INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.As with
yesterday, Kate and Alex were both on-site at TechCrunch’s San Francisco headquarters to chat over the latest
Unlike yesterday, however, Equity brought along a guest: Sean Dempsey from Merus Capital
(Merus writes seed and Series A checks, with a focus on enterprise companies.)And thus the three dove into the news
Early-stage first, to shake things up.Early-stageKate wrote a story this week about a startup you might have forgotten about but who’s
name probably rings a bell
Bodega! The company now goes by Stockwell, actually, and they’ve raised a whopping total of $45 million in VC funding
But what’s in a name after all? We debate.Next we turned to an interesting company called Kapwing
What’s that you ask? “It’s a laymen’s Adobe Creative Suite built for what people actually do on the internet: make memes and remix
media,” says TechCrunch’s Josh Constine
We’re intrigued.Late-stage and beyondThis week Peloton priced and went public
The firm’s $29 per-share IPO price was top of its proposed range ($26 to $29)
The public markets, however, decided that the unicorn had reached too high.So, shares of the high-end exercise company dropped, wrapping the
A good IPO first day this was not, though the company did manage to raise more capital than it might have with more conservative pricing
(Peloton has a yucky multi-class share structure that we touched on as well; it seems that all the big companies these days are opposed to
regular governance.)Next we turned to the Vox-NYMag merger
It’s a bit out of our territory but it’s a digital media deal, so we were interested
After all, the two of us have spent our entire careers in digital media and we have a vested interest in these companies surviving.WeWork
(Redux)We honestly tried to get all the WeWork out of our system yesterday
We wanted to include zero WeWork content on this episode
But WeWork keeps doing things, so here we are.Keeping things as brief as we can, WeWork is going to divest some companies that it bought
(more on what we thought it was up to, here) including its jet, and the firm is looking to take on more capital
Unsurprisingly.All that and we’re done for this week
Chat you all at Disrupt!Equity drops every Friday at 6:00 am PT, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify, Pocket Casts,
Downcast and all the casts.
