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Equity

The SPAC trash ticker is counting down

Equity

TechCrunch

Entrepreneurship, Business News, News, Business, Technology

4.2372 Ratings

🗓️ 28 May 2021

⏱️ 32 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines. This week had the whole crew aboard to record: Grace and Chris making us sound good, Danny to provide levity, Natasha to actually recall facts, and Alex to divert us from staying on topic. It's teamwork, people - and our transitions are proof of it. And it's good that we had everyone around the virtual table as there was quite a lot to get through: Team felt all kinds of ways about the Amazon-MGM deal. Some of us are more positive about than the rest, but what gists out from the transaction is that for Amazon, the purchase price is modest and the company is famously playing a supposedly long-game. Let's see how James Bond fits into it. Alex receives four points for not bringing up F1 thanks to the Bond-Aston Martin connection. Turning to the SPAC game, we chatted through the recent Lordstown Motors earnings results, and what we can parse from them regarding blank-check companies, promises, and reality. After launching last June with just $2 million, Collab Capital has closed its debut fund at its target goal: $50 million. The Black-led firm invests exclusively in Black-led startups, and got checks from Apple, PayPal, and Mailchimp to name a few. We talk about this feat, and note a few other Black-led venture capital firms making waves in the industry lately. We Resolved our transition puns and eventually spoke about the Affirm spin-out, which raised $60 million in a funding round for BNPL for businesses. There's bigger questions there around the accessibility and point of BNPL, and if its really re-inventing the wheel or just repackaging it with simpler UX. Next up, we got into a can of worms about the future of meetings thanks to Rewatch, which raised a $20 million Series A this week led by Andreessen Horowitz. The startup helps other startups create internal, private Youtubes to archive their meetings and any video-based comms. We could only spend a second on this, so if you want our longer thoughts in the form of text, check out our 3 views on the topic on Extra Crunch! (Discount Code: Equity) From there we had Interactio and Fireflies.ai, two more startups that are tackling the complexities of meetings in the COVID-19 era, and whatever comes next. Both recently raised new funding, and Alex brought up Kudo to add one more upstart to the mix. Noom, a weight loss platform, bulked up with $540 million in funding after nearly doubling its revenue from 2019 to 2020. The pandemic has made many people gain weight, but we chew into why Noom's moment might be right now after a decade in the works. Thanks for hanging out this week, Equity is back on Tuesday with our usual weekly kickoff, thanks to the American holiday on Monday. Chat then, unless you want to follow us on Twitter and get a first-look at all of Chris' meme work.  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

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

Equity is brought to you by Extra Crunch, that Prodigious Tech Ranch Paywell you keep running into.

0:05.0

You can break through that Paywell at a steep discount if you use the promo code Equity.

0:09.0

If you do, you'll get access to our best stuff and you'll make equity look really good internally at the same time.

0:14.0

Enough of that, let's start the show. Hello and welcome back to Equity Tech Runches Venture Capital

0:30.1

focused podcast where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.

0:33.6

My name is Alex Wilhelm and I'm joined today as always by the two finest humans on planet Earth.

0:38.0

I have Natasha Moscuanis.

0:39.5

Natasha, please tell me that all things are good with you.

0:41.8

All things are good with me, but more importantly, Alex,

0:44.2

how are you?

0:44.7

We never ask how you are on the show.

0:46.8

Usually I'm terrible, but today I'm lovely because it is a gorgeous,

0:50.2

gorgeous summer day.

0:51.6

I'm going to after be recorded, go out and stand in the sun and just soak in that

0:55.2

vitamin D because much like Danny Crichton who's also here I'm super pasty right now and I could use some sun.

1:01.1

Danny how are you doing? I am not pasty. I have gotten sun.

1:04.0

In fact I've been sunburned three times because after being holed up in a house for the last year you walk outside and you're like,

1:10.1

oh the sun this is this feels great and then you come home and you look like a

1:13.0

salmon right and then the next day you look again like a bowl of fresh cream anyways we

1:17.4

are gonna talk about a lot of things today this is a show in which there is

1:19.8

something for everybody so stick with us we are going to start with a discussion of

1:24.3

Amazon buying MGM why it's doing that and does Jeff Pizos really think he's

...

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