Newchip's bankruptcy is a cautionary tale for founders

Welcome back to Friday Equity!In today’s episode Equity podcast, Mary Ann, Haje and Becca dug into three very different but all super interesting deals of the week. Haje wanted to discuss Raspberry Pi’s debut on the public market, and we all agreed that what this profitable company has managed to build – a tiny affordable computer that fits into the palm of your hand – is very neat. Mary Ann then wanted to talk about InScope, a fintech which just raised a $4.3 million seed round of funding led by Lightspeed Venture Partners to automate financial reporting. Becca got to riff on Meowtel, a niche – and also profitable – startup focused on cat-sitting that has raised just $1 million in venture capital over its nine-year life.The trio then talked about all the Apple news (largely AI-focused) that came out of WWDC and its potential impact on the startup world. They then turned their attention to Elon Musk’s reaction to Apple’s announcement that it would be integrating ChatGPT into its iOS. While he clearly wasn’t happy about it, we discussed what his true motives for threatening to pull Apple devices from his companies might be. That’s it for this week, but we’ll be back bright and early Monday with more tech and startup news. Talk soon!Equity is TechCrunch’s flagship podcast, produced by Theresa Loconsolo, and posts every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. You also can follow Equity on X and Threads at @EquityPod. For the full episode transcript, for those who prefer reading over listening, check out our full archive of episodes over at Simplecast. 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.

Vanessa Larco, partner at New Enterprise Associates (NEA), believes that Generative AI’s impact on the world of SaaS could be huge.The investor joined Mary Ann Azevedo on Equity to talk through, among other topics, her theories about how GenAI could alter the pricing models SaaS businesses use when charging customers.“I think where [SaaS] people aspire to get to is value-based pricing. This is really, really hard,” she said.  But “I think it's a North Star for a lot of different SaaS products.”Larco also touched on how incumbents’ AI strategies may impact the startup world in general and in particular, what Apple’s new intelligence offering might mean for founders.The venture capitalist also gave us insight as to why despite being a big believer in the enterprise, she’s also still bullish on consumer investing and what she looks for when evaluating startups in the space.“I'm bullish on it. Look, I think the consumer is always going to spend. They just are,” she said. “It just depends on what they're going to spend on, what their priorities are.”In addition to discussing the SaaS and consumer spaces, the investor also shared her thoughts on what she believes the next wave of fintech will look like. (Spoiler alert: think less neobanks and more SMB focus).It was a super fun conversation, so press play and listen in!Equity is TechCrunch’s flagship podcast, produced by Theresa Loconsolo, and posts every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts.You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod. For the full episode transcript, for those who prefer reading over listening, check out our full archive of episodes over at Simplecast. 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.

Apple’s WWDC is just hours away, and we’re gearing up for big announcements on – you guessed it – AI. We're kicking off  today’s episode of Equity with a list of what we can (and can't) expect from the highly anticipated developer conference. But that's not all we talked about this morning. Becca Szkutak also took a look at Byju’s alarming valuation drop. The Indian edtech giant, once valued at $22 billion, might now be worth nothing according to BlackRock. The news may not come as a surprise given the rocky year Byju’s has had, but as Manish Sing put it, its journey stands to be one of the most “spectacular startup slides in recent memory.”To close out, we had news of a new fund looking to give the Italian startup ecosystem a boost. We’re optimist about the Italian Founders Fund and what it could contribute to the market, so press play and join the conversation!Equity is TechCrunch’s flagship podcast, produced by Theresa Loconsolo, and posts every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts.You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod. For the full episode transcript, for those who prefer reading over listening, check out our full archive of episodes over at Simplecast. 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.

As always, there was a lot happening in startup land this week, and the Equity team had so much fun breaking it down for you.On today’s episode of TechCrunch’s Equity podcast, Mary Ann and Rebecca discussed Robinhood’s plans to buy European crypto exchange Bitstamp for $200 million in cash and why they weren’t really surprised by the news.The duo then dug into not just one but two exciting health-care related deals. Rebecca wanted to riff on Sword Health’s innovative AI-powered virtual physical therapy tech and recent fundraise and corresponding cool valuation bump. Mary Ann then brought up Eko Health, which just raised $41 million after getting FDA clearance to help detect the first signs of heart failure during a routine medical exam (really, how cool is that?!).From there, they got to grill transportation reporter extraordinaire Sean O’Kane about his in-depth investigation into the mess at electric vehicle manufacturer Fisker. Think hoods flying off and pinching parts from the production line kind of mess. Oof.From there, they talked about the drama at AI mortgage startup LoanSnap and how that company is being sued left and right among other things. On a more positive note, they then riffed about two very interesting fintech startups focused on Gen Z, Frich (which stands for ‘effin rich) and Fizz – the latter of which is a YC alum just raised $14.4 million in a seed round led by Kleiner Perkins.That’s it for this week, but we’ll be back bright and early Monday with more tech and startup news. Talk soon!Equity is TechCrunch’s flagship podcast, produced by Theresa Loconsolo, and posts every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. You also can follow Equity on X and Threads at @EquityPod. For the full episode transcript, for those who prefer reading over listening, check out our full archive of episodes over at Simplecast. 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.

Consumer startups have taken a hit when it comes to venture funding. But according to Eurie Kim, partner at Forerunner Ventures and founding member of All Raise, consumer is where it’s at.The investor joined Mary Ann Azevedo on Equity to talk through the intricacies of the space. She pointed out that last year, just 7% of seed capital went to consumer startups. Yet, research shows that consumer company performance has outpaced enterprise, Kim contends. Forerunner itself has backed the likes of Oura, Chime and Prose, among others. Kim also talked about the advantages of being dedicated investors in a space that has seen a number of tourist VCs drift in and out. In addition to discussing the state of consumer investing and what consumer investors are looking for, the venture capitalist shared her thoughts on the investment landscape as a whole, what’s up with IPOs and why every startup should have AI in their pitch deck.Equity is TechCrunch’s flagship podcast, produced by Theresa Loconsolo, and posts every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts.You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod. For the full episode transcript, for those who prefer reading over listening, check out our full archive of episodes over at Simplecast. 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.

Welcome to this week's Episode of Equity Monday. We're kicking off the week with a deep dive from this weekend into the demise of electric vehicle startup Fisker at the hands of its founders' whims. Fisker, which was founded by famed vehicle designer Henrik Fisker, is on the brink of bankruptcy after only having delivered a few thousand electric Ocean SUVs. Then, Rebecca Bellan talked about X's new rules to allow adult content (as long as it's "consensually produced," whatever that means), and why that's problematic for the safety of other users -- namely women, who are most often the targets of sexually explicit trolling and harassment. We also touched on Trump's TikTok debut, which came in the wake of the former president's felony conviction. To wrap up, Bellan also discussed a story that TechCrunch published over the weekend looking into the new trend of smaller, lesser-known investors getting shares of hot private AI companies like Anthropic, X.ai and Perplexity by using special purpose vehicles, or SPVs. The result has been a Wild West, high risk, buyer-beware situation, with SPV terms varying wildly. Haje closed out the show with another Pitch Deck Teardown, this time looking into the Angel pitch deck for RAW Dating App. RAW just raised a $3 million friends and family round to shake up the dating scene by shedding fake, TikTok-ified, heavily filtered photos and replacing them with a more genuine, unvarnished experience. 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.

Welcome back to Equity Friday!In this week’s episode, Mary Ann, Becca Szkutak,and Haje Kamps tackled three deals of the week: xAI, Elon Musk has once again proven that his name alone can shake up the investment world, raising a staggering $6 billion for his AI startup. Solutions by Text, The Dallas-based company, which has been bootstrapped for over a decade, secured $110 million in funding. And WeatherXM, which is a company bringing Web3 into the weather forecasting space that raised $7.7 million in a Series A.Then they discussed the Synapse Collapse and what it means for the larger FinTech ecosystem. Synapse, a banking-as-a-service (BaaS) provider, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy leaving many startups and customers in the lurch. Lastly, the crew wraps it up by discussing Becca’s piece on who is (and is not) going to IPO this year and what that signals to the industry.That’s it for this week, but we’ll be back bright and early Monday morning with more tech and startup news, along with another round of Pitch Deck Teardown. Talk soon! 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.

It’s no secret that the bar for startups to land a Series A has risen, but has it risen too high? According to Jenny Fielding, a co-founder and Managing Partner at Everywhere Ventures, startups are facing what she calls “The Series A Chasm.” In a post on X this month, Fielding said, “there’s a huge backlog of seed stage companies with nice traction – just not $3m ARR + 30% MOM growth kinda traction.” The post sparked a conversation online, and Fielding joined Haje Kamps on Equity to talk through it all. Looking beyond Fielding’s portfolio, we can see that the early stage storm has been brewing for quite some time. According to data from Crunchbase, seed companies have raised about $7 billion so far this year, which is down $1 billion year over year and down significantly in the later stages. Crunchbase has even taken to calling this a moment of “extended adolescence” for startups, with an increase in companies raising $5 million+ seed rounds instead of a Series A. Of course, this meant we had to address the AI elephant in the room, and the $135 million seed round Musk’s xAI raised last December. Note that after 6 months, the company behind Grok has already announced a $6 billion Series B round. It was an interesting chat, so press play and join the conversation!Equity is TechCrunch’s flagship podcast, produced by Theresa Loconsolo, and posts every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts.You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod. For the full episode transcript, for those who prefer reading over listening, check out our full archive of episodes over at Simplecast. 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.

We’re kicking off the short week with news about Elon Musk, and no, it’s not about X or Tesla. Instead, we’re talking about Musk’s other other company, xAI. In a blog post this weekend, xAI announced it raised $6 billion in Series B funding, confirming earlier reports that the AI startup was looking to raise at a pre-money valuation of $18 billion. With Andreessen Horowitz, Sequoia Capital and Valor among its backers, it looks like Musk is taking steps to catch up and compete with the likes of OpenAI, Microsoft and Alphabet.The ongoing AI race was only the beginning of what we covered on today’s episode of Equity. This morning, Becca Szkutak dove deep into the collapse of Synapse, a banking-as-a-service company whose bankruptcy could impact an estimated 10 million end customers and 100 fintechs, including teen banking-focused Copper. While this is not the only troubling headline in the fintech space, as our co-host Mary Ann Azevedo put it, “it shows just how treacherous things are for the often-interdependent fintech world when one key player hits trouble.”To wrap up this morning’s news segment, we also discussed a report from The Washington Post that election officials and researchers are considering a new approach to combating misinformation called “pre-bunking.” Companies like Google are testing it out in the lead up to the European Union election, but we remain skeptical about how successful the technique could be. Haje closed out the show with another Pitch Deck Teardown, this time examining Berlin-based Terra One’s deck. The startup just raised a cool $7.5 million to make sure Germany’s clean energy isn’t going to waste. Listen through to the end to hear how they made it happen! Equity is TechCrunch’s flagship podcast, produced by Theresa Loconsolo, and posts every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts.You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod. For the full episode transcript, for those who prefer reading over listening, check out our full archive of episodes over at Simplecast. 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.

Say hi to the new Equity  crew! To kick off today's show, Mary Ann invited her new co-hosts - Becca Szkutak, Rebecca Bellan, and Haje Kamps - to introduce themselves and shared a bit more about what they do here at TC. The team then jumped right into the news, starting with Techstars CEO Maëlle Gavet announcing she is leaving the company, just weeks after TechCrunch reporter Dominic Madori-Davis published an in-depth investigative article on what’s been going on behind the scenes at the accelerator in recent years. (You can listen to Dom talk more about it here).As always, there was plenty more to uncover in the world of startups and venture. Mary Ann, Rebecca and Haje dug into two funding deals, one straddling the lines of crypto and social media and the other in the fintech space.Rebecca wanted to talk about Farcaster, a blockchain-based social protocol that ​​invites developers to build other apps on top of it. The startup raised a $150 million round, news that had the Equity team asking, “Is crypto back?” Mary Ann dug into immigrant banking platform Majority securing $20M in funding after notching an impressive $40 million in ARR as of April.Last but not least, our trio riffed on the fact that a bunch of tech majors made commitments to the safe development of their AI models, including a potential “kill switch.” While we felt the news was mostly positive, we are also skeptical, too. The team also discussed the challenging environment for emerging fund managers, and our surprise at just how many of them there are.That’s it for this week, but we’ll be back bright and early Tuesday morning (thanks to a U.S. holiday on Monday) with more tech and startup news, along with another round of Pitch Deck Teardown. Talk soon!Equity is TechCrunch’s flagship podcast, produced by Theresa Loconsolo, and posts every Monday, Wednesday and Friday.Subscribe to us on  Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. You also can follow Equity on  X and Threads at @EquityPod. For the full episode transcript, for those who prefer reading over listening, check out our full archive of episodes over at Simplecast. 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.