Best Tech News Site: You can only invest if you promise not to read the fine print, ok?

Friday, March 26, 2021

You can only invest if you promise not to read the fine print, ok?

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

Natasha and Danny and Alex and Grace were all here to chat through the week’s biggest tech happenings. News was right back up to a dull roar this week, so we did our best to trim and hone and just bring you the most important things.

Here’s the rundown:

David Dobrik stepped down from Dispo, the photo-sharing app he co-created, this past week after allegations came out about him. We talked about the venture capital angle, since early-stage investors in the app reactively distanced from their investments. Could this set precedent or have a chilling effect on celebrity-startups?
Robinhood filed privately to go public! So, it’s happening everyone. At long last, one of Silicon Valley’s hottest companies is kicking off its IPO process. We’re hype, you’re hype, and we had some jokes.
And in other mega-unicorn news, it appears that Microsoft is tempted to plonk down $10 billion for Discord. Why, you ask? Well why not. It’s just $10 billion from Microsoft’s $1,780 billion valuation. Or around half a percent.
Sticking to the $10 billion-and-greater category, Plaid could be raising $600 million at a valuation of $10 billion to $15 billion. That’s a lot of money. Danny, however, has some doubts.
Also, Plaid has announced the inaugural cohort of its FinRise accelerator, a program focused on helping fintech startups led by underrepresented founders.
And then there were a few rounds to chat about. Namely the intensely interesting Bevy deal, and Ro raising $500 million at a $5 billion valuation.
And to wrap, Natasha and Alex shared their favs from TechCrunch’s massive Y Combinator demo day coverage. Which you can read here, and here.

Let’s all get some rest!

Equity drops every Monday at 7:00 a.m. PST, Wednesday, and Friday at 6:00 AM PST, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts!