November 04, 2022

Most of the unicorns aren’t

35 minutes

Hello and welcome back to Equity, a podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines.

Oh what a week. What a week. Things are busier than ever at TechCrunch, where we're coming out of our post-conference stupor and charing straight back into a packed news cycle. Sure, Musk is still making waves, but there are startup rounds to cover, layoffs to chew on, earnings coverage, unicorn reports, new data, and more.

After cutting back sharply on material and still going long, here's what Mary Ann, Natasha, and Alex got into this week:

Rewind wants to help people with their memory. We talk about how the startup, which launched this week, uses recording technology to help you get what you see, hear and say at your finger tips.

We talked about Onward, a startup that wants to help divorced or separated parents fight less about money and how it just raised nearly $10 million despite being pre-revenue.

The somewhat odd, possible Byju's IPO-spinoff of Aakash, a tutoring company that it bought the other year. Our views can be summarized in meme format: An edtech IPO? In this economy?

Unicorns face an incredibly uphill journey to get public, which may explain in part why Byju's is not itself going public (recall that it had had plans, but like with so many other companies those are on hold).

And then there was Brex, which announced a new partnership with Techstars despite a big push into the enterprise space.

Stripe revealed that it has cut 14% of its staff, or over 1,100 people, and its CEO and co-founder Patrick Collison admitting that the payments giant had "overhired for the world we're in."

And finally, there's a new VC ratings company in the neighborhood. How do we feel? Better than some VCs, at least.

Got all that? Good. More Monday morning.

Equity drops at 7 a.m. PT every Monday and Wednesday, and at 6 a.m. PT on Fridays, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders, one that details how our stories come together, and more!

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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By TechCrunch, Mary Ann Azevedo, Kell, Theresa Loconsolo, Rebecca Bellan, Kirsten Korosec, Devin Coldewey, Margaux MacColl

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