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Equity

Venture needs crypto more than crypto needs venture

Equity

TechCrunch

Business, News, Technology, Business News, Entrepreneurship

4.2372 Ratings

🗓️ 13 April 2022

⏱️ 26 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

This is our Wednesday show, where we niche down to a single topic, think about a question and unpack the rest. This week, given a parade of headlines and news that Fast shut down, Natasha and Alex brought on our new senior TechCrunch+ reporter Jacquelyn Melinek to ask: How is ‘Web3’ blowing up venture’s traditional playbook? The question comes after Jacquelyn and Natasha looked into how crypto companies are altering the investing landscape for even the most disciplined VCs. Use code "EQUITY" for a sweet, sweet discount. Here's an excerpt from that post: The main difference between web3 cap tables and traditional startup cap tables is the structure of a company, because the way a C-corp would provide investors with equity would differ from the way a decentralized organization or DAO would, Celsius CEO Alex Mashinsky said. Today, Celsius owns half of its CEL tokens and only sold investors tokens in its initial coin offering (ICO) in 2017 when the company first launched, he added. “We don’t need to give tokens anymore,” he said. “If you can raise money through equity, you want them as equity investors because they’ll stick with the company for a long time. Sometimes when you give tokens they sell them quickly because it’s like easy money, it’s not like equity.” In today's episode, we walked through fresh PitchBook data on crypto funding, a crash course in web3 vernacular, and what crypto cap tables are the loudest about. Don’t forget that TechCrunch Early Stage is happening this Thursday, so snag some last minute tickets here. Natasha and Alex will be there recording a live episode and hopefully meeting some listeners in real life! 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

0:16.4

where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines. I'm Natasha

0:20.3

Masquerainis and this is our Wednesday show where we niche down into a

0:23.9

single topic think about a question and unpack the rest. This week we're asking

0:28.6

how is Web 3 blowing up Ventures's traditional playbook? As always, I am joined by Alex Wilhelm.

0:34.6

Alex, we don't talk about crypto in our funding round section too often, do we ever bring up

0:39.4

crypto on our show?

0:40.4

We do occasionally, but definitely not enough enough given how frequent I see these rounds come across my screen

0:45.8

So I'm really glad we're taking the time to focus to niche down to really dig into this because there's a lot of interesting mechanics and nuances to it. there's a lot to unpack.

0:53.0

Definitely. I mean I think that this show, I'll speak for myself because everyone here is super

0:57.5

smart, but I feel like I am often confused by the conversations we're seeing happening

1:01.3

in crypto and so I've been really desperate to find

1:03.3

natural on-ramps to write about it in this case when we're looking at how Web 3 is impacting

1:08.4

venture and a lot of the early-stage venture capitalists that I speak to it's kind of like the middle of ground a lot of the early stage venture capitalists that I speak to it's kind of like the middle

1:14.0

of ground a lot of them are pivoting as well so they're learning how to speak the

1:16.9

language how to win deals how to change their mind and that's really where this

1:21.4

question originated.

1:22.9

So think of this, if you're not a crypto expert

1:25.6

as a way to like start understanding

1:27.4

how something that has clearly become unavoidable

1:29.8

is changing things in a way that we really can't

1:32.3

not talk about on the show.

...

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