Equity

Natasha and Mary Ann took over this week's show with Chris and Grace, which meant that our overdeveloped senses of curiosity filled up the script just fine (even on a somewhat short week). Unintentionally, today's episode was built around a theme of inclusion - from auto-insurance to women's health, and from payments to knowledge.But here are some more specifics on what we got into:For our funding round section, we discussed UK's Marshmallow getting unicorn status for its more inclusive, big-data take on car insurance, Women's health tech brand, Elvie, topping up its Series C to $97M, and an ambitious fintech play from Leap, which wants to give gig workers access to financial products by partnering directly to marketplaces. After getting past the dollars and the deals, I indulged by bringing up my latest piece: Edtech leans into the creator economy with cohort-based classes. The core of the story gets into a ton of tensions, the biggest of which I'd pose as a question to you: should anyone be allowed to be a teacher?Then we headed into Mary Ann's world of fintech to understand what I dubbed feels like national BNPL week. If I may, I'd argue that this is the can't miss segment of the entire show, as we made sense of why it's a global phenomenon, which markets are popping off, and what this means for the credit card industry. Below is a smattering of headlines we walked through.PayPal acquires Japan's Paidy for $2.7B to crack the buy-now, pay-later market in Asia Zip acquisition of Payflex means Africa is ripe for BNPL disruptionAddi raises $75M to advance ‘buy now, pay later' in LatAm, nearly triples valuationAnd then we ended by talking about an adorable, but potentially dangerous robot unicorn. Yep. You read that right.Remember when we were all thinking about what 'the new normal' would look like? Well, I guess it's here.

Alex is on a well-deserved vacation this week, so for the Equity Wednesday deep dive, we took the conversation to Twitter Spaces. Danny, Mary Ann, and Jonathan Metrick, Chief Growth Officer at Portage Ventures, dove into growth marketing. You can listen to the full episode on the Equity Podcast feed.This conversation was spurred by the TechCrunch Experts project, where we're looking for the best growth marketers for startups. Metrick had been recommended to us in July (you can read his featured recommendation in our growth roundup) and we were eager to have the opportunity to learn from his experience.Help TechCrunch find the best growth marketers for startups.Provide a recommendation in this quick survey and we'll share the results with everybody.In this conversation, we cover:Influencers take on the marketing worldChallenges marketers face with iOS 14How Metrick sees trends develop geographicallyNew capabilities with attribute in the past yearWhat holiday advertising might look like in 2021

This is Equity Monday, our weekly kickoff to catch up on weekend news and prep for the days ahead. We're here on Tuesday this week since us folks in the United States had off for labor day. You can follow the show on Twitter here, and while you're at it, throw me a follow too.Jobs report: Over the weekend, the US government posted the Jobs Report. It wasn't ideal, with a sharp drop in percentage of women rejoining the workforce. I give you the startup angle, and talk about a somewhat poetic unicorn.Instacart, meet Instagram: WSJ reports that new Instacart CEO Fidji Simo is expanding the grocery delivery store's consumer-product advertising business, with a goal of hitting $1 billion in revenue next year. I riff on why this makes sense and what challenges the business make come up against.Behemoths, beware: The largest Series A within Africa just closed, and it's not even close. Wave is taking on telecom-led mobile money, now with four-big name backers. It's not the only startup trying to take on a behemoth. I also gave a shout out to Glass, which wants to take on Instagram as a new go-to destination for photographers to share their content.And that's a wrap. I have a fun edtech piece coming out on Extra Crunch this week, so keep your eyes out for it.

Natasha and Alex and Grace and Chris gathered to dig through the week's biggest happenings, including some news of our own. As a note, Equity's Monday episode will be landing next Tuesday, thanks to a national holiday here in the United States. And we have something special planned for Wednesday, so stay tuned.Ok! Here's the rundown from the show:Apollo completed its takeover of Verizon Media Group Yahoo: Yep, we have new bosses, and we have feelings about it. But mostly the TechCrunch news was a useful segue to Drift's majority exit to Vista Equity Partners at a price that made the Boston-based startup a unicorn. Terms were not disclosed, sadly, but Drift's revenues looked strong going into the transaction. That left us with questions.Then we chatted about Databricks, which raised a small country's GDP in a single funding round this week, valuing the data-and-ML company at a staggering $38 billion valuation. Why isn't Databricks going public? Because it doesn't have to, mostly.Hum Capital believes the future of startup fundraising requires a return to old school Wall Street. The startup helps founders and investors navigate the overly fragmented market these days, and just raised millions to scale this service.Form there we dug into two IPOs, including the very interesting story of Toast, another Boston-based company, and AllBirds. The AllBirds offering was less exciting from a numerical perspective, though Natasha and Alex both like their shoes from the company.And to close out, we discussed how Compound Foods wants to save the planet by making coffee sans beans. Which we are willing to try as soon as we can.That's a wrap from us for the week! Keep your head atop your shoulders and have a great weekend!

After a 17-hour marathon through nearly 200 startup pitches, the Equity team was fired up to get back on Twitter and chat through some early trends and favorites from the first day of Y Combinator's demo party. We'll be back on the air tomorrow, so make sure you're following the show on Twitter so you don't miss out.What did Natasha and Alex chat about? The following:First Impressions: We started by going through top-line numbers, geographic breakdown, and how the accelerator is doing when it comes to the representation of diverse founders. The last bit had a tiny bit of progress, but diversity continues to be an issue in YC's batches - even as cohort size grows. We also chatted about what startups pitching can work on: like better mics, which are cheap and good.Our early favorites: Metaphor, Lumify, Alex's favorite duo Indian real estate plays, Akudo, Reframe, and Playhouse.And some hmmm moments, including our thoughts on Writesonic, which Natasha has a potentially paranoid theory on.TechCrunch has extensive coverage of the day on the site, so there's lots to dig into if you are in the mood. More tomorrow!

This is Equity Monday, our weekly kickoff that tracks the latest private market news, talks about the coming week, digs into some recent funding rounds and mulls over a larger theme or narrative from the private markets. You can follow the show on Twitter here. I also tweet.We are heading into a simply crazy week, so make sure that you keep Twitter pulled up as often as you can. Why?This is Y Combinator Demo Day week, which means a zillion startups are going to be doing their best to make noise, stand out from their peers, and raise capital on uncapped notes sans discount. TechCrunch is going to be busy as bees tracking the accelerator cohort, and bringing our favorites to your ears and eyes.The Chinese regulatory story continues, with new gaming restrictions and fresh warnings about anti-monopoly action coming this morning. As before, the news is moving stocks. And the gaming news underscores that the Chinese state is not too bothered about directly undercutting its private sector to meet government goals.All that regulatory work is harming venture capital investment, it appears. Despite a rapid-fire July for Chinese startups, August is looking thinner from a foreign-investor perspective.Vietcetera has raised new capital, along with Urbanbase. In India, Ola Electric is looking to raise a huge amount of capital, we report.In public market news, Astra's rocket didn't go up high enough, so its shares are falling. And we are heading back into an IPO cycle, so get ready.Alright! That's our show! Let's get to work!

After news broke that meditation app Headspace and on-demand mental health care platform Ginger were merging, we couldn't resist hopping on the mics to do a bonus episode. And, because we were in the mood for hot takes, Natasha and Alex held the conversation on Twitter Spaces. The special guests we had on, who we'll get to down below, did not disappoint.It's a quick show, but the tl;dr is that you want to listen if you're curious why a meditation app would get into therapy, the precedent by Lyra Health and Calm, and how consolidation looks for the sector going forward.Here's who helped us understand and contextualize the news:Lux Capital partner Deena Shakir (who is also coming to Disrupt, incidentally)Chrissy Farr of OMERS Ventures (who you may also know as a former CNBC reporter in the healthech space)7WireVentures' Alyssa Jaffee (who needs her own podcast because she was shining during the Spaces)And, special shout out to Ginger CEO Russell Glass, who joined the Space but wasn't able to come up on stage due to technical difficulties. Twitter Spaces are fun, but the platform is still a bit nascent so goofs can bedevil live production.However, we managed to get some notes from him via email, so let's take a quick look at those:Glass said that he agreed with "what Chrissy Farr and others said about there simply not being enough therapists in the market today to meet the overwhelming demand," adding that there's "real global need today for what Headspace Health can offer - a scaled, comprehensive platform that can truly democratize mental healthcare."He also doubleclicked on the discussing regarding future "meaningful market consolidation," noting that he expects to see it "especially" happen in "areas that address higher acuity care for severe mental illness.”Make sure you are following the podcast on Twitter so that you catch us when we go live. These are meant to be spontaneous pop up shows, so your best bet is to turn on notifications to never miss our Spaces. Ok that's all. Thanks everyone!

Natasha and Alex and Grace and Chris were joined by none other than TechCrunch's own Mary Ann Azevedo, in her first-ever appearance on the show. She's pretty much the best person and we're stoked to have her on the pod.And it was good that Mary Ann was on the show this week as she wrote about half the dang site. Which meant that we got to include all sorts of her work in the rundown. Here's the agenda:Funding rounds from: Ramp, which raised $300 million at a $3.9 billion valuation; NoRedInk which put together an impressive $50 million Series B; and Playbook, which is building a sort of Dropbox for designers. Each company gave us something different to noodle on, be it the diverging strategies at Ramp and Brex, how NoRedInk is different from Grammarly, and why Dropbox is not the Dropbox for designers.Then we spun the globe to narrow our focus to Latin America, a booming startup scene that Mary Ann recently profiled for Extra Crunch. In a nutshell, venture capital is helping drive an enormous wave of startup activity in the region -- or perhaps a wave of startup activity is driving a boom in venture investment? -- leading to huge companies, and perhaps some tech-powered inclusion of more folks into the modern banking, and digital economy. (For more, here are notes on the Brazilian market's rising exit tally! And Flink raised, which was worth chewing on as well.)We quickly pivoted to the hot button issue of the moment for every startup (and business): hiring. Natasha noted how startups used to focus on runway, and now they are looking to fill empty seats amid the great resignation. Finally, we nattered about huge venture results from Boston, big numbers from Austin, and what increasingly feels like an everything bubble. Chicago is doing well, too. Pick a city, it's putting up big numbers.And that's a wrap, for, well, at least the next 5 seconds.

The Equity crew felt that there was enough media news out recently that we simply had no choice but to fire up a Twitter Space and have a chat. The above episode is a discussion of a few things, in a loose and relaxed manner, so don't take any of the Verizon jokes too seriously, Verizon, as we still work for you. For a few more days.Regardless, here's what Danny and Alex got into:Politico sells for $1 billion: Its new parent company Axel Springer also buying the rest of Politico Europe and all of Protocol at the same time. This deal exploded everyone's Twitter feed due to its scale, and the fact that it was one heck of an exit for a media company. One billion dollars? For media? In this economy? Yes!Forbes is going public via a SPAC: Yep, the venerable Forbes magazing and its enormous digital arm are taking the blank-check route to the public markets, which means that we got its numbers and time to stroll through them. Our take is that Forbes has done massive work to take its IRL brand and extend it into the digital world. The company has big plans to boot, and will be worth more than $800 million when it combines.Layoffs hit Vice: As Vice turns its focus to video content — you've heard this story before — it is shedding some of its editorial staff. The layoffs were a stinkbomb on Media Twitter after the other news of the week, but were sadly not a huge surprise. The company's union decried them as something of a yearly recurrance. Not good, not good at all.And there's more media news to come. Our parent company Verizon Media is expected to close its sale to Apollo on September 1 or sometime soon after, which means we will either be hosting Equity regularly as always, or we'll be hosting the RUDE (Recently Unemployed Due to (Private) Equity) podcast.

For our Wednesday show this week, Natasha and Alex and Danny had colleague Amanda Silberling on the show to help us parse through OnlyFans' precedent-setting move to ban sexually-explicit content on its service. The decision was a bolt from the blue for many of its creators, a great portion of whom created and monetized adult videos and images through the subscription service. It also stirred up a ton of debate around fintech, crypto, venture capital, and the morality of decision-makers.We put all the facts in context for you, hitting the following points:OnlyFans' recently leaked financials. Of course, the company's historical, and projected revenues are now dated thanks to the platform's planned content changes, but all the same the numbers help put into context just how much money OnlyFans' adult creators were earning on its platform.The leaked financials were part of a pitch deck that the company was using on its plight to raise more capital - an endeavor that has apparently been challenging for the startup. This tension made us think about the role that venture capital plays in funding vice startups, and why a tiny clause may stop many from getting into the game. Let's just say, the money behind the money has a way of having weight.And finally, we wondered what might be ahead for adult-content creators. Per Silberling, the world of adult content has ever been in flux, with creators and other sex workers moving from platform to platform as corporate policies, and national laws evolved. To see OnlyFans wind up where Patreon and Tumblr previously tread is not a complete surprise.

This is Equity Monday, our weekly kickoff that tracks the latest private market news, talks about the coming week, digs into some recent funding rounds and mulls over a larger theme or narrative from the private markets. You can follow the show on Twitter here. I also tweet.Today's show was good fun to put together. Here's what we got to:Global stocks are up to kick off the week. It's a great way to start Monday, frankly.Thinking broadly, the latest regulatory news from China regarding ByteDance is not super bullish for the nation's tech industry. And what the Indian government is doing to its own technology industry is not encouraging. But all of that and tension between the two countries, is not stopping deals. You can't stop deals!Facebook bowed to pressure, and released a content report that it had previously shelved.Zetwerk raised a $150 million Series E. The Indian startup scene is trucking right along, perhaps acting a bit as-if its government wasn't increasingly authoritarian.Shelf.io raised a $52.5 million Series B in what we're somewhat considering a classic Tiger-led deal.And the SPAC boom is not over yet, with yet another Virgin space company headed for the public markets.Woo! And that's the start to the week. Hugs from here, and we'll chat you on Wednesday!

Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch's venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.Danny was back, joining Natasha and Alex and Grace and Chris to chat through the week's coming and goings. But, before we get to the official news, here's some personal news: Danny is stepping back from his role as co-host of the Friday show! Yes, Mr. Crichton will still take part in our mid-week, deep dive episodes, but this is the conclusion of his run as part of the news roundup. We will miss him, glad that his transitions and wit will continue to be part of the Equity universe.Who will take the third chair? Well, stay tuned. We have some neat things planned.Now, the rundown:Funding rounds: Maven has built a women's health unicorn, Monte Carlo raised $60 million for data observability, and Launch House wants to scale venture community with a fresh $3 million in its accounts. The last round is probably the most controversial one of them all, so each of us took a side and discussed what's new and old about hacker homes.The next crop of key IPOs: Please say hello to the rising seniors of the startup world, companies that are the next IPOs that we are excited about. The list includes Discord, Databricks, Chime and Carta, which made headlines this week after setting its own valuation with its own tool. Will investors and startups turn to a third-party to value companies? What happens if secondary investors aren't as into your product as you are? We had a ton of questions.Brazil's burgeoning startup and exit market: In the wake of Nuvemshop raising a zillion dollars, it was time to sit down and talk about Brazil. Alex and Anna Heim have been rigorous in their reporting on the fascinating exit market. Who knew dual-listings were so dramatic?After traveling overseas, we went very close to home to speak about the news industry. Danny had a piece about informed., which a trio of media veterans believe could fix the economics that plague subscription-based publications. The nuts and bolts are in the episode, but prepare to debate if you're the kind of reader that likes a snack, or the whole lip smackin' meal.Finally, we discuss the wack reality that YikYak is indeed back. 

For our Wednesday show this week, Natasha and Alex and Danny had colleague Tage Kene-Okafor on the show to chat about the burgeoning African startup scene. Tage has become TechCrunch's key correspondent in the area, chronicling the continents expanding venture capital totals, public company performance, and startup ecosystem.Given that we've paid attention to just how much money African startups are raising, we wanted to have Tage on to give us a better, deeper understanding of the continent's technology activity. Here's what we got into:The power of Y Combinator in Africa: Is the well-known American accelerator a kingmaker in Africa? Or are we merely seeing more of its activity thanks to our own information biases?Fintech as core focus: As in many markets, fintech investment and startup activity stand out in Africa. We wanted to better understand why that's the case in Africa, and what startups are building in the realm of financial technology.African ecommerce: The continent's ecommerce market is perhaps best known through the lens of Jumia, a public tech company that works in the sale of goods online, and their delivery. How quickly is ecommerce growing in Africa, and which startups could be the next breakouts? We asked Tage.Equity is back on Friday with our weekly news roundup!Equity drops every Monday at 7:00 a.m. PDT, Wednesday, and Friday

Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch's venture capital-focused podcast where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.This is Equity Monday, our weekly kickoff that tracks the latest private market news, talks about the coming week, digs into some recent funding rounds and mulls over a larger theme or narrative from the private markets. You can follow the show on Twitter here. I also tweet.It's a surreal day to talk about technology, but here we are. If you can pull your eyes away from the greater geopolitical tragedy that is our world today, here's what we talked about:T Mobile may have suffered a material breach. If this bears out, it could be a leading tech story for the week. Vice has confirmed that at least some of the data in the leak appears genuine.Indian travel service ixigo is going public. The company's IPO follows Zomato's own domestic debut.And speaking of IPOs, the Tencent Music offering in Hong Kong could be on hold until next year.And a trio of American tech companies raised a raft of capital as last week concluded. Carta put together $500 million in a huge deal, as Chime raised $750 million. And as the week closed, Discord was reported to be hunting up a new round at a $15 billion price tag.And stocks are set to open lower this morning. That's the morning report. Equity is back on Wednesday.

This week Danny and Alex and Chris took to Twitter Spaces to chat about the current state of the crypto economy, and hang out with friends in a live Twitter Space. We're doing more of these, so make sure that you are following the show on Twitter.As a small programming note, I forgot to tell the folks who chimed in during the chat that we were recording it, so we had to cut most the Q&A portion of the show. We got Ezra's permission, thankfully. The mixup was a bummer as we learned a lot. In the future, we'll not make that mistake and keep all the voices.So, what did we talk about? The following:The current state of crypto regulation in America, and how the government may screw everything up. In short, tech moves fast, and government moves slow. This creates friction.Coinbase kicked the ever-loving shit out of its Q2 earnings. But as it turns out the future for trading-powered companies could include a few quarters of slower results.And everyone wants to fund the next Coinbase. You can understand why. The company is printing cash lately, helping drive more investment into localized exchanges in different markets. 

Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch's venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.Our beloved Danny was back, joining Natasha and Alex and Grace and Chris to chat through yet another incredibly busy week. As a window into our process, every week we tell one another that the next week we'll cut the show down to size. Then the week is so interesting that we end up cutting a lot of news, but also keeping a lot of news. The chaotic process is a work in progress, but it means that the end result is always what we decided we can't not talk about.Here's what we got into:A little URL to IRL update from Natasha, who just got back from an edtech conference.How one VC got hit by ransomware, and why stolen LP data could be a wake up call for investors.The crew chatted through some Cloud 100 numbers, and riffed for a minute on Figma, Gusto, and Mailchimp, companies all reportedly worth around the $10 billion mark.From the early-stage funding round side of things, we noodled on Surfside's $4 million raise, and the capital that Pave recently attracted. Felt also raised money to make maps more mainstream, which had us thinking about use cases galore.In unicorn-land, Trendyol raised a mountain of cash, while UpGrad became India's newest unicorn.Climate change is going to mean lots more companies needed to handle disaster prep, Danny argues. His recent EC-1 here about RapidSOS got into the deep and complex world of three simple numbers: 911.And we ended the show with a riff on Salesforce+, which we had fun with but also tried to take seriously because we are journalists after all.

This week we were back to full strength, with Danny Natasha and Alex joined by Chris to chat through the latest venture capital brouhaha. Namely whether or not venture capital is about to get shaken to its core, or if we're really parsing some long-term economic trends that will eventually revert.Here's a rundown:Sam Lessin kicked off the Twitter conversation by positing that venture capital as we know it is kaput, with software and later-stage investing possibly seeing the most disruption.Both Alex and Crunchbase News posted responses to the concept, which could best be summarized as yeah, but.However, the point that there is a lot of non-venture money flooding into startups is both real and material, and worth chewing on. So, masticate we did, parsing which areas of startup investing might be the most winsome for the VCs we spend so very much time talking to,The direction and future of the venture capital world has largely been lost amidst a sea of large numbers. New megarounds. New unicorns. That sort of thing. But inside the rising tide of capital available to private companies has been a mix-shift of sorts. The question is where that goes long-term. We tried to posit a few things that could happen next.

Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch's venture capital-focused podcast where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.This is Equity Monday, our weekly kickoff that tracks the latest private market news, talks about the coming week, digs into some recent funding rounds and mulls over a larger theme or narrative from the private markets. You can follow the show on Twitter here and me here.It's going to be a busy week, with a Samsung event and a host of earnings reports that we'll have to pay attention to. But more important there are a few stories still dominating the news cycle:Apple's privacy choices: The American hardware company's plans to scan iPhones for some illegal material is once again raising the issue of privacy versus safety.China's tech crackdown: The continued clampdown by regulators continued this weekend with Tencent once again under the spotlight.The American crypto regulatory push: This is still causing waves this morning as Congress works to pass a major bill that could include crypto regulations that are opposed by industry leaders.All that and we also riffed on the Siemens-Sqills deal, Cornerstone OnDemand going private, and Delivery Hero buying a piece of Deliveroo.And, for added flavor and fun, Canopy Servicing just raised a $15 million Series A, while Siga OT Solutions raised a $8.1 million Series B.All that, and we got to talk stocks! Hugs and love from the Equity crew — chat Wednesday!

Sara Spangelo's startup Swarm now has nearly 100 of its satellites in orbit, but the journey to get here has had plenty of challenges. After a track record that included working at Google X, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and plenty more, Sara realized with her co-founder Ben that including low-bandwidth network capabilities on tiny satellites was not only possible, but offered massive cost-savings vs. the usual way of doing things. But our talk focuses on the challenges of being a first-time founder and CEO, and creating a whole new business model.Links for this episode:SwarmSwarm's low-cost satellite data network is now available to commercial clientsConnect with us:On TwitterOn InstagramVia email: found@techcrunch.com

For our Wednesday show this week, Natasha and Alex hosted a PR roundtable. Yep, our promise back when Alex Konrad came on the program to chat funding rounds is being fulfilled. Here's who joined us:Amy Widdowson, VP Corporate Communications at Zeno Group and newsletter writer extraordinaire Kelsey Cheng, PR Director at Walker SandsCreighton Vance, Media Strategist at Mission North and maker of musicWe had a few things to chat about, so we broke the show into a few sections: Today's PR world: The impact of COVID-19, burnout, what their work entails, and some tips for startups.The sheer pace of news today: The evolution of client expectations, managing clients themselves, and burnout.Tech vs. Media: We chatted content marketing, sharing details with the press, and why the media never shares drafts of stories before they go out.Frankly it was a very good time and a fun chat. Shoutout to our guests for arriving early and being very put together. May all podcast guests in the future learn from such efforts. One guest was even wearing a shirt with a collar! In 2021! We were impressed.Recall that Equity is off the rest of the week so that we can recharge and retool a bit. Hugs!

Last week, Natasha and Alex jumped on Twitter Spaces to discuss the tale of two edtech IPOs: Duolingo, the consumer language learning company, and Powerschool, the enterprise K-12 software platform. It was a rare moment in the sun for the recently-revitalized sector, which saw two companies list on the NASDAQ on the same dang day.Special shout out to our producer Chris Gates for handling this impromptu live chat, tech difficulties and all, and bringing it to your ears on this lovely Monday. Don't forget that Equity is largely on break this week!Here's what we got into, featuring some edtech entrepreneurs nice enough to drop on by:China's edtech crackdown and how it is impacting startups both internationally and domestically. The regulations, one of which will force for-profit tutoring companies to turn into non-profits, are also getting the cold shoulder from U.S. edtech VCs, it seems.As Lightspeed Ventures investor Mercedes Bent so aptly put it, the news is somewhat ironic: "[T]he US edtech IPO market is on fire (after being dormant for so long) and the China edtech market is crumbling (after being on fire for so long)."Evidence of that can be found in the Duolingo IPO pricing arc. The company first posted a strong estimate of its worth, raised its range, priced above that raised interval, and still managed to trade higher. The company is still up more than $30 from its IPO price.Powerschool was a bit different. It priced at $18 per share, the low-end of its $18 to $20 range. The company is up from its IPO price, albeit a much more modest two, or three percent in today's early trading.In the second half of the show, we brought on the following host of edtech founders to share their hot takes about the current state of edtech:  Philip Cutler, the founder & CEO of PAPER gave us an enterprise perspective. The startup recently raised $100 million in a Series C round led by IVP.Taylor Nieman, the founder & CEO of Toucan spoke language learning -- and how she's using Duolingo's S-1 as a competitive advantage.Anada Lakra, the founder & CEO of BoldVoice, a startup that wants to help non-native English speakers hone their accents. TechCrunch covered the company here.Yeva Hyusyan, the founder of Sololearn, a Duolingo-like company that wants to teach coding instead of languages. The company recently raised $24 million.Before we go, Equity is on a "break" this week, as we do some soul searching and refresh before our next run of shows. Obviously we still had to shaare this episode, and um, are recording another episode this week too, but you, my dear friend, will hear from us again next Monday.

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

For our Wednesday show this week, Natasha and Alex Chris had prior Equity guest Phil Libin back for a chat. Libin was first on our show a while back to chat about his startup studio. But since then, he's been a little busy.You may recall that mmhmm, Libin's project to build a better video communication service, raised $100 million the other week. And we here on the Equity pod made a little bit of fun at the number. It was just so very much money for a roughly one year old company. What was the company going to use it for?Well, Libin's folks got in touch and so we decided to just have him on to chat. And we wanted him back because he was one of the most memorable guests on the show, frankly, thanks to his candor the last time around.So, what did we get into? A refresh on the mmhmm story, and notes from Libin about what's ahead for his company. It certainly has the cash to pursue its vision. But as we learned, building software for a variety of platforms comes with challenges. Challenges that are ameliorated by having lots of smart staff. So, that's where the money is going.Regardless, it was good sporting of Libin to come back for another chat. Equity is back Friday morning with our news roundup. Make sure to follow the show on Twitter, as we're doing the odd Twitter space that you won't want to miss.

Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch's venture capital-focused podcast where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.This is Equity Monday, our weekly kickoff that tracks the latest private market news, talks about the coming week, digs into some recent funding rounds and mulls over a larger theme or narrative from the private markets. You can follow the show on Twitter here and myself here.Ever wake up to just a massive wall of news? That was us this morning, so we had to pick and choose. But since this show is about getting you caught up, we decided to focus on the largest, broadest new information that we could:Asian stocks were down, European shares are lower, and American equities are set to open underwater. Bitcoin had a great weekend, however.China's edtech crackdown continued over the weekend, with the country's ruling party setting new rules for online tutoring companies; they can no longer go public and will be forced to become non-profit entities. Chinese edtech stocks around the world fell.China's larger tech crackdown continued over the weekend and into the week, with new moves against the present-day business models of both food delivery companies, and Tencent Music. The former must ensure minimum incomes, while the latter must give up exclusive rights deals. Shares fell.The Jam City SPAC is kaput. It will not be the last similar deal to fall apart.And we chatted about this bit of Rivian news, as it stood out to us.All that and we had a good time. Hugs and love from the Equity crew, chat Wednesday!

We were smaller team this week, with Natasha and Alex together with Chris to sort through yet another summer frenzy of a week.This time around we actually recorded live on Twitter Spaces, which was a first for the podcast. If you missed it, it's probably because we didn't promote the taping since it was just an experiment. Good news, though, is that it went well, and we're going to some more live tapings of the show with the entire crew on the mics. Make sure to follow the show on the Big Tweet to ensure that you can come hang with us next week. We'll also do some Q&A at the end, if we're in good moods.Until then, let's live in the present. Here's what we got into in today's show:The blisteringly-hot EU startup market: You can raise money anywhere, but you might want to do it in Europe where VCs are putting a acre-feet of capital to work this year. Hours before the taping, Index Ventures announced a $3 billion trio of funds (and TikTok strategy?), basically solidifying our earlier reporting.The huge round for crypto trading house FTX, and OpenSea raising again: Regardless of whether or not you are paying attention to the crypt market today, investors are still firing capital at startups in the space at an eye-catching pace.Duolingo's first IPO price range: It's a good-news week for consumer-focused, edtech startups, since the public markets will finally get a taste of an non-enterprise sector startup. Plus, Duolingo's upcoming finance event could lead to them finally bolstering areas like speech, cultural norms, and fluency.From the world of funding rounds, we had notes on Sololearn, Numerade, NewCampus, Mural, Spreadsheet.com, and Bolt. The conversation ran into some fresh corners, such as how a company raised less than its preceding round but 4x'd its valuation and if we should bite-size all learning.

For this week's deep dive, Alex and Natasha took a trip down memory lane to the great WeWork saga. We had WSJ reporter and author Eliot Brown on the show to chat about his new book, The Cult of We, written with his colleague Maureen Farrell. You can snag it here if you haven't already.Brown and Farrell were key reporting voices during WeWork's rise, and fall, covering the company's growth, hijinks, and demise.Recently, WeWork has filed to go public via a SPAC, bringing the co-working startup to the public markets years after it initially tried for an IPO. It will debut at a fraction of the value that it once commanded on the private markets.For fun, you can read the original WeWork S-1 filing here.The WeWork-SPAC deck is here.While we had Brown on the show, we took the time to dive into how he handled reporting the WeWork story, what his take is on today's startup market, and how the tech media in general can do a better job. It felt like a masterclass for journalists and founders alike, which we'd argue is Equity's sweet spot.What lessons can we take away from WeWork's rise and fall? At a very basic level, that companies with slim gross margins are not software companies and should not be valued as such. And that allowing founders to have monarchical control of their company goes against historical norms of good corporate governance, which isn't so smart. 

Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch's venture capital-focused podcast where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.This is Equity Monday, our weekly kickoff that tracks the latest private market news, talks about the coming week, digs into some recent funding rounds and mulls over a larger theme or narrative from the private markets. You can follow the show on Twitter here and myself here.It was a big damn morning, so we had to cut some stuff. Here's what we got into:Stocks and cryptos are off this morning, as inflation and COVID-19 concerns rise.Zoom is buying Five9. The deal is not super expensive, nor is it cheap. But given the huge percentage of Zoom's market cap that it represents, it's a serious wager from the video conferencing startup.Carlyle is buying LiveU for around $400 million. TechCrunch broke this news. The deal shows that private equity interest in startups that aren't unicorns.Robinhood dropped a new SEC filing this morning! That means we have a price range and valuation target to play with. More from TechCrunch on the matter shortly.From India: A huge round for Lenskart, and a big Series A for GlobalBees.And we covered this round from Nigeria. A smaller transaction, but one that could prove to be quite neat, we reckon.Ok! Chat Wednesday! 

The whole crew was here this week, with Danny and Natasha and Alex  together with Grace and Chris to sort through a very, very busy week. Yep, somehow it is Friday again which means it's time for our weekly news roundup.Here's what we got to in our short window of time:The Jianzhi Education IPO: We have questions. The Chinese edtech company is looking to list in the United States after Chinese regulators clamped down on Didi and other China-based, American public offerings. Bravery? Stupidity? Brilliance? It's hard to say, but we'll be watching.Zomato's IPO and the Indian tech scene: As Zomato puts the final touches on its impending public offering, we chatted about the listing and what it may mean for the larger, red-hot Indian startup market.The AI conversation: ZoomInfo bought Chorus.ai this week, which we had lots of say about especially in light of Gong's epic valuation. And Discord bought Sentropy, which also uses AI, albeit for a very different purpose. The great AI startup marketing push of years' past has finally led to a few neat exits.Apple vs. Startups: That's the gist of our chat about the BNPL space and Apple's possible invasion of the hot startup market. In short, who's at risk? We have a few ideas.The TechCrunch List is dead — long live commodity capital: We get into how a list that separates VCs by sector and stage makes no sense into today's lawless investing world.Which brings us to a series of new funds. As Natasha pointed out, the scene for emerging fund managers has never looked more diverse.Nooks raised a seed round, which turned us back into the world of virtual HQs.And we closed with a quick digest of the latest morsels from the fake-meat startup smorgasbord, including what Gourmey is cooking, what Next Gen Foods is whipping up, and how Beyond Meat plans to keep its market cap sizzling.Like we said, a busy week! Chat you all on Monday morning, early.

Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch's venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.For this week's deep dive, Alex and Natasha and Danny decided it was time to chat about funding rounds. Yep, everyone's favorite topic, just in time for the return of our wonderful producer Chris.To help us navigate these particular waters, we had our friend and friendly competitor Alex Konrad on the show. Konrad is a senior editor over at Forbes, and part of the founding duo behind the Midas Touch newsletter. We like him - and his puppy!With four of us around the Zoom table, here's what we got into:An overview of the venture capital market in Q2. You can read TechCrunch's coverage of the global numbers here, and our further exploration of the US market here. TechCrunch has more coming on the matter, so stay tuned.While the show includes the staggering statistics on the current funding frenzy, we soon broadened the conversation to why it all matters.Consider this a peek into the reporter's notebook! We spoke about the supply and demand for covering funding rounds, the imbalance in who receives what money, and how an overall reader ad writer numbness to that $2 million pre-seed impacts the headlines.Which landed us into our final section: how to stand out in the overall deluge of funding rounds. Here we all had a take, because all reporters find different things interesting. Here we answer questions about what metrics to pay attention to, how to be more than a number in your pitch, and the value of talking about topics other than your startup's success.Thanks again to Alex K. for joining the show! Find him on Twitter,https://twitter.com/alexrkonrad and check out his work at Forbes.Chat with everyone on Friday, a show that is already coming together to be a scorcher. A bit like the weather. Except in San Francisco. Natasha is cold!

This is Equity Monday, our weekly kickoff that tracks the latest private market news, talks about the coming week, digs into some recent funding rounds and mulls over a larger theme or narrative from the private markets. You can follow the show on Twitter here and myself here.It was a busy weekend for everyone, regardless of whether you were watching the technology, what Branson was up to, or the footie. I won't take sides on the match, but I will say that it was gripping unto the very end and a great example of sport. Now, the news:Microsoft is said to be hunting up the purchase of RiskIQ, a cybersecurity firm. The deal is reported to be worth around $500 million.And this weekend, Twitter began to conform with new regulations in India, moves that come after it lost some legal protections during a scrap with the Indian government.China's tech market has been busy: News is out concerning ByteDance's IPO delay, Tencent is being forced to drop some music label exclusivity, and the Chinese government recently blocked a merger of streaming giants in the country.There's big news out from Flipkart this morning, thanks to its recent and huge new funding round worth $3.6 billion.And returning to the cybersecurity theme from earlier, startups in the sector are having a lovely time raising capital in recent months, it turns out.And don't forget that earnings season is just around the corner. It's a pretty important cycle. Why? Because startup valuations are hot, and could take a hit if earnings come up short. And the IPO market is pretty freaking active; poor earnings from major tech companies could crimp exit-prices for mature startups.Ok! Talk to you on Wednesday!

Danny and Alex were on deck this week, with Grace on the recording and edit. Natasha will be back with us starting next week. So, it was old times on the show with just two of our team to vamp on the news. And oh boy was there a lot of news to get into. Like, loads.What's going on with Didi? Didi's woes have continued this week, with the company seeing its share price continue to fall. The Equity team's view is that the era of Chinese companies listing in the United States is over.What's going on with facial recognition tech? With AnyVision raising a $235 million round, Danny and Alex tangled over the future of privacy, and what counts as good enough when it comes to keeping ourselves to ourselves.Nextdoor is going public: Via a SPAC, mind, but the transaction had our tongues wagging about its history, growth, and how hard it can be to build a social network.Dataminr buys WatchKeeper: In its first-ever acquisition, Dataminr bought a smaller company to help it better visualize the data it collects. It's a neat deal, and especially fun given taht Dataminr should go public sooner rather than later.Planet and Satellogic are going public: One week, two satellite SPACs. You can read more about Planet here, and Satellogic here.FabricNano and Cloverly raise capital: Satellites had us into the concept of climate change, so we also dug into recent funding rounds from FabricNano and Cloverly. It's beyond neat to see for-profit companies tackle our warming planet.Two new venture capital funds: Acrylic has put together a $55 million fund for moonshot crypto work, while Renegade Partners has a $100 million fund for early-and-mid-stage generalist investments.Mmhmm is big time: And then there was mmhmm. Which now has $100 million more, and some big plans. Our question is what it will do with the money. We'll have to wait and find out, we suppose.

Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch's venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.For this week's deep dive, Alex and Natasha and Danny decided that it was time to talk about drugs. No, not like drugs for fun, but instead drugs that you might have considered fun, but are now being redirected to help bolster your health.Yep, that's our theme today. As it turns out, there are a number of startups and even nascently public companies that are pursing using drugs that we might consider recreational for serious health purposes. Which is neat, as our habit of decrying any drug that makes you feel better as immoral has likely held us back from learning quite a lot about them.Venture capital investment in psychedelic start-ups, per CB Insights, rose from sub-$100 million results in 2018 and 2019 to $346 million last year.Vice clauses, however, can pause a legitimate issue for investors who might want to cut a check in the space.From the startup angle, NUE Life Health recently raised $3.3 million, and Osmind is up to some neat stuff regarding mental health.From the public markets, Atai Life Sciences, Compass Pathways, and MindMed are the companies worth watching.Frankly this was a fun one to record, even if the topic at hand is actually rather serious. Chat Friday morning!

Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch's venture-capital-focused podcast where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.This is Equity Tuesday, our weekly kickoff that tracks the latest private market news, talks about the coming week, digs into some recent funding rounds and mulls over a larger theme or narrative from the private markets. You can follow the show on Twitter here and myself here.What a busy weekend we missed while mostly hearing distant explosions and hugging our dogs close. Here's a sampling of what we tried to recap on the show:Didi vs. China: The Chinese government's crackdown on Didi continued over the weekend, after announcing a cybersecurity review of the company on Friday. That decision blocked new user signups. Now Didi has had its app removed from pertinent app marketplaces. That's going to hit revenue. Shares of the company are sharply lower in pre-marketing trading here in the United States. The company went public last week.Twitter vs. India: India's attempts to cow Twitter into not enacting its own content moderation policies continues. Now India has taken away legal protections from the well-known American company. It's not great news for India's growing technology sector, or the investors backing the upstarts.Funding rounds: Lots of companies raised money, including Byrd, with $19 million in a Series B, Pleo with a huge $150 million unicorn round, and Obviously AI, which just extended its Seed round.It's going to be a busy week! Chat tomorrow.

Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch's venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.Danny, Natasha, and Alex were on-deck this week, with Grace on the recording and edit. But, if you want to hear more about Robinhood, this is not the episode for you. If you want to learn more about the consumer fintech company's IPO filing this is the episode you want. Basically, Robinhood filed after we had wrapped taping, so we had to do a special pod for the news.So, this is the everything-but-Robinhood episode. And here's what's inside of it:Startup and investor tensions at Bessemer and Hinge Health. Natasha has the latest.Didi's IPO, and what's going on with Chinese IPOs more generally. Also SentinelOne's expensive and notable debut.And then all things Duolingo, including TechCrunch's overview and more in-depth look.From the venture capital side of things, Zipline raised $250 million, Daylight raised $5 million, Articulate raised $1.5 billion, Acceleprise rebranded to Forum Ventures, and Peanut put together a micro-fund.We closed with Neeva, Brave, and other alternative search tools. Alex has a piece coming on the subject, once he gets around to finishing it.A four-episode week! With only Grace handling production! She's amazing.

It's a sweltering day here in New York City, and that means Wall Street is on fire, and so is Robinhood, apparently. The popular stock trading app officially filed its Form S-1 with the SEC a few hours ago to go public, where it will trade under the ticker "HOOD."The Equity crew has been yammering about Robinhood for years now, and we have been chomping on the bit to see those S-1 results for what feels like ages. Well, we finally got the numbers, we chomped that bit (or at least Alex and Danny did, since Natasha went on vacation about 15 minutes before the IPO hit the wires), and so here's a special Equity Shot to talk about all the highlights.We talked about so much in an itsy-bitsy 15-minute episode: crazy revenue growth, crazy revenue concentration from two major sources, regulatory hurdles that the company has been clearing up, better financials with a bit of nuance on the company's Q1 finances, and the company's special plan for its IPO.Wowza.Here's what we got up to:Historical growth and profitability.Revenue mix and revenue concentration, along with constituent concerns.The importance of options-related incomes for the company.Dogecoin.Why the company's adjusted income may help it assuage investors who have their eyes pop out of their skulls when they see its GAAP Q1 2021 results.And a lot more. Of course, if you hate Robinhood, we will be back with our normally-scheduled Friday episode of Equity tomorrow.

Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch's venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.For this week's deep dive, Alex and Natasha brought on Alexis Gay, a former operator at Patreon who now makes her living as comedian and podcast host, to talk about the creator economy - including our disdain for that horrid phrasing. You may know her from her cheeky, on point shorts about tech culture (and tech Twitter).https://twitter.com/yayalexisgay/status/1369346460911734784Gay gave us an honest look into the life of creator helper turned creator actual, admitting that her current job path wasn't possible in 2018. Somewhere, somehow, a VC in the distance heard that admittance as an opportunity to back a creator economy startup.Here's what we got into: Gay's experience at Patreon, and why she left. Alex had some thoughts on the theme. It appears that growing list of creator-focused tools could increase the vapor pressure of folks who write, talk, art, and otherwise create, regarding their present-day employment. Why one size doesn't fit all when it comes to the diverse world of folks engaged in creative work. We also dipped our toes into the issue of indie creators needing to be CEOs as well as artists. We chatted on Vibely, a startup that wants to make interactions with creators ~ multi-directional~ and what it says about scaling time. We also got into what an average day looks like for a full-time creator-comedian-podcaster, why she's annoyed with how creators are discussed by founders and investors, and the tooling she hopes to see in the future. And, well, we had to ask her if she's starting a rolling fund too.All told, if you care about the economics of the creative world and want to add some nuance to your theories about it, it's a fun episode.

Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch's venture capital-focused podcast where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.This is Equity Monday, our weekly kickoff that tracks the latest private market news, talks about the coming week, digs into some recent funding rounds and mulls over a larger theme or narrative from the private markets. You can follow the show on Twitter here and myself here.First, happy belated birthday to Chris Gates, one of the founding members of the show. His birthday was yesterday, and while he's on vacation for two weeks, we still wanted to give him a shoutout. Chris is a very good person, a good friend, a good father, a good partner. He's kind, supportive, and hilarious. And he has a very good beard.But Equity waits for no single person, regardless of their merit, so on we went! Here's today's show:Stocks are a bit blah this morning, though set to rise in the United States. Cryptos are up a little.From the weekend, Venmo is getting into ecommerce, and Apple loves Surface.From this morning: Binance is beefing with the United Kingdom, and appears to be winning, which is somewhat humorous.On the funding round beat, Slice raised $20 million, Botrista raised $10 million, and Thursday raised $3.5 million.We wrapped with this.The Equity crew is back on Wednesday for our deep-dive, this week focusing on the creator economy which should be good fun. Chat then!

Hey Equity fam, we have a small clip of extra for you today. After our live show - listen to the recording here, it was good fun - we got to take a few questions from the audience, audio that was not included in the main episode as we didn't have the time. But we've cut it out, given it a short polish, and have it for you today.If you wanted even more Equity, here you go!As a small note from the team, we know that this week's Wednesday episode didn't have the best audio quality. And to do a Twitter Spaces experiment the same week as a live show might have felt like a lot of change. Don't worry, it just worked out that way. Equity will keep tinkering and having fun, but we're back to normal next week.Enjoy the Q&A, and we'll see you at our next live show!- Grace, Chris, Natasha, Danny, and Alex

Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch's venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.This week we did something fun and different and good: a live show! A good number of people came, and asked questions, and altogether, it was a blast.Danny, Natasha, and Alex had a lovely time with the regular work, while Grace and Chris and Kevin made the whole operation function. We'll likely post a bonus episode of the Q&A on Saturday if people are interested in Equity After Hours.That aside, what did we talk about in a longer-than-usual episode? Here's the rundown: Buzzfeed is going public! Alex wrote about the news here, but the gist is that the media company is merging with a SPAC, buying Complex, and raising some capital at the same time. We have thoughts about it. Maybe neobanks will break even? We dug into some fintech news through the perspective of some recent news from the neobank market. MAJORITY raised MONEY for migrants to the United States, while MFast, a Vietnamese financial services app, got some funding of its own amid the neobank boom. Alex interviewed a leading venture capitalist. So, we talked about that. What's going on with the early-stage venture capital market? That's something we tried to parse. The gist is that the rapidly-evolving world of investing in startups is in the midst of a few trends that are worth understanding. Even if they are slightly contradictory. A16z tripled down on crypto with a new $2.2 billion fund, giving it a total of $18.8 billion in assets under management. Edtech leaders rallied around a memo of their own this past week. And then to close, we raced through some of our recent reporting on a new fund that will invest in American military institute graduates, Figma's huge new round of capital, and WaitWhat?It's always fun to play around with our show, and thank you to everyone who came out and supported us in our first-ever, but probably not last-ever, virtual live show. We are back to regular, however, starting Monday.

For this week's deep dive Danny, Alex, and a bunch of the TechCrunch crew took on the recent happenings in the world of bitcoin. In a break from our regular format, we recorded live from a Twitter Space -- it's like a Clubhouse, but closer to where your social network is -- so the audio quality is not going to be Utterly Perfect. But we think the conversation will more than make up for it!Before we get into the show notes, do not forget that we're recording Equity live on Hopin Thursday the 24th. Come hang with us and have some fun. It's free, of course, and should be a good time. Details here, sign up here!So what did we get into? A lot!Recent price changes to the value of major coinsThe impact of China on the larger crypto ecosystemWhat's the latest from the NFT craze?Are DAOs, you know, actually a thing?And more. A big thanks to Romain Dillet and Lucas Matney for hanging with us, Drew Olanoff for hosting, and Chris Gates for snagging the audio and making it all work.See you tomorrow!

Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch's venture capital-focused podcast where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.This is Equity Monday, our weekly kickoff that tracks the latest private market news, talks about the coming week, digs into some recent funding rounds and mulls over a larger theme or narrative from the private markets. You can follow the show on Twitter here and myself here.Our live show is this week! And we're very excited about it! Details here, and you can register here. It's free, of course, so swing by and hang with us.Back on theme, we had a lot to get through this morning, so inside the show you can find the following and more: The Chinese cryptocurrency clampdown is a big damn deal: With lots of the nation's mining capacity heading offline, there's a scramble to relocate rigs and generally figure out what a crypto market sans China might look like. In the wake of the news, the value of cryptocurrencies fell. As did shares of Coinbase this morning in pre-market trading. Facebook's Clubhouse rival is out. The American social giant follows Spotify into the live-audio market. You have to give it to modern software companies, who thought that they could be both leading tech shops and Kinko's clones at the same time? Revolut is unprofitable as hell but increasingly less so. That could be good news for fintech as a whole. Amber Group raised $100 million; Forto raised $240 million.See you this Thursday at the live show!

Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch's venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.This week, Natasha and Danny, otherwise known as your two new favorite Book influencers (inside joke, you'll get if you listen to the show), hopped on the mics to take everyone threw the news, with Grace and Chris in the background.Here's what we got into: Wise announced plans to go public via direct listing, making it the biggest company to use this route to debut on the London Stock Exchange. Andreessen Horowitz goes into publishing with Future, so Danny and Natasha took turns fawning over why everyone has hot takes about a blog, and what could be in the future for Future. Harry Stebbings turned up the volume on 20VC with new $140M fund. Natasha broke down why it matters for emerging fund managers, and why it might quiet some concerns about the growth potential of micro-funds. After we left our usually programmed media and venture conversation, we turned to community. Commsor bought Meetsy to build community tools for all for an undisclosed price. Danny found hobby-market fit with BookClub, a startup that just raised $20 million to make reading experiences more engaging with author-led discussions. Then, the edtech convo continued with Formative's $70 million financing event from this week. Danny had the scoop on Gusto's first-ever acquisition as well as Clair, a tool that is skipping the direct deposit and heading straight for the paycheck.  To close out the funding round section, we spoke about Carbyne making emergencies more streamlined, and what Natasha argued is the headline o' the week: Neo4j raises Neo$325m as graph-based data analysis takes hold in enterprise. To close, we spoke to HBCUvc's $1 million fund to back overlooked founders, and onramp aspiring investors.Well, as you can tell, it's been a busy writing and speaking week for your humble hosts. We're grateful for the opportunity, and will be back in your ears on Monday.

Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch's venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.For this week's deep dive, Natasha and Danny unpacked the Expensify EC-1, which includes a ton of surprises, building tips, and, as we discuss in the show, some life lessons as well. This is our largest EC-1 to date, and is the result of six months of prodigious work from the inimitable Anna Heim. Of course, we had to add our Equity spin on the feature and boiled down our favorite musings into a succinct episode.Here's what we got into:Expensify's silent period as a fun dynamic to deal with as reportersThere's always an Uber angle, and Expensify is no different when you realize its early roots are tied to entrepreneur Travis Kalanick's persuasionHow Expensify manages to stay slim, focus in a rural town in Michigan, and achieve profitabilityNatasha asked if lack of structure negatively or positive impacts minorities and underrepresented folk, while Danny explained a nifty way that the company deals with promotions and raises.Danny explained how re-writing the playbook might positively impact recruitment, and how joining Expensify doesn't come with your classic SaaS pitch.And we end with a meta conversation on how society views work, and why neither of us went to spend the next 50 years with predictability.Once you're done listening to the episode, make sure to check out Heim's EC-1 below: Part 1: Origin story “How a band of P2P hackers planted the seeds of a unique expense management giant” (2,400 words/10 minutesPart 2: Culture: “How Expensify got to $100M in revenue by hiring ‘stem cells' and not ‘cogs in a wheel'” (3,120 words/12.5 minutes)Part 3: Expansion and remote work: “How Expensify shed Silicon Valley arrogance to realize its global ambitions” (3,250 words/13 minutes)Part 4: Engineering and technology: “How Expensify hacked its way to a robust, scalable tech stack” (3,300 words/13 minutes)Part 5: Business model: “How bottom-up sales helped Expensify blaze the path for SaaS” (4,200 words/17 minutes)And that's the show! Make sure to register for a seat at our FREE Equity live show next week, and follow us on Twitter @equitypod. Until Friday!

Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch's venture capital-focused podcast where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.This is Equity Monday, our morning coffee chat with you that is all about the weekend, what to expect this week, and some funding rounds you may have missed. I'm subbing in for Alex Wilhelm today, who is deservedly out on vacation. You can find me on Twitter @nmasc_, and Equity on Twitter (turn on those notifications!) @equitypod. Biden and world leaders are congregating at the NATO summit, which kicks off this week. Also, the Dublin Tech Summit is happening on Thursday with yours truly, other TC folks, and many entrepreneurs making a virtual appearance.Now, onto the news!  The weekend: The seat next to Jeff Bezos as he launches into space just got filled for $28 million. Also, Elon Musk tweeted about how Tesla might start accepting Bitcoin as a payment once at least half of it can be mined using clean energy. The comment sent Bitcoin up more than a few percentage points, hovering at $39,173 at the time of the recording. This morning: The FT reports that Flagship Pioneering, which is responsible for incubating and launching Moderna, has raised a new venture capital fund at $3.4 billion. Flagship isn't your traditional VC. It forms teams around problem areas and brainstorms solutions, incubates the most promising ones, and then eventually spins out and finances those companies.  Funding rounds: Byju's got a check from UBS and Zoom founder Eric Yuan, making it the most valuable startup in India. The company is now valued at $16.5 billion post-money. Plus, The Pill Club has raised an extension Series B round with former Uber exec Liz Meyerdirk newly at the helm of the company. Finally, please take the Equity Listener Survey. We want to make the show better for you, so spending a few seconds filling out our survey and we will be very grateful.And that's all. Be kind with yourself this week, and take more than a 5-minute lunch because true glamour is being present and chewing slowly.

Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch's venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.We're closing our survey soon, so this is your last chance (probably) to get your voice heard!Despite it being a short week, as always, it was a busy, busy time. We had Grace on the dials today, and Danny, Natasha, and Alex making chit-chat about the tech world. As with every week this year, we had to cut and cut and cut to get the show down to size. Here's what made it in in the end: Medium saw more employees depart the company after CEO Ev Williams published a 'culture memo.' While the Medium memo doesn't wholly ban politics, some allege that the undertone of the statement, timed weeks after a failed unionization attempt, created an unsafe environment. A week later, Natasha covered another controversy, this time at Y Combinator. We riff on the takeaway, and what this story looks like three months from now. The issue of company culture is attracting companies. Or more precisely startups, with Blendoor dropping a new report this week that TechCrunch covered, and Vault raising $8.2 million to provide a software solution to aid employees in reporting misconduct. On the funding round beat, we explored ChartHop's new $35 million round that Danny had many thoughts about, fake-chicken nuggets startup Nuggs raising $50 million, and Faculty's latest deal that will help power its vision for the future of male grooming. We also got into Lifted's elder-care focused round, a startup in the larger healthtech beat that Natasha is giving some of her attention to. And we wrapped with the ExtraHop exit. We spent a minute trying to figure out why the company was valued at $900 million in its exit. The number, while large, felt light based on what we knew about the company.Thanks for hopping along with us this week and every week. Quick programming note: Natasha will take Alex's spot on the Monday show for next week since he's out, so be nice, and send her stuff to mention.

For this week's deep dive, Alex, Natasha, and Chris dug into the world of hormonal health, a sub-sector within the massive (and booming) world of digital health.The show was inspired by Natasha's latest Extra Crunch piece: "Hormonal Health is a massive opportunity: Where are the unicorns?". To round out the show, we asked one of the featured founders, Dr. Elizabeth Ruzzo, to hop on the mic and help us understand if hormonal health is at its infancy, or at an inflection point, in tech.The tl;dr before we hop into the show is that hormones -- while constantly evolving and changing -- are center node for a ton of health conditions that disproportionately impact women. These can include mental health issues, infertility, diabetes, and more. If you're someone interested in the world of digital health and always read about the Ro's and Hinge Health's of the ecosystem, this episode will teach you what else there is that deserves equal - if not more - attention.Here's what we got into:We started with landscaping! We defined the term "hormonal health" and got a sense of market size, as to show the opportunity there is to innovate here right now.Ruzzo walked us through the opportunity in pro-active medicine, as well as how investors reacted to her pitch when she was first raising her seed round.We ping-ponged around different reasons as to why hormonal health is an underserved category, starting with stigma and ending with stigma.This post from a set of venture capital investors discussing the market opportunity that women's health may have for founders and VCs alike.Then we got into Modern Fertility's acquisition by Ro, and why Ruzzo and many in the digital health community were surprised at the outcome. That said, it's still one of the rare exits, and as far as unicorns go, there are virtually no companies valued at over $1 billion that focus explicitly on women's hormonal health.Shifting gears, the trio turned to startups working on PCOS, one of the most common hormonal conditions out there that impacts one in ten women. Former Ro director Rachel Blank announced today that she is starting a company in this world, Allara.To round out the conversation we touched on the recent Veera venture capital round, and closed with a short discussion concerning the the term "femtech" and why it's not so good.Don't forget to take the Equity survey, and we'll chat you on Friday morning!

Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch's venture capital-focused podcast where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.This is Equity Monday, our weekly kickoff that tracks the latest private market news, talks about the coming week, digs into some recent funding rounds and mulls over a larger theme or narrative from the private markets. You can follow the show on Twitter here and myself here.It's WWDC week, so expect a deluge of Apple news to overtake your Twitter feed here and there over the next few days. But there's a lot more going on, so let's dig in:The Weekend: A supercharged, supercharged Model S Tesla car is not coming out. Instead, a merely supercharged version will come out. It's still stupid fast and expensive. And Nigeria's war with Twitter continued, with new efforts from the African nation to limit access to the social media service within its borders.This Morning: Flipkart is raising $3 billion at a roughly $40 billion valuation The deal underscores not just how big the Indian tech scene is, but also how much investor interest there is in ecommerce bets more generally. And Jeff Bezos is going to space. Soon!Funding Rounds: Trulioo raised a $394 million Series D. The Canadian startup is now worth far more than $1 billion. And Chinese company Kanzhun is going public in the United States, which raised an eyebrow here amongst the Equity Morning Crew.Take The Damn Equity Survey: Take it! All the cools kids are taking it!And that's your start to the week. More to come from your friends here on Wednesday, and Friday. Chat soon!

Despite it being a short week, as always, it was a busy busy time. Our regular Friday producer Grace was under the weather today, so Chris stepped in to help out.And as noted at the top of the episode, we're running a survey. The survey is here, dear Equity family. Please fill it out so that we can keep making the show better.That aside, here's what Danny and Natasha and Alex got into:Stack Overflow has a new owner, and a $1.8 billion sale price that is minting 61 new millionaires in the process.Katerra is dying, as in going to zero. As the company has been a regular feature of TechCrunch coverage, we had to discuss its end. You can also catch up on Greensill here if that's your jam.Back on the acquisition front, Etsy is buying Depop for $1.625 billion. Our take is that the deal makes good sense, even if it is not cheap.Amazon is now open to being sued after an overwhelming number of arbiration claims were filed. Also we get to talk about everyone's favorite judge's writing style.Unit raised money to help teams unionize; Chipper Cash raised a huge round for its fintech product; and One Concern underscores Danny's larger disaster tech thesis by raising $45 million.That's all we got! If you have heard Equity before, take the survey. Thank you!

For this week's deep dive, Alex and Natasha dug into the burgeoning of sports media, sports gaming, and fantasy sports world today through the lens of some early-stage startups. Naturally, the Equity team is what comes to mind when you consider the correct and right people to discuss sports. We are here to back up your priors.Jokes aside, we had a good time digging into the following:THE GIST raised $1 million. Both Natasha and Alex were very bullish on the company's product, focus, and market. Especially in light of some recent media deals that have kept our hearts aflutter over the last few quarters.Blaseball raised $3 million. Whether it is blah-ZAY-ball, or BLACE-ball, the Equity team thinks that having fantasy fantasy sports is meta, good fun, and perhaps appeal-broadening the larger, somewhat hoary world of baseball. Also baseball could use more whimsy in general.And the fantasy talk continued as we got to cricket, which is a massively adored and obsessed over sport in India especially. Earlier this year, Dream11's parent firm raised $225 million at an over $2.5 billion valuation to build an end-to-end sports tech company around the sport.We'd venture out to say we are probably the only tech podcast this week that found an angle to riff on within sports and donuts, which is why we love our jobs and why we hope you love the show. Surprises keep things fun, and much love to our producers, Chris and Grace, for constantly sourcing creative material that may have flown under the radar otherwise.Back Friday!

Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch's venture capital-focused podcast where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.This is Equity Tuesday, our weekly kickoff that tracks the latest private market news, talks about the coming week, digs into some recent funding rounds and mulls over a larger theme or narrative from the private markets. You can follow the show on Twitter here and myself here.We are back from a long weekend here in America. But not break here in the States can stop the flow of global tech news. So, here's the rundown:The Weekend: Tata bought BigBasket, setting up a fascinating ecommerce war in India. China is cracking down on edtech companies, leading to an IPO freeze. And Wejo is going public via a SPAC. You can read its investor deck here.This Morning: The are a zillion funding rounds in Europe and globally this morning, the start of what could be a super busy week's cycle. Private Equity is buying Cloudera, which is a surprise. Nio had chip shortage issues that impacted its delivery cadence. The Chinese EV company does expect to meet its Q2 delivery goal, however.Funding Rounds: Truebill raised $45 million. Chipper Cash raised $100 million. Zenyum raised $40 million. WeFox raised $650 million. Malt raised $97 million. Sennder raised $80 million. idwall raised $38 million. Belvo raised $43 million. And that was not even close to all the big ones.Riff: Late last week we missed the Sprinklr filing. You can read it here. Quite a number of VCs have money riding on the IPO.Welcome back, America, to the week. It's nice to see you, everyone else. Maybe Robinhood will file this week.

Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.This week had the whole crew aboard to record: Grace and Chris making us sound good, Danny to provide levity, Natasha to actually recall facts, and Alex to divert us from staying on topic. It's teamwork, people - and our transitions are proof of it.And it's good that we had everyone around the virtual table as there was quite a lot to get through:Team felt all kinds of ways about the Amazon-MGM deal. Some of us are more positive about than the rest, but what gists out from the transaction is that for Amazon, the purchase price is modest and the company is famously playing a supposedly long-game. Let's see how James Bond fits into it. Alex receives four points for not bringing up F1 thanks to the Bond-Aston Martin connection.Turning to the SPAC game, we chatted through the recent Lordstown Motors earnings results, and what we can parse from them regarding blank-check companies, promises, and reality.After launching last June with just $2 million, Collab Capital has closed its debut fund at its target goal: $50 million. The Black-led firm invests exclusively in Black-led startups, and got checks from Apple, PayPal, and Mailchimp to name a few. We talk about this feat, and note a few other Black-led venture capital firms making waves in the industry lately.We Resolved our transition puns and eventually spoke about the Affirm spin-out, which raised $60 million in a funding round for BNPL for businesses. There's bigger questions there around the accessibility and point of BNPL, and if its really re-inventing the wheel or just repackaging it with simpler UX.Next up, we got into a can of worms about the future of meetings thanks to Rewatch, which raised a $20 million Series A this week led by Andreessen Horowitz. The startup helps other startups create internal, private Youtubes to archive their meetings and any video-based comms. We could only spend a second on this, so if you want our longer thoughts in the form of text, check out our 3 views on the topic on Extra Crunch! (Discount Code: Equity)From there we had Interactio and Fireflies.ai, two more startups that are tackling the complexities of meetings in the COVID-19 era, and whatever comes next. Both recently raised new funding, and Alex brought up Kudo to add one more upstart to the mix.Noom, a weight loss platform, bulked up with $540 million in funding after nearly doubling its revenue from 2019 to 2020. The pandemic has made many people gain weight, but we chew into why Noom's moment might be right now after a decade in the works.Thanks for hanging out this week, Equity is back on Tuesday with our usual weekly kickoff, thanks to the American holiday on Monday. Chat then, unless you want to follow us on Twitter and get a first-look at all of Chris' meme work.