July 30, 2021

Growth is not enough

37 minutes

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

We were a smaller team this week, with Natasha and Alex together with Grace and Chris to sort through a week that brought together both this quarter's earnings cycle, and the Q3 IPO rush. So, it was just a little busy!

Before we get to topics, however, a note that we are having a lot of fun recording these live on Twitter Spaces. We've found a hacky way to capture local audio and also share the chats live. So, hit us up on Twitter so you can hang out with us. It's fun - and we may even bring you up on stage to play guest host.

Ok, now, to the Great List of Subjects:

Robinhood went public! Yep, at long last, it is done. The company priced at $38 per share, the low end of its range, and had a medium-weak day of trading once it started to float. In short, Robinhood seems to have deftly priced its IPO, leaving zero fat on the table. So, it is now richer than ever, and public. More here.

Earnings! We took a moment to chat about earnings reports from Alphabet, and Microsoft, and Shopify. Why? Because we care lots about the cloud and platform companies. So, we took a minute to chat about public cloud results, and what Shopify got up to.

Batteries! Tesla is moving towards iron-based batteries, and is looking to source other materials direct. At the same time battery recycling is raising lots of cash, and Nikola is Not Dead. We call it two truths and a lie.

Unicorns and soon-to-be's: Contentful raised $175M at a $3B valuation from Tiger for its content delivery service, Squire, a barbershop tech platform, tripled its valuation (again) with Tiger Global (again), and Class squashed acquisition rumors with SoftBank Vision Fund II funding,

More venture rounds! To cap off our venture roundup, two neat healthtech investments stood out, namely rounds from both Oova and Peppy. Both startups agree with the idea that hormonal health is a massive yet nascent opportunity. (We did an entire show about the imbalanced world of hormone startups if you're interested).

We ended on a musical note, which lucky for you all, didn't include us singing: meet a quartet of early-stage music startups

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.

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