SaaS stocks are at it again, and I think I’ve got it figured it out.
More precisely I think I’ve figured out what other people think is going on. After rigorous fact-checking by both reading tweets, making VCs talk to me on the phone, and chatting…

What the hell, SaaS valuations?

The global pandemic has halted travel, shunted schools online and shut down many cities, but the future of college-town America is an area of deep concern for the startup world.
College towns have done exceedingly well with the rise of the knowledge…

3 views on the life and death of college towns, remote work and the future of startup hubs

Hello and welcome back to our regular morning look at private companies, public markets and the gray space in between.
A cluster of related companies recently caught our eye by raising capital in rapid-fire fashion. TechCrunch covered a few of them,…

API startups are so hot right now

Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
First, a big thanks to everyone who took part in the Equity survey, we really appreciated your notes and thoughts. The…

Clubhouse proves that time is a flat circle

Skyflow, a Mountain View-based privacy API company, announced this morning that it has closed a $7.5 million round of capital it describes as a seed investment. Foundation Capital’s Ashu Garg led the round, with the company touting smaller checks…

Skyflow raises $7.5M to build its privacy API business

Hello and welcome back to our regular morning look at private companies, public markets and the gray space in between.
There’s a famous old post going around Twitter this week by entrepreneur and developer David Heinemeier Hansson (@DHH). DHH is a…

Beware mega-unicorn paper valuations

This week Alexia Bonatsos of Dream Machine and Niko Bonatsos of General Catalyst swung by Extra Crunch Live to discuss where they are investing today and what the future might look like.
As expected, these seed and early-stage venture capitalists had…

Why VCs say they’re open for business, even if they’re pausing new deals

The COVID-19 pandemic is making life worse for many startups, but not all. Those benefiting are often taking advantage of the market updraft to add more capital to their accounts. Robinhood, for example, saw usage of its consumer fintech product rise…

Human Interest tacks on $10M more to its Series C

This morning, Coalition announced that it has closed a $90 million Series C. The funding comes around a year after the cybersecurity insurance startup raised a $40 million Series B that TechCrunch covered at time.
The startup’s new, larger funding…

Cybersecurity insurance startup Coalition raises $90M Series C

Hello and welcome back to our regular morning look at private companies, public markets and the gray space in between.
Startups in the Midwest are optimistic despite the fact that a fair number of companies in the region are suffering from economic…

Despite COVID-19, optimism reigns in the Midwest’s startup scene

The two investors don’t work for the same firm, but they each have an interesting perspective on the world of investing. Alexia is a former journalist — and a former co-editor of TechCrunch — who now runs Dream Machine, her own venture capital fund.…

Extra Crunch Live: Join Alexia and Niko Bonatsos for a Q&A today at 2 pm EDT/11 am PDT

Hello and welcome back to our regular morning look at private companies, public markets and the gray space in between.
Yesterday afternoon, Vroom, an online car buying service, filed to go public. Based on its SEC filing, Vroom is a highly-successful…

Popping the hood on Vroom’s IPO filing

A famous investor published notes today concerning its startup investments, detailing where they excelled and where they struggled. To understand why we care about this particular investor’s results, a little context helps.
The investor in question…

What SoftBank’s Vision Fund results tell us about troubled startup sectors

Hello and welcome back to our regular morning look at private companies, public markets and the gray space in between.
Today we’re digging into SoftBank’s latest earnings slides. Not only do they contain a wealth of updates and other useful…

SoftBank’s Q1 2020 earnings presentation mixes comedy and drama

A few housekeeping notes. First, the main, long-from Equity episodes still drop every Friday, so if you are behind, check your podcast feed. Also, we’re running a listener survey which you can find here, in the last ep’s shownotes. And finally, I am…

Equity Monday: Food delivery economics, and global layoffs

The novel coronavirus pandemic has disordered traditional notions of work, travel, socializing and the way we collaborate with colleagues.
It seems obvious that the future of work must evolve, given what we’re experiencing, but what will that future…

3 views on the future of work, coffee shops and neighborhoods in a post-pandemic world

Hello and welcome back to our regular morning look at private companies, public markets and the gray space in between.
After spending perhaps more time than we should have recently trying to figure out what’s going on with the public markets, let’s…

Big VCs stacked billions in Q1 while smaller firms saw their haul shrink

Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
Are you a regular Equity listener? Take our survey here! We talk about it on the show, and it’s embedded below in case…

What’s up with tiny checks at giant valuations?

Earlier today, DigitalOcean announced that it raised $50 million more from prior investors Access Industries and Andreessen Horowitz. The capital comes after the SMB and developer-focused cloud infrastructure company raised nine-figures worth of debt…

DigitalOcean raises $50M more from Access Industries and a16z

With the global economy still sorting itself out in the face of the pandemic, we’re hearing about fewer new venture capital funds these days. However, today is an exception, as Cathay Innovation has raised a $550 million second fund, which is about…