Memes, money and madness: 2021 in tech

Equity

TechCrunch

News, Business, Entrepreneurship, Business News, Technology

4.2 • 372 Ratings

🗓️ 24 December 2021

⏱️ 26 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

It's just about Christmas, which means you may be stuck with family at the moment. Regardless of what, if any, holidays you may celebrate, there's good chance that there are more people around you than normal. We're here to distract you from that. To ensure that you get respite from Actual Human Interaction, the Equity team has prepared a look-back at the year. Big numbers? Check. Big themes? You know it. Big moments of 'wait, that happened this year?!' Well, we'd have it no other way. Here's what we have in store for you: High-level venture capital stats from the year, from around the world including India, Latin America, and the United States. The rise of memes and money: Remember the Gamestop/stonk saga? That was this year, amazingly. So too was the Robinhood IPO, the Coinbase direct listing, and a host of other related stories. Sure, by the end of the year we had moved on to other pieces of key news, but don't forget how wild the start of 2021 was from a trading perspective. The crypto boom: Love it or hate it, crypto was one of the key startup themes this year. Capital raced into NFT marketplaces, crypto infra projects, new blockchains, and more. It was a gold rush, but all the gold was digital. A changing creator economy: We had little choice but to talk talking, to chat chatting, to yammer about yammering. Yes, we riffed on the rise and fall of Clubhouse, and the larger live-audio market. Podcasts, videos, and the creator economy as a whole were pretty big narratives this year, so we talked through what went down. We also touched on remote work, fintech, insurtech mistakes, media startups, and a grip of topics that you, the Equity family, sent in via Twitter. Did we get to everything? Heck no. We didn't even get close. But that's because 2021 was a busy damn year. It started busy and never slowed down. What do we expect in 2022? Well, just wait for next week's episode! 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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello and welcome back to Equity, a podcast about the business of startups where we unpack the numbers and the nuance behind the headlines.
0:16.4	Welcome to Christmas Eve, ladies and gentlemen.
0:19.2	Whether you have been naughty or nice, you are here with the Equity crew, which means you are currently hiding from family and we are glad to have you but welcome to our family
0:26.6	today we are gathered around our proverbial Christmas tree with Natasha Moscureanes.
0:30.4	Natasha hello you are wearing green today, you are feeling festive.
0:34.0	You know what, I didn't even plan to, but yeah, I'm always festive.
0:38.0	Cheers to that.
0:39.0	Cheers to that. You are actually one of the happier and peppier and more holiday oranges people in my life and I appreciate it.
0:45.1	Also we have Marianne as a Veto.
0:46.8	Marianne what are some Texas Christmas traditions
0:48.9	that we should be aware of?
0:50.0	Well, it's gonna be 85 degrees this week.
0:53.6	That'll do it.
0:55.8	Ladies and gentlemen, though, we are not doing our regular show.
0:58.4	We have instead for you a treat, a real treat.
1:00.6	We are going to do a roundup of sorts. We have gone through and we have thought about the year. We are going to do a round up of sorts. We have gone through
1:02.9	through and we have thought about the year. We have gone back through headlines. We have
1:06.2	re-read articles. We have done a Twitter poll slash thread thing. We have
1:10.2	grabbed all the big stuff and we are going to look back over the year because my gosh
1:15.4	2021 was not what we wanted it was not what we expected but it is what we got so Marianne
1:21.4	up top tell us about some venture capital numbers to set the tone, if you will.
1:25.5	After a dip last year, due to the pandemic, numbers, it feels like we're going to be like much much much higher and when it comes to
	...

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