Hello and welcome back to Equity, a podcast all about the business of Starups where we unpack the numbers and the nuance behind the headlines. Today is November 17th, 2023. My name is Alex and I'm joined as I am each and every Friday by my dear friend on the FinTech Beat. It is Senior Tech Ranch reporter Mary Ann Azaveto.

Mary Ann, hello, we are here again and we have survived another week we have survived I've been

looking forward to this I have to admit this is one of the highlights of my

week every week that's because for one hour we get to turn off slack not

answer phone calls your ignore tech messages, not read email,

and actually just get to sit and chat.

Like, I wonder if we had like actual lunch breaks

with people and to talk to them

if we'd enjoy podcasting as much or this is just our

standing for social interaction. Good question. No, I think we still would enjoy it. Come on, this is a blast.

Oh, absolutely. And one reason why we enjoy this is because there's always so very much to talk about and on today's show we are going to riff on ramp tapping into AI.

We're also going to talk about Sunnisines AI powered coach with a sobriety twist, then the 2024 M&A market and what it might bring

and what this year lacked, then how AI automation could resurrect startup valuations.

That one's for me, hope you like it. And then finally, everyone

wants to do hormonal health now, or essentially the revenge of prior host Natasha and why she was

right a couple of years back. But, Marianne, we're going to start in the FinTech world, but

from a kind of a newsy angle. So in the spin management category, there's ramp, there's brics,

there's a lot of other companies. They're back in the news. What's going on?

Yeah, so a few things have been going on lately.

Brex and Ramper two of the higher profile startups in this space.

And earlier this week, the information reported some news on Brexit's annualized net revenue and what it reported was that it only increased by about 1% in the third quarter to 283 million compared to 279 million in the

second quarter that was after this kind of surge in business after the

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