Our Monday show covers the latest in tech news from the weekend and what’s making headlines early in the week. Here's what Alex got into: The end of earnings: With just Adobe and Oracle from the tech world reporting this week, we have finally (mostly) wrapped up earnings season for Q4 2023, and thus the year. Crypto’s doing things again: Recent price appreciation is driving another massive spike in trading activity. TikTok forms joint venture : Teaming up with Tokopedia, the Bytedance company ha...
Dec 11, 2023•11 min•Ep. 764
This week on Chain Reaction, Jacquelyn interviewed David Pakman , managing partner and head of venture investments at CoinFund . Before CoinFund, David spent 14 years at the venture capital firm Venrock. He also led the Series A and B rounds at Dollar Shave Club which was acquired by Unilever for $1 billion. And in 1991, David co-created Apple Music when he was a part of Apple’s system software product marketing group We discussed the state of the crypto VC environment, areas he’s focusing on fo...
Dec 09, 2023•33 min•Ep. 763
This week Mary Ann Azevedo, Kirsten Korosec , and Alex Wilhelm gathered to hash out the news over some coffee and good times. Here’s what the gang got into today: Deals of the Week: Simply Homes raises $22 million for an interesting property play, SoftBank buys majority share of connected-vehicles company Cubic Telecom , and OurSky raises $9.2 million for its space-viewing software system. Troubles in Fintech: With ZestMoney shutting down , and layoffs at Navan (fka TripAction) it seems that fin...
Dec 08, 2023•35 min•Ep. 762
Today, we’re bringing you another conversation from TechCrunch Disrupt 2023, when Alex sat down with Serhii Bohoslovskyi , the founder of no-code app-builder Trible . Trible is a no-code software product that helps folks construct online courses. We love Disrupt because it gives us lots of room to chat with founders that we might otherwise have missed. We even had a dedicated podcasting area! Expect even more of this sort of chat in the future. Here’s what we got into with Bohoslovskyi: The stat...
Dec 06, 2023•16 min•Ep. 761
Our Monday show covers the latest in tech news from the weekend and what’s making headlines early in the week. And we had a lot to cover this morning! Crypto prices are rising, which is good news for the decentralized economy, as increasing prices track with heightened trading activity and consumer interest. We have another busy week of SaaS companies reporting quarterly results, which will hopefully provide a useful temperature check for tech valuations. CoreWeave's new $7 billion valuation had...
Dec 04, 2023•11 min•Ep. 760
Here's what the Equity crew got into today: Self-driving setbacks: Cruise is set to slash its costs in the wake of a safety mess, and greater scrutiny from regulators. Alex hopes that the current set of news items doesn’t slow down the progress of self-driving tech. Webull snaps up Flink: Free trading is not just a business model that is popular in the United States. Webull is taking the Latin American market more seriously with its purchase of Flink . Uber <3’s taxis: What are London’s iconi...
Dec 01, 2023•37 min•Ep. 759
Anu Hariharan , who previously led YC Continuity, has partnered with two of her former colleagues and former Brex executive Lucas Fox to launch a new fund, Avra . The fund aims to raise about $350 million and operate a program that some are referring to as a “YC for growth.” In light of the news, we’re throwing it back to a conversation we had with Anu earlier this year: Alex spoke to Anu back in August, after she tweeted about how "great" founders were successfully guiding their companies towar...
Nov 29, 2023•38 min•Ep. 758
You might be glad to know today was not all about OpenAI. Instead, we took on a bunch of news from the weekend that had to do with other companies: It’s a big earnings week for software companies, which means we’re about to get a bushel of information on how things are shaping up for SaaS startups in the latter half of 2023. On the crypto front, price movements have slowed as the industry digests the recent Binance verdict . Neuralink has raised more capital , which is great news for nerds like ...
Nov 27, 2023•12 min•Ep. 757
Today on Equity, we’re bringing you two bonus conversations all about sustainability in fashion from TechCrunch Disrupt 2023. First up you’ll hear our very own Harri Weber sit down with three guests: Jim Ajioka from Colorifix , Beth Esponnette from unspun and Julie Willoughby from Circ . They are all powerhouses in sustainable fashion and they all happened to join Harri on the Sustainability Stage. Watch their full conversation here . In part two, we have a great conversation between TechCrunch’...
Nov 24, 2023•39 min•Ep. 756
We’re discussing the recent turmoil in the AI market today. OpenAI has kept the journalistic corps busy, but we also need to consider what the latest twists and turns in the l’affaire Altman may bring for startup founders. So, I rallied TechCrunch’s own Kyle Wiggers , and Supervised founder and former Equity host Matthew Lynley to help me dig into the latest. Here’s the show rundown: What has happened to OpenAI since Monday morning when we last recorded the podcast? What do the two experts think...
Nov 21, 2023•31 min•Ep. 755
Listen here or wherever you get your podcasts . Hello, and welcome back to Equity , the podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines. Our Monday show covers the latest in tech news from the weekend and what’s making headlines early in the week. This past weekend was all about the massive shakeup at OpenAI, and the high-impact machinations that the last few days brought. We discussed the following: The timeline that brought us to today regard...
Nov 20, 2023•11 min•Ep. 754
This week Mary Ann and Alex covered a host of news events. Here's the rundown: Fintech + AI = ? News that Ramp and Brex are working to lever AI in the wake of reporting that Brex's growth this year on a sequential-quarterly basis slowed had us thinking. Can AI help fintech startups grow more quickly? The fintech sector could use a boon at this juncture, perhaps this is it. Help I drink too much : Alex dug up a recent venture round in the sobriety space. This time it was Sunnyside, which just rai...
Nov 17, 2023•31 min•Ep. 753
This week we brought TechCrunch’s own Rebecca Bellan onto the podcast to help us better understand Google’s search-related anti-trust case that is currently ongoing in the United States. There are a number of major legal cases involving tech giants and their in-market heft and behavior, from Google v. Epic to what’s going on in the EU and the U.S. government’s adtech-related suit against Google , but our focus is search. Catch up on the state of affairs with Bellan’s reporting here . Now, the st...
Nov 15, 2023•29 min•Ep. 752
Here’s what we got into on this very cold November morning: Crypto’s melt-up is continuing, with rising trading volumes following in the wake of the price gains. For web3 believers, it’s great news. The FT has a great interview with Sam Altman about how AI training is going to stay expensive for a long while; Microsoft is probably not worried about the costs, however. Didi’s earnings dropped , kicking off a busy week for Chinese tech companies including Alibaba, NetEase, and Tencent Music. The B...
Nov 13, 2023•10 min•Ep. 751
This is our Friday show, and we’re talking about the week’s biggest startup and tech news. This time ’round we had Kirsten Korosec , Mary Ann Azevedo , and Alex Wilhelm on the job to chat through a massive pile of news: For everyone who listened to our fintech deep-dive, here are Affirm’s results . Deals of the Week: $105 million for May Mobility , $3.6 million for Mogul Club , and Microsoft’s latest startup wooing trend . WeWork is bankrupt , and we are Not Shocked . All things from OpenAI’s de...
Nov 10, 2023•35 min•Ep. 750
Today, Mary Ann and Alex dove deep into encouraging signs from the fintech startup market: Solid results from Klarna are on top of Alex’s mind . The company’s ability to continue growing while staying profitable is a reminder that one down-round does not a company kill. Fintech fundraising results were on Mary Ann’s mind as we wait for venture capitalists to re-accelerate their investments in the space. Sure, no one wants to return to 2021-era insanity, but after so long in the valuation doghous...
Nov 08, 2023•30 min•Ep. 749
Here’s what we got into on this fine morning: Stocks and crypto: Stocks are higher in Asia, lower in Europe, and nearly flat in the United States. More interestingly, crypto prices are continuing their ascent. Even NFTs are picking up a little bit ! It’s another busy week on the earnings front, meaning we’ll hear from Uber and Lyft and Hubspot, among others. On the AI front, TechCrunch is tracking 01.AI in China , which is now a unicorn, and the latest offering from Elon Musk’s X.AI service. The...
Nov 06, 2023•10 min•Ep. 748
We’re talking about the week’s biggest startup and tech news with Mary Ann, Becca, and Alex. Here's what we got into: What happened to WeWork? As the shared office space company struggles to stay alive , we had a lot to say . Deals of the Week: Mary Ann wanted to chat about Charlie , which is building a neobank for seniors; Alex wanted to talk about an interesting non-profit-ish model to get startups and others access to H100s; Becca brought Almouneer to the table , an interesting healthtech pla...
Nov 03, 2023•36 min•Ep. 747
This is our Wednesday show, where we sit down with a guest, talk about their work and dive deep into the rest. Mary Ann and Alex invited Marisa Warren onto the show. You may remember that we discussed her new fund — ALIAVIA Ventures’ first — on the show the other week. We wanted to talk with her to go over a few key topics that we care a lot about: The current state of venture investment in women; why the numbers aren’t changing, and what she thinks could make a difference. When startups should ...
Nov 01, 2023•32 min•Ep. 746
Our Monday show covers the latest in tech news from the weekend and what’s making headlines early in the week. Here’s what we got into today: It's a massive earnings week, unlocking a massive wave of new data concerning the performance of tech public tech companies. We're hoping to learn more about the market that startups are selling into in the process. The recent crypto rally is helping bolster spot trading results, good news for Coinbase ahead of its own earnings report. The Biden administra...
Oct 30, 2023•10 min•Ep. 740
Happy Saturday! We have a special bonus episode for you from our sister pod, Chain Reaction. Alex joins Jacquelyn Melinek go over the FTX/Sam Bankman-Fried trial before getting into his testimony from Thursday and Friday. They talked about: Why the judge had the jury leave the courthouse for SBF’s testimony Thursday The general feeling of the courthouse on the fourth week of the trial A possible timeline for next week and what to look out for as the prosecution gets a chance to cross examines de...
Oct 28, 2023•25 min•Ep. 745
Hello and welcome back to Equity , a podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines. This is our Friday show, and we’re talking about the week’s biggest startup and tech news. Mary Ann and Alex were lucky enough to have Kirsten aboard for the roundup, which means we got to tackle an even wider array of stories than usual: Updates from the trial of former FTX CEO SBF, more here from our own Jacquie . Deals of the Week: Mary Ann was very interes...
Oct 27, 2023•38 min•Ep. 742
Hello, and welcome back to Equity , the podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines. This is our Wednesday show, where we sit down with a guest, talk about their work and dive deep into the rest. This week, we had Theory Ventures founder Tomasz Tunguz on the show. As long-time readers of his work , having the former Redpoint investor on the show was a no-brainer. While it would have been fun to spend our time chatting about the ups and down...
Oct 25, 2023•31 min•Ep. 741
Hello, and welcome back to Equity , the podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines. Our Monday show covers the latest in tech news from the weekend and what’s making headlines early in the week. Here’s what we got into today: Stocks are down around the world, while the value of crypto tokens is heading higher. Crypto trading volume is also trending north . It’s a huge week for earnings with names like Microsoft, Alphabet, Spotify, Snap, Me...
Oct 23, 2023•9 min•Ep. 744
This is our Friday show, and we’re talking about the week’s biggest startup and tech news. Mary Ann and Alex ran as a pair this week, and here's what they got into: Deals of the Week: Allara raised $10 million for women's hormonal health , Agnikul raised $26.7 million for its orbital launch technologies . Beef in the (leased) boardroom: WeWork is irked by Codi , which is hammering the well-known shared-office giant in an advertising campaign. Meanwhile, Anyplace raised more capital to fund its d...
Oct 20, 2023•33 min•Ep. 743
This week Gené Teare from Crunchbase and Crunchbase News joined the podcast. She's a well-known analyst of the global venture capital market, and was instrumental to Crunchbase's early life and remains one of its more tenured staffers. So, what did the three of us get into? Here's the rundown: The big picture: What should we think about when we consider the Q3 2023 venture capital market as a whole. (More on Latin America here , Canada here , and global data here from TechCrunch+.) Here's Gené o...
Oct 18, 2023•33 min•Ep. 739
Here's what we got into today: Earnings season is here, and we'll hear from Tesla and Netflix this week. Expect a lot of new data to drop in the coming weeks. If we bundle a number of headlines together, it's clear that running a social media company in the modern era can be a very expensive proposition. Though, what you think about regulation may color how you view the situation. Funding to web3 gaming companies declined in Q3, but it's not all that bad . The U.S. may not see IPOs happening, bu...
Oct 16, 2023•10 min•Ep. 738
This week, we have a bonus mini episode where Jacquelyn talks with TechCrunch+ editor-in-chief Alex Wilhelm to dive back into the Sam Bankman-Fried trial and what has transpired in its second week. Major witnesses who were involved in the downfall of FTX and its sister company Alameda testified like Gary Wang, CTO and cofounder of FTX, and Caroline Ellison, CEO of Alameda. The two of them plead guilty to a number of charges and could face maximum sentences of 50 to 110 years, respectively. It’s ...
Oct 14, 2023•11 min•Ep. 737
Mary Ann and Alex were joined by Kirsten once again to parse the week’s news and call out the biggest stories in startups and venture: California passed a law that will require venture firms to disclose certain market data concerning whom they are investing in. Some investors and venture groups are opposed to the law. ALIAVIA Ventures has put together a new fund to invest in women building tech companies in Australia and the United States, with a focus on helping Aussie companies reach the Ameri...
Oct 13, 2023•34 min•Ep. 736
This week we had Medium CEO Tony Stubblebine , the CEO of Medium.com, a publishing platform that he has helmed for more than a year. Medium has gone through a number of versions over the years. Pivots, if you will . But what has been a steady focus in Medium's life in recent years has been its subscription business . Medium offers a paid membership tier that costs $5 per month or $50 per year. And, Tony was willing to share, it's growing once again and is heading toward a pretty key milestone. W...
Oct 11, 2023•31 min•Ep. 735
