Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
This week was something fun. First, we were back as a group in the San Francisco studio, which is always fun. Even better, we had NEA’s Rick Yang on hand to chat with Danny and Alex about the week. Yang, as old-school Equity listeners will recall, was back on the show in 2017. (Equity turns three soon, which is somewhat amazing.)
All that aside, let’s talk about what we talked about. As always, we kicked off with three rounds:
After that we chugged through a mountain of news. First up, the confirmation of a story that we had mentioned on the show before, namely the existence of a new venture fund (angel pool, perhaps) from the CEO of email startup Superhuman Rahul Vora and Eventjoy founder Todd Goldberg. The $7 million vehicle is going to cut pre-seed sized checks ($75,000 to $200,000) which should make it a popular pit stop for pre-revenue companies.
What next? Well, Casper of course. The company’s IPO pricing and debut was this week, something that we’ve had something to say about. That and the latest from One Medical’s strong post-IPO performance, and the news that Asana has filed privately to go public in a direct listing.
That last item was of particular interest as the company hasn’t raised as much cash as other companies that we’ve seen direct list, the Spotifys and Slacks of the world. So has it raised capital that we haven’t heard about, or has it simply not spend the capital it has raised? If it had spent the money, then, wouldn’t it want to raise some like with a traditional IPO? Mysteries! Riddles that will be solved when we get to see the damn filing.
Oh, and Spotify continues to pour money into podcasting. Which everyone ’round the table thought was pretty smart.
Equity drops every Friday at 6:00 am PT, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts.