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Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture-capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
This week we — Natasha and Danny and Alex and Grace — had a lot to get through, as the news volume in early 2021 has been rapid and serious. Sadly this means that some early-stage rounds missed the cut, though we did make sure to have some Series A material in the show.
So, what did the assembled crew get to? Here’s your cheat sheet:
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- The demise of the Plaid-Visa deal, our chat with the CEO of the fintech unicorn and what the failed transaction could mean for startup valuations more broadly.
- Why the $1.4 billion Nuvia exit to Qualcomm is impressive in scale and puzzling. This topic also gave Danny a chance to talk about chips, his favorite thing.
- Auto-insurance rates can often depend on highly variable demographic data like marital status, income and education. Loop is a new seed-stage startup that wants to make the process more equitable. It landed millions this week, underscoring a broader insurtech wave.
- SuperCharger Ventures pivoted its fintech accelerator into an edtech accelerator! We discuss why the shift and its surprising focus on B2B makes a ton of sense.
- Crypto’s going up and down, ahead of the anticipated Coinbase IPO and the known Bakkt SPAC. More on that here.
- Sticking to the SPAC front, SoFi joined the list of companies using blank-check companies to approach the public markets.
- As is Talkspace, the tele-therapy startup that you’ve heard of.
- Then there was SoftBank, of course, which has its own SPAC in the market now, confirming earlier reports. Which makes perfect sense.
There are so many SPACs and bits of IPO news and funding rounds to pick through and cover that we’re already straining the time limits of the show to even cover half of the material. This week that meant that we excised a chunk of the show to a forthcoming Saturday episode that is focused on e-commerce.
So, we will talk to you again soon!
Equity drops every Monday at 7:00 a.m. PST and Thursday afternoon as fast as we can get it out, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts.
Source: https://techcrunch.com/2021/01/14/the-end-of-plaid-visa-and-palantirs-growing-startup-mafia/
As expected, shares of Poshmark exploded this morning, blasting over 130% higher in afternoon trading from the company’s above-range IPO price of $42. The enormous and noisy debut of Poshmark comes a day after Affirm, another IPO, was treated similarly by the public markets.
Both explosive debuts were preceded by huge December debuts from C3.ai, Doordash and Airbnb. It seems today that any venture-backed company that can claim some sort of tech mantle is being treated to a strong IPO pricing run and a huge first-day result.
This is, of course, annoying to some people. Namely, certain elements of the venture capital community who would prefer to keep all outsized gains in their own pockets. But, no matter. You might be wondering what is going on. Let’s talk about it.
Here’s how you get a big first-day IPO pop
TechCrunch has covered the IPO window as closely as we can over the last few years. And the late-stage venture capital markets, along with the changing value of tech stocks and the huge boom in consumer (retail) investing.
Based on my participation in as much of that reporting as I could take part in here’s how you get a 130% first-day IPO pop in a company that has actually been around long enough for investors to math-out reasonable growth and profit expectations for the future:
- Exist in a climate of near-zero interest rates. This leads to super-cheap money, bonds being shit and no one wanting to hold cash. Lots of dollars go into more speculative assets, like stocks. And lots of money goes into exotic investments, like venture capital funds.
Source: https://techcrunch.com/2021/01/14/a-theory-about-the-current-ipo-market/
