Warren Buffett invests in an unprofitable business

09/10/20 • 33 min

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

The whole crew was back, with Natasha Mascarenhas and Danny Crichton and myself chattering, and Chris Gates behind the scenes tweaking the dials as always. This week was a real team effort as we are heading into the maw of Disrupt -- more here, see you there -- but there was a lot of news all the same.

So, here's what we got to:

AngelList is doubling down on rolling funds, driving that SaaS revenue into the firm that is also investing in the rolling funds. So that's neat. (Really!)
Edtech stayed hot this week with Byju's raising $500 million from Silver Lake. Founded back in 2011, Byju's is the highest-valued edtech company that we can think of, now worth $10.8 billion.
And speaking of Silver Lake, the group just poured $1 billion into a part of the Reliance empire, this time Reliance Retail. And we talked about JioMart, which is taking on both Flipkart and Amazon in the country.
Next there were two companies with names that start with "S" that raised $100 million in the last week, namely Snyk -- more here -- and Sprinklr -- more here.
Sticking to our "S" theme, Slack's earnings were incredibly interesting. The company's quarter didn't get plaudits from investors, and it did note some negative COVID impacts that could impact startups as well.
And, one more S-company to get through: Snowflake. We were all a-twitter about the company's new valuation range and fact that fucking Berkshire Hathaway is going to invest in it. That's wild! What a thing!
Finally on the IPO front, we did a quick Palantir update. Danny has all the latest here.

We wrapped with whatever this is, which was at least good for a laugh. We are back next week at Disrupt, so see you all there!

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 (now on Twitter!), where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.

So, here's what we got to:

AngelList is doubling down on rolling funds, driving that SaaS revenue into the firm that is also investing in the rolling funds. So that's neat. (Really!)
Edtech stayed hot this week with Byju's raising $500 million from Silver Lake. Founded back in 2011, Byju's is the highest-valued edtech company that we can think of, now worth $10.8 billion.
And speaking of Silver Lake, the group just poured $1 billion into a part of the Reliance empire, this time Reliance Retail. And we talked about JioMart, which is taking on both Flipkart and Amazon in the country.
Next there were two companies with names that start with "S" that raised $100 million in the last week, namely Snyk -- more here -- and Sprinklr -- more here.
Sticking to our "S" theme, Slack's earnings were incredibly interesting. The company's quarter didn't get plaudits from investors, and it did note some negative COVID impacts that could impact startups as well.
And, one more S-company to get through: Snowflake. We were all a-twitter about the company's new valuation range and fact that fucking Berkshire Hathaway is going to invest in it. That's wild! What a thing!
Finally on the IPO front, we did a quick Palantir update. Danny has all the latest here.

We wrapped with whatever this is, which was at least good for a laugh. We are back next week at Disrupt, so see you all there!

Previous Episode

Equity Monday on Tuesday 09/08

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.

Headline roundup: TikTok's parent will pay an irregular bonus to staff, a move that is causing ripples as Bytedance's social service finds itself an international political football. Reed Hastings is not big on working from home. And China's fight with Australia is escalating, again showing how willing China is to become an ostracized internationally; in business terms this makes the India market more important to tech companies.
New IPO filings are out from both JFrog and Sumo Logic. We're going for a dive soon, but the short riff is that JFrog wants up to $37 per share, valuing it at more than $3 billion while Sumo Logic wants $21 per share, valuing it at more than $2 billion. (More here on Sumo Logic and here on JFrog.)
Big rounds: Byju has put together a half-billion dollars at a $10.8 billion valuation, while Mollie has stacked on $106 million at a valuation that makes it a unicorn.
Small rounds: Fashionphile has raised $38.5 million, Cloudentity raised $13 million, and Sarbacane has raised $27 million.
And as we recorded, tech shares were set to sell off yet again.

Next Episode

Equity Monday 09/14

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 weekend behind us, and what a week ahead. Disrupt kicks off today, so the TechCrunch crew is busy as heck getting all the final touches put on. Snag a ticket here and we will see you soon.

On the podcast this morning: