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Equity

Square's Better.com name Block is Butter-y smooth

Equity

TechCrunch

Entrepreneurship, Business News, News, Business, Technology

4.2372 Ratings

🗓️ 3 December 2021

⏱️ 31 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

It's Friday, which means the whole crew was aboard for this particular episode. We had Grace and Chris behind the scenes, and Mary Ann, Natasha, and Alex on the mics. And, frankly, we needed the full team because the holidays aren't slowing any news down. First up? Square becoming Block, which we wanted to make fun of but mostly found to be reasonable given the company's disparate interests. From there we chatted about Inpathy's neat take on social networking, Massive's $11 million funding round, and why Butter could help grease the skids of many a subscription business. Then it was time to trade startups for bigger companies, as we had to riff on Bret Taylor's quasi-ascension to the top of Salesforce along with a host of other executive exits. Alex calls it cold resignation winter, but Meta clearly has put some people on the hot seat. Better.com was also in our remit this week, due to its fundraising and layoffs. We debate if you should raise if it comes at the cost of your employees, and the morality of a Zoom layoff. And, finally, Sounding Board's Series B reminded us that executive coaching, even and especially for the folks above, isn't just a services business. It's a SaaS business. See you here next week, unless Jack shaves off his beard and we're forced to do a shot. 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.

0:16.0

My name is Alex, this is our Friday show and I'm here of course with the regular Friday crew including Natasha Moscarinus.

0:22.0

Natasha, hello.

0:23.6

How are you doing?

0:24.6

It's December, I'm doing great.

0:25.8

I take it, you're a holiday type person.

0:27.7

I have a big holiday type person except I hate peppermint mochas,

0:30.7

so I just want to go on the record.

0:32.4

There, you know, you don't have to drink those.

0:35.0

They still make Americano's year round.

0:37.0

Marion, I know you're an espresso fan, please tell me why peppermint should not be in caffeinated drinks.

0:42.0

Well, I actually think it's okay.

0:44.0

As long as it's not too strong.

0:46.0

Sorry.

0:47.0

You're off the show.

0:48.0

That's the end of that.

0:50.0

Uh, no, we kid.

0:52.0

We actually have a lot to get through today guys. I thought it was going to be one of those weeks when not much happened, but instead everything happened this week. So we're going to talk about square changing its name. We have three of the coolest funding rounds we've talked about all year. We have about fun that we need to talk about. So it's going to be busy, but Natasha, the news that we added to the very top of our dock is all about square, or really the artist formerly known as.

1:18.9

So square, like everyone except us, has chosen to rebrand.

1:23.7

They are rebranding to block and to quote the wonderful Chris Gates,

1:27.2

our producer, he was like, like block like blockchain,

1:29.8

definitely block like blockchain.

...

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