Equity

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 — and be sure to check out last week's main ep that dug into Robinhood, Miami, and a host of other topics. This morning we had a pile of news to get through. Here's the rundown: Pony.ai raised another $100 million, which underscores our growing thesis that there is no amount of money yet that will produce the tech required for self-driving cars to work. Perhaps we will get there, but it is going to cost a pretty penny or two. Sticking to cars, the Apple-Kia tieup is kaput, which we should have known the moment it became known. Apple previously bought startup Drive.ai back in 2019, of course. Vroom, a 2020 IPO, bought a Super Bowl ad. Who would have expected that? Its shares are up, however, after the ad. Still on the car beat, Tesla bought $1.50 billion in bitcoin, and may accept the stuff as tender to buy its vehicles in the future. The move sent the price of bitcoin higher. Clubhouse got banned in China. Phable raised $12 million, Nexthink raised $180 million, and Bumble is targeting a higher share price in its impending IPO. And we may have figured out the ∆ between what investors are saying about the Seed market, and what data has largely said. Credits: Equity is produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. Bryce Durbin is our Illustrator. We'd also like to thank the audience development team and Henry Pickavet, who manages TechCrunch audio products. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture-capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines. Natasha and Danny and Alex and Grace were all here to chat through the week's biggest tech happenings. The good news is that we managed to fit it all into a single episode this week. The bad news is that that means the show is pretty long. Sorry about that! So, what took us so much time to get through? All of this: Robinhood raised $3.4 billion after its trading hiccups, and we also chatted over what we know about the company's Q4 2020 numbers. In short, the company is growing nicely. RPA is big and UiPath is cashing in on the trend, raising $750 million at a $35 billion valuation. That's a lot of cash for very little dilution. Databricks raised $1 billion at a $28 billion valuation, after reaching $425 million in ARR. The company's growth is hot, but its valuation may be even hotter. Bumble is going public, so we chatted about its results, and how founder- and venture-friendly the dating market may be in the future. In a big exit for the Boston startup ecosystem, alcohol delivery platform Drizly has sold to Uber for $1.1 billion. Sticking to the alcohol beat, Danny talked us through the Vivino news, describing himself as a wine sophisticate with a distaste for sommeliers, which is just about the most Danny thing he has ever said. But the company really is neat. Divvy homes raised a $110 million Series C to make it easier to buy a home, after financing five times as many homes in 2020 as it did in pre-pandemic times. And then there were some neat early-stage rounds to chat about: Balance raising $5.5 million to bring B2B payments to the modern world, Alloy Automation raising $4 million for ecommerce automation, and Beam raising $9.5 million to build a new browser. Make sure to read Natasha's profile of the new Expectul CEO here. And, we closed on some Miami news. And somehow we still have another entire day before the weeks is up! So much for 2021 calming down after 2020's storms. Credits: Equity is produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. Bryce Durbin is our Illustrator. We'd also like to thank the audience development team and Henry Pickavet, who manages TechCrunch audio products. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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 — and make sure to check out last week’s main episode and companion chat about Robinhood. This morning we ran into quite a lot of the same material, with Robinhood back in the news and the stock market looming large. Here's what we talked about: American stocks are set to rise, bitcoin is flat, and meme-stocks are mixed. In India, news is out that a new law could ban bitcoin (whatever that means), and this morning India forced Twitter to take down some accounts that had been critical of government policy. That's a pretty bad look. And it comes as we see a coup in Myanmar leading to a decline in internet connectivity; there is a clear link between authoritarianism and a desire for Internet control. Robinhood's CEO went on Clubhouse, where he was interviewed by Elon Musk about last week's mess; it turns out the National Securities Clearing Corporation, or NSCC, had asked Robinhood for $3 billion in deposit requirements. That number was reduced to $700 million, with Robinhood limiting some consumer behavior, allowing the company to open Friday morning. This morning the key news stories include the mess that is Facebook Groups, and the EU is appealing a tax decision that could impact tech company structure for years to come. Ben raised $2.5 million Phocas Software raised $34 million DesignCrowd raised $7.6 million And, finally, we are heading into earnings season, so strap in and get ready for a deluge of results. All that and we are back Thursday, if not before. Hugs and hellos from the Equity crew! Credits: Equity is produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. Bryce Durbin is our Illustrator. We'd also like to thank the audience development team and Henry Pickavet, who manages TechCrunch audio products. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines. Natasha and Danny and Alex and Grace hopped online for our weekly show, sans Gamestop news (which you can find here) to talk about all the other busy news happening in startup world right now. Here's a taste of what we got into: Qualtrics IPO pricing, and the future of major acquisition pricing schemes. This company's path to the public markets has been a long-time coming, so we had plenty to say. How Atlanta's Calendly turned a scheduling nightmare into a $3 billion company. This story was not only neat, but also operated as a sort of palate cleanser for the team. Rhino's interesting insurtech play, and how it is pre-IPO pretty damn early. Revenue questions, the power of insurtech, and public markets impacting startups? This story had it all! Alex talks about how Fast is raising fast money ($102 million to be exact). Even more, the Fast story fits into a broader narrative of online checkout startups raising a zillion dollars in recent weeks. A boom in food delivery and restaurant startups, and why Danny is bearish on a plastic-free play. Natasha is in favor. Alex gets a company's model mixed up with Spoon Rocket. Natasha explains how Clubhouse isn't the first company to raise millions off of millions of users with no known near-term monetization plan. Her piece on ClassDojo illustrates how a quiet edtech giant finally turned its 51 million users into a profitable base. There's also an investor survey for you to check out (Discount code: EQUITY). TCV's record fund, and a female-focused angel fund coming out of Africa. As always, it was a ton to get through because there is just so much going on. More Monday morning, until then stay cool! Credits: Equity is produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. Bryce Durbin is our Illustrator. We'd also like to thank the audience development team and Henry Pickavet, who manages TechCrunch audio products. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices