier) is seeing its growth accelerate.

Good morning friends, and welcome back to TechCrunch’s Equity Monday, a short-form audio hit to kickstart your week.

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

This week's episode was a testament to making do, as we've had to cancel some trips, juggle a few guests, and get up and running as a podcast that have guests dial in without losing our stride. So, this week Danny and Natasha and Alex were joined by Unshackled VC's Manan Mehta.

And it went pretty ok, aside from a hiccup or two, expect Equity to still feature guests as often as it makes sense, even if we're currently locked out of our own studio. Anyhoo, a combo of local recording, remote video setups, and Chris handling the dials meant that we were able to talk over all the good stuff:

Hashicorp raises $175 million at a $5 billion valuation. It was nice to see a round so large take place when the rest of the sky in tech was busy falling onto itself.

Deepgram raises $12 million. Alex covered this company's funding, winding up pretty excited about the technology itself.

Edtech startup Teachable exits after good GMV growth. Nice exit for this New York City-based startup, and we chatted about the early-stage edtech market, which was good fun.

VC firms offer group therapy for founders due to the COVID-19 outbreak. It marks another data point in the small, but growing, cohort of venture capitalists thinking about mental health services beyond an investment opportunity.

Remote Year, which helps you work while traveling the world, lays off 50% of staff. It's one of an incoming flurry of layoffs we're expecting to see from travel-related startups.

Danny advised founders to announce their rounds now to reassure their employees and customers that they are ready for the coming recession

And finally, what's up with Airbnb's direct listing timing? We tried to sort that out before we ran short of time.

All told there were some laughs, and we spent a good few minutes before mentioning COVID-19. It was good fun to have the crew on for a classic Equity episode, and a big thanks to Manan for coming aboard under less-than-optimal circumstances.

Good morning friends, and welcome back to TechCrunch’s Equity Monday, a short-form audio hit to kickstart your week. Regular Equity episodes still drop Friday morning, so if you’ve listened to the show over the years, don’t worry — we’re not changing the main show.

Y Combinator’s Demo Day has historically drawn crowds of investors and journalists into a big warehouse to watch hundreds of startups come out to the public for the first time ever. Think two minute pitches, a big audience, and tons of networking opportunities after.

This year, citing COVID-19 concerns, the accelerator canceled its in-person Demo Day and moved it to online-only, and a week earlier than expected. You need to be pre-approved to access the list of companies, and over 1,200 investors RSVP’d.

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

With the markets in turmoil and fear running rampant through the global economy, you might not think that it’s a great time to start a company. According to at least one well-known venture capitalist, however, it’s a great time to start up.

TechCrunch recently caught up with former founder and active venture capitalist Jason Lemkin to chat about the world of software-as-service companies, better known by their acronym moniker “SaaS.” Lemkin swung by TC HQ in San Francisco to spend some time with the Equity crew to discuss all things SaaS, markets, and startups.

Long-time Equity listeners will recall that this is not the first or even second time that we’ve had Lemkin on. He was, after all, our first guest, and a repeat for Episode 100. But as it’s Equity’s third birthday, and his SaaStr conference was just around the corner (now postponed), we had Lemkin back to dig deep into one of our favorite startup categories.

So let’s get nerdy about SaaS.

Good morning friends, and welcome back to TechCrunch’s Equity Monday, a short-form audio hit to kickstart your week. Regular Equity episodes still drop Friday morning, so if you’ve listened to the show over the years, don’t worry — we’re not changing the main show. (Here’s last week’s episode with Danny Crichton in which we took a look at the new Kleiner fund.)

This morning was more of the same. More COVID-19 bad news and stock market worry. But this weekend saw other, new issues, like a collapse in oil prices and record low yields in Treasuries. What happens when all U.S. government notes yield less than 1%? We're about to find out.

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

This week was packed with news, most of it pretty bad. But Zoom did well, so there's that. Happily we had our dynamic pairing, Alex "Have I Died" Wilhelm and Danny "Good Hair" Crichton on hand to parse through it all. (A reminder that Equity now hits your podcast app twice a week now, so peep us Monday mornings!)

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

After a long Shot hiatus, things keep happening that demand our attention. So, after digging into Tesla's near-miss of the $1,000 share-price mark, we're back to dig into Elliott Management's imposition into Twitter's world after sticking its nose into SoftBank earlier this year.

Alex and Danny had a few goals in this short, news-driven Equity episode: To talk about what the activist investor wants Twitter to do, and what it has wanted other tech companies to do in recent memory.