Equity Monday 09/21

09/21/20 • 9 min

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 big news, chats 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 don’t forget to check out last Friday’s episode.

What a busy morning. We had to cover TikTok. We had to talk VC rounds. So, this is what we got up to:

US tech stocks are poised to sell off further this morning.
The Oracle-TikTok-Walmart-ByteDance deal is either coming into focus, or a period of even less clarity. It's hard to tell.
Nikola founder Trevor Milton is leaving the board of his own company in the wake of fraud allegations. Shares of the company are sharply lower in pre-market trading.
Turning to TikTok, this primer represents the best over-the-weekend roundup that we could find. But, of course, things are still breaking as we come to print.
Since recording, Oracle has said that "upon creation of TikTok Global, Oracle/Walmart will make their investment and the TikTok Global shares will be distributed to their owners, Americans will be the majority and ByteDance will have no ownership in TikTok Global." And, President Trump said this morning that China has to give up control of TikTok or the deal is off. ByteDance has said that it will retain control. You figure that out.
But there was some good stuff to chat about. Including the super-neat Mobile Premier League round worth $90 million, growth news from EU-based Babbel, a new London-based Seed fund that got raised, and a Swedish healthtech Series B.
As you guessed from today's title, it was fun to see such a concentration of EU VC activity.
Finally, will the Nikola mess discourage more SPACs from taking companies public? If the rest of the stock market wasn't selling off, we would have said no. But today? Is the answer maybe?

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.

Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.

What a busy morning. We had to cover TikTok. We had to talk VC rounds. So, this is what we got up to:

US tech stocks are poised to sell off further this morning.
The Oracle-TikTok-Walmart-ByteDance deal is either coming into focus, or a period of even less clarity. It's hard to tell.
Nikola founder Trevor Milton is leaving the board of his own company in the wake of fraud allegations. Shares of the company are sharply lower in pre-market trading.
Turning to TikTok, this primer represents the best over-the-weekend roundup that we could find. But, of course, things are still breaking as we come to print.
Since recording, Oracle has said that "upon creation of TikTok Global, Oracle/Walmart will make their investment and the TikTok Global shares will be distributed to their owners, Americans will be the majority and ByteDance will have no ownership in TikTok Global." And, President Trump said this morning that China has to give up control of TikTok or the deal is off. ByteDance has said that it will retain control. You figure that out.
But there was some good stuff to chat about. Including the super-neat Mobile Premier League round worth $90 million, growth news from EU-based Babbel, a new London-based Seed fund that got raised, and a Swedish healthtech Series B.
As you guessed from today's title, it was fun to see such a concentration of EU VC activity.
Finally, will the Nikola mess discourage more SPACs from taking companies public? If the rest of the stock market wasn't selling off, we would have said no. But today? Is the answer maybe?

Previous Episode

Schools are closing their doors, but OpenDoor isn’t

Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast (now on Twitter!), where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.

This week Natasha Mascarenhas, Danny Crichton and myself hosted a live taping at Disrupt for a digital reception. It was good fun, though of course we're looking forward to bringing the live show back to the conference next year, vaccine allowing.

Thankfully we had Chris Gates behind the scenes tweaking the dials, Alexandra Ames fitting us into the program, and some folks to watch live.

What did we talk about? All of this (and some very, very bad jokes):

The Great American SPAC-Off: As both Opendoor and Desktop Metal approach the public markets on the wings of SPACs, we ask why. And why we have to keep talking about SPACs, which we do not want to do.
But the public markets are hot and active, with companies like JFrog and Snowflake going public to great effect. JFrog had a great IPO. Snowflake had an insane IPO.
But there was a lot of action from the private markets as well, including Airtable raising $185 million, ApplyBoard raised a $55 million extension, and Tonal raised $110 million, because connected fitness is hotter than SaaS at the moment.
We also riffed on Natasha's venture trends' piece, digging into how to get to conviction in a remote-only world. As it turns out, we have notes on video games.
And there were two new funds, including one from the Chainsmokers (hot, fun, great) and another from Greylock (traditional, Victorian, and huge). In more serious commentary, the Greylock raise continues the mega-fund era.

And then we tried to play a game that may or may not make it into the final cut. Either way, it was great to have Equity back at Disrupt. More to come. Hugs from us!

Equity drops every Monday at 7:00 a.m. PT and Thursday afternoon as fast as we can get it out, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts.

Next Episode

Why isn't Robinhood a verb yet?

Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast (now on Twitter!), where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.

This week Natasha Mascarenhas, Danny Crichton and your humble servant gathered to chat through a host of rounds and venture capital news for your enjoyment. As a programming note, I am off next week effectively, so look for Natasha to lead on Equity Monday and the both her and Danny to rock the Thursday show. I will miss everyone.

But onto the show itself, here's what we got into:

Zoom's earliest investors are betting millions on a better Zoom for schools: Built on Natasha's reporting, we took a look at a neat company that wants to make Zoom better for the educational environments where it had suddenly taken the center stage. Teachers need more.
The first rule of BookClub? No boring book clubs. Another Natasha story this week, this time about a startup that we somewhat like but can't decide how its market will be. Still, the biblophiles in your life should read this piece and get hype about rising access to authors.
Robinhood raised $460 million more, extending its preceding $200 million Series G to a $660 million total investment. Chime also added $485 million at a new, $14.5 billion valuation. We dug into what's up with the pair and why they are raising so much money.
The short answer is hella growth, leading us to a question and this week's headline: Why isn't Robinhood a verb yet?
Willow, the startup making the wearable breast pump, raises $55 million: Natasha talked us through some of the issues with the phrase femtech, before Danny explained to us the need for what Willow offers. Here's to more tech being used to help more folks at more stages of life.
Then we turned to VC media, namely our notes on a new venture capital gameshow, and, a16z launching a podcast network. We also worked what Casey Newton is up to into the same conversation.