This time around we had a bit of a theme. See if you can spot it: Stocks are down around the world in the wake of Hamas' attack in Israel. Crypto is similarly in the red. China is working to bolster its national computing and data infrastructure . You know, the things that make AI function. In other words: the AI race between China and the United States is far from over. This Anthropic paper is a potentially big deal. The more that we understand LLMs, the better we can use them, right? Changes a...
Oct 09, 2023•10 min•Ep. 734
This week, Mary Ann and Alex had the pleasure of having TC reporter extraordinaire Dominic Madori-Davis as a guest on the show. Here’s what we got into: A quick update on the SBF trial , which quite frankly, has us all riveted. An Atlanta-based fintech startup called Rainforest’s $8.25M equity raise and how it is hoping to take market share away from the likes of Stripe. A bunch of new fund raises this week, including At One’s $375M climate-focused raise ; Section 32’s $525M fund close and Greyl...
Oct 06, 2023•35 min•Ep. 733
This time, we teamed up with the Chain Reaction podcast and Jacquelyn Melinek to talk about the ongoing trial of former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried, also known as SBF. The rise of FTX and its later implosion rocked the crypto world when the formerly massive crypto exchange went under last year. In the aftermath, the company's executives have been charged with financial crimes. Many have pleaded guilty and are cooperating with the government. SBF is not. Here's TechCrunch's reporting on the trial t...
Oct 05, 2023•34 min•Ep. 732
Welcome to Q4 2023, the period in which we are all going to pretend to have gotten enough done this year. Here’s what we got into on the show today: Stocks are mixed around the world while crypto tokens are enjoying a nice price-upswing in recent days. A recent article argues that Apple has all the ingredients it needs to build a search engine to take on Google and Microsoft. At issue? The fact that Apple makes so much money not having a search engine. For startups, more competition here could b...
Oct 02, 2023•9 min•Ep. 731
Here's what Mary Ann, Alex and Kirsten got into this week: The writer’s strike is over, and we have thoughts about its implications on AI . OpenAI is allowing some shareholders to sell stock , and the resulting valuation could be pretty darn high. Electric boat startup Arc has raised about $70 million ? We aren’t about to drop the coin needed to buy one of those, but the idea is neat nevertheless. Alex wanted to talk about fluctuations in the venture and stock markets . Is the mini-tech recovery...
Sep 29, 2023•37 min•Ep. 730
This week on Equity, Alex was joined by Nathan Baschez , the CEO and founder of Lex, an AI-infused online writing tool that recently raised capital . Together, we're talking through a few key topics that have been top of mind in recent months: How many AI-powered, or AI-using writing tools can the market support? How far into the generative AI moment we are, and how much we should anticipate in the form of technology improvements? And then we discussed the nuts and bolts aspects of pricing an AI...
Sep 27, 2023•32 min•Ep. 729
Equity is back from Disrupt and fired up for the rest of the year. Here’s what Alex got into today: Stocks are not peppy to start the week, while crypto prices have also moderated in recent days. Alex could not not talk about the Cisco-Splunk deal , mostly to promise that he’ll finish that post today come hell or high water. The Amazon + Anthropic news is the biggest item of the day. A $1.25 billion deal that could stretch to $4 billion is no small fee. And with Google and Amazon and Anthropic t...
Sep 25, 2023•10 min•Ep. 728
The Equity crew is back with another live recording from the Moscone Center in San Francisco for TechCrunch Disrupt 2023 . Alex , Kirsten and Becca sat down to recap a very busy (and dare we say successful) event, and walk through our favorite moments for the listeners who couldn't make it out this year. Here's what we got into: Providing early liquidity to founders and employees What advice VCs are giving their early stage founders Why Cruise might join the call to ban human drivers in city cen...
Sep 22, 2023•22 min•Ep. 727
We were live at TechCrunch Disrupt 2023 ! Yes, even though our dear friend and colleague Mary Ann had to handle a family emergency, the larger Equity family rallied to put on a rollicking early-morning show at the venue. From the Builders' stage where Alex had to introduce himself, Kirsten Korosec and Becca Szkutak rounded out our hosting crew and we had a blast. Here's the rundown: Instacart went public ! Finally, at last, at long last, Instacart is a public company. It priced at $30, the top-e...
Sep 20, 2023•30 min•Ep. 726
Here's what Mary Ann , Alex and Kirsten got into: More layoffs at Divvy Homes : More cuts at a company that was once richly valued and heavily venture-backed. Rising interest rates are having a ripple effect across startup-land. Databricks is big, and now richer : With $500 million in a new Series I, Databricks is now worth more money and has fresh capital to continue working on AI. Lime, just go public already : What is profitable and private and a tease? Lime. Well, that last bit is a stretch,...
Sep 15, 2023•33 min•Ep. 725
This week, we brought TechCrunch+ senior climate reporter Tim De Chant on to talk climate tech, hardware breakthroughs, and why we have a whole stage this year at Disrupt focused on sustainability . On that last point, perhaps you have gone outside recently. Extreme weather around the world, warming oceans, fires — it's a mess out there. That's the bad news. The good news is that a number of startups are working hard to build new technologies that could shoothe our struggling planet. And perhaps...
Sep 13, 2023•31 min•Ep. 724
Here's what we got into on the show today: Instacart IPO: We have a first price range for Instacart ! And the company is going to take a roughly $30 billion haircut on the valuation it raised at back in 2021. Still worth north of $7 billion by our math , Instacart is set to raise a lot of money at a multi-billion price. Hard to get too worried about that. (Even more, the company's fully-diluted valuation range is, if we are doing our sums correctly, $8.6 billion to $9.3 billion.) Klaviyo IPO: Al...
Sep 11, 2023•10 min•Ep. 723
Here's what Mary Ann, Alex and Kirsten got into: Mentra wants to help neurodivergent jobseekers find ideal jobs : We love a startup that is doing good for itself and doing good for others. This deal that Mary Ann wanted to chat through seems to check both boxes. SimpleClosure raises $1.5 million : What happens if your startup dies, and you need to wind down? You might need a simple way to close things up, right? Enter SimpleClosure. Argo AI founders are building something new : What just raised ...
Sep 08, 2023•39 min•Ep. 722
While the Equity crew prepares for another Y Combinator Demo Day, we're throwing it back to when Natasha and Alex caught up with current YC Partner and Managing Director of YC Early Stage, Michael Seibel . The main question on the pair's mind was how is YC evolving to meet a changed market? Seibel doesn't often do press -- and neither does YC -- so the interview was used to connect the dots on news from the accelerator, cross check top trends from the 2022 summer batch and ask about some of the ...
Sep 06, 2023•52 min•Ep. 721
Here's what Alex got into this morning: Earnings Season Never Ends: Gitlab, Asana, UiPath, Docusign, Rent the Runway and others will report this week. Crypto Down Bad: Prices for major cryptoassets are flat this morning, while the crypto venture picture is looking up to some degree . Arm Sets IPO Range : Shares of Arm are expected to sell for $47 to $51 per share, according to the company. The question for investors is whether to value the company on its trailing results, or future profits. More...
Sep 05, 2023•10 min•Ep. 719
Here’s the show rundown: Teamshares: Here’s an interesting one . Teamshares has raised a lot of money and is buying a lot of SMBs. But that’s just the start. It also plans to allow employees of those companies to buy most of their stock over time, while serving up centralized fintech services to all its sub-companies. Who doesn’t love to chat about a new model? MoonPay’s new venture arm: Crypto payment infra company MoonPay is getting into the venture game , with a focus on crypto, gaming, and f...
Sep 01, 2023•32 min•Ep. 718
This week, Alex spoke to Anu Hariharan , who’s previously worked with a16z, sits on Brex’s board, and more recently has been investing in later-stage companies at Y Combinator. She's also working on something new. Hariharan recently tweeted about how "great" founders were successfully guiding their companies towards cash flow positivity. Since that very interesting post, both Instacart (a former Y Combinator company) and Klaviyo have filed to go public . And both have super strong cash flows. Ou...
Aug 30, 2023•37 min•Ep. 717
As a small heads up, we had a bonus show over the weekend that is well worth your time! Alright, here’s what’s on the show this morning: Stocks are up around the world: A good note to start the week on, of course. In the meantime, the crypto market is still dragging. We’re back to minimal week-over-week price movements. Tech IPOs are back: After a drought that will be talked about for years, it’s raining tech IPOs again! Instacart and Klaviyo have filed their Form S-1s to go public, and we are b...
Aug 28, 2023•9 min•Ep. 716
Why the extra edition? Because Battery Ventures dropped an interesting report on Gen-Z and we wanted to talk about it. Alex got Courtney Chow, a vice president at Battery and one of the report's authors to chat about it. You can read the report itself here . This is what we got into: The fracturing of culture: Gen-Z is large, and very diverse. The trend away from monolithic cultural primacy that began years ago has accelerated with the generation, making culture itself more personal, and more di...
Aug 26, 2023•23 min•Ep. 715
This is our Friday show, and we’re talking about the week’s biggest startup and tech news. Here's what Mary Ann, Alex and Kirsten Korosec got into: Nvidia blew the doors off with its earnings report . We talked through some of the high-level numbers and marveled at the company's growth. TechCrunch has more on the matter here . Ramp raises $300M : In this market, a multi-billion-dollar valuation is a win for a fintech, even if Ramp's new price tag is a bit lower than it was previously. So, while ...
Aug 25, 2023•37 min•Ep. 714
This week, Mary Ann spoke with Mercedes Bent , Partner on the early stage team at Lightspeed Ventures and co-lead of Lightspeed’s LatAm region and angel fund. The pair chewed through a number of topics, including: How and why Mercedes started investing in Latin America, and why she thinks the region is more resilient than others Why we're early in the hype cycle when it comes to the intersection of AI and fintech Why generative AI and fintech aren't always the best combination and much more. Equ...
Aug 23, 2023•27 min•Ep. 713
Our Monday show covers the latest in tech news from the weekend and what’s making headlines early in the week. Here’s the rundown from this morning, with real news from the crypto-front, and even a neat startup round to round it out! Stocks are up in most of the world, China apart. The Chinese economy is a real topic of conversation lately, mostly centered around concerns regarding credit appetite, debt levels, housing costs, and government activity. In the crypto-world, prices are sharply lower...
Aug 21, 2023•9 min•Ep. 712
This week Mary Ann and Alex were joined by our regular guest host Kirsten Korosec. Here's what the gang got into: FTX's former CEO SBF is heading to jail : We struggled to find much pity for the former celebrity executive. Better.com is going public : After much controversy Better.com's SPAC merger is a go. The deal is a fundraising mechanism by our understanding, though we had a bit of a tough time coming up with a bull case for the company in the present moment. Monday.com's growth : Alex has ...
Aug 18, 2023•34 min•Ep. 711
This week, Alex had Amplitude CEO Spenser Skates on the show to talk about the SaaS market journey since his company went public in late 2021, which happened to be right before investor sentiment changed . After a successful IPO, Amplitude warned analysts and investors alike in early 2022 that it was seeing some macroeconomic pressure, which led to its stock being sharply repriced. (That happened to most companies eventually, to be fair.) Since then, the digital analytics company has shaken up i...
Aug 16, 2023•38 min•Ep. 710
Here’s the rundown from this morning: Worries about the Chinese economy dragged down Asian shares this morning; the equity picture was more mixed in Europe and the United States. Meanwhile, why is crypto so slow lately? What happened to price volatility? On the earnings front, we're looking ahead to Monday.com, Getty, Cisco, Bill.com and Palo Alto Networks this week. News that Anthropic is raising another $100 million got us talking about a few other AI rounds that are in the pipeline; the gist ...
Aug 14, 2023•10 min•Ep. 709
This week Mary Ann and Alex got into a mix of growth stories, and some less-than-winsome on the startups that are not having the best 2023: How Lula went frugal and set itself up for a massive up-round in 2023 : Mary Ann's recent reporting on Lula was perfect Equity material as it dealt with capital in motion, and a quickly-growing startup. Even more notably, Lula is in the insurtech space, part of the fintech world that has had an up-and-down few years. Weights & Biases raises $50M : Back i...
Aug 11, 2023•33 min•Ep. 708
This week, Dominic-Madori Davis came back on the show to chat with Mary Ann and Alex about two of her latest pieces: A lawsuit targeting a grant program that provided small checks to Black women small-business owners. The context here is that there's a movement in the United States to curtail programs that seek to provide access, or opportunity to underrepresented peoples in business and education. Given venture's somewhat embarrassing investment demographics, we struggled to understand the seem...
Aug 09, 2023•30 min•Ep. 707
Here’s the rundown from this morning, which saw Alex catching up from a few days off last week: Earnings season is slowing down, while global stocks slip to start the week. Crypto is not doing too much to start the week, but do recall that Coinbase earnings came last week . Peak smartphone? In the wake of Apple earnings , questions linger regarding just what is ahead for smartphones and what could get that market moving again. Thankfully for Apple shareholders, the company has done yeoman’s work...
Aug 07, 2023•9 min•Ep. 706
Today, we're bringing you an episode of our sister podcast, Chain Reaction. Chain Reaction unpacks and dives deep into the latest trends, drama and news in crypto with some of the biggest names in the industry to break things down block by block for the crypto curious. Jacquelyn interviewed Stu Alderoty, chief legal officer of Ripple Labs. Stu spent most of his career working for traditional financial institutions in legal roles at firms like CIT Group, American Express and HSBC and left that wo...
Aug 04, 2023•23 min•Ep. 705
This week, Alex and Mary Ann had Sara Mauskopf on the show, the CEO and co-founder of the childcare marketplace, Winnie, and a former Postmates and Twitter denizen . Here’s what we got into: The progress of Winnie over time , and how it found its niche in the childcare market The state of care as a venture-backable category, and where startups can find the most impact and business results The reported issues at Papa and the pressures of fundraising-driven growth in care-oriented markets And, of ...
Aug 02, 2023•35 min•Ep. 704
