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.