The Information's TITV

It seems like in Silicon Valley is starting a SPAC. Reid Hoffman, Peter Thiel, Kevin Hartz, Chamath Palihapitiya, maybe even your roommate.

Reporters Cory Weinberg and Ross Matican trace the origins of the SPAC surge. We explain why these special-purpose acquisition companies have become so popular, some of the regulatory history, and what some of the downsides are. 

In this episode, we talked to:

Further reading:

This week we're presenting highlights from two interviews from the WTF Summit earlier this month. Emerson Collective's president Laurene Powell Jobs discusses her group's work on voting access as well as her ownership of The Atlantic magazine. Jenna Lyons, the former creative director for J Crew, talks about starting from the ground up with her new beauty brand.

We speak to some brave souls around the world who ventured back into the movie theater. And Richard Rushfield of The Ankler joins to give his take on how well the movie industry has faired these last two weekends back and what it all means for Hollywood.

With the TikTok drama getting even messier and tech relations between the US and China at an all time low, we check in with Jessica Lessin about the latest. Then Cory talks to Kate Clark about how the payments firm Stripe has become a force in venture capital, often edging out established firms to get in on deals.

The second part of our Airbnb series looks at Domio, a startup that tried to build a business on the Airbnb platform. Paris tells us how she stumbled across the Domio story and how the company gamed loopholes in city guidelines about short term rentals. And Cory explains what the Domio saga means for Airbnb as it heads toward an IPO.

Background reading:

How One Rental Startup Gamed Airbnb

Cory talks about the rise of parties at Airbnb rentals and how it's poised to be a huge headache for the company as it heads down the path of going public.

Kevin talks about his profile of Marc Benioff, the Salesforce CEO and philanthropist, which looked at how he and his company are managing during the pandemic. Especially when Salesforce's marquee event, Dreamforce, appears to be off this year. Also Tom chats with Alex about Apple's changes to ad tracking and the effect it will have on Facebook—as well as the gaming companies that rely heavily on Facebook ads. 

Yunan joins to explain why the TikTok saga and the US government's decision to ban the app, unless it sells to an American company, has hurt the reputation of Zhang Yiming, the CEO of the app's parent company ByteDance. And Cory speaks to Kate about Headspin and the case of the company that had to give back some of its capital to investors after its revenue projections proved to be wildly off base. 

Background Reading

Once a Hero, TikTok’s Founder Is Under Attack in China

Startup HeadSpin to Return Funding After Probe of Financial Statements

It was a big week for tech and politics as the four leaders of the major US tech companies testified in front of the House Antitrust subcommittee. We spoke to Alex Heath and Chris Stern about which CEOs weathered the questions from lawmakers best and where the antitrust investigations go from here. Then Cory speaks to Anissa Gardizy about delivery startup GoPuff and the problems its skyrocketing growth has caused for its neighbors.

Cory Weinberg interviews Steven Galanis, the CEO of Cameo, a fast-growing startup that allows major and minor celebrities can send messages to fans. Steven discusses Cameo's growth story, why this is a "new golden age" of consumer apps, and why Apple's app-store monopoly should get government scrutiny.