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 w...
Sep 03, 2021•27 min•Ep. 406
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 ...
Aug 31, 2021•25 min•Ep. 405
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 n...
Aug 30, 2021•7 min•Ep. 404
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 Ly...
Aug 28, 2021•22 min•Ep. 403
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 ...
Aug 27, 2021•27 min•Ep. 402
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 al...
Aug 26, 2021•22 min•Ep. 401
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 ...
Aug 25, 2021•24 min•Ep. 400
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 Byte...
Aug 23, 2021•7 min•Ep. 399
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 t...
Aug 20, 2021•35 min•Ep. 398
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 ...
Aug 18, 2021•12 min•Ep. 397
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...
Aug 16, 2021•6 min•Ep. 396
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...
Aug 14, 2021•30 min•Ep. 395
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 i...
Aug 13, 2021•35 min•Ep. 394
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. Bo...
Aug 11, 2021•24 min•Ep. 393
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 ha...
Aug 09, 2021•7 min•Ep. 392
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 ...
Aug 06, 2021•53 min•Ep. 391
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 Sands Creighton Vance , Media Strategist at Mission North and maker of music We had a few things to chat about, so we broke the show into a few sections: Today's PR worl...
Aug 04, 2021•26 min•Ep. 390
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. Do...
Aug 02, 2021•29 min•Ep. 389
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 lo...
Jul 30, 2021•38 min•Ep. 388
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...
Jul 28, 2021•29 min•Ep. 387
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 an...
Jul 26, 2021•6 min•Ep. 386
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...
Jul 23, 2021•29 min•Ep. 385
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 ...
Jul 21, 2021•24 min•Ep. 384
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...
Jul 19, 2021•6 min•Ep. 383
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? ...
Jul 16, 2021•34 min•Ep. 382
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 fo...
Jul 14, 2021•27 min•Ep. 381
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...
Jul 12, 2021•7 min•Ep. 380
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 goin...
Jul 09, 2021•35 min•Ep. 379
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...
Jul 07, 2021•17 min•Ep. 378
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...
Jul 06, 2021•6 min•Ep. 377
