Hello and welcome back toEquity, TechCrunchs venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.This week Kate and Alex held the reins as a duo (check out our chat with Greylocks Sarah Guo from last week here) to dig into an enormous raft of news.
And dont worry, its not all late-stage happenings.
Were discussing early-stage news every week because thats what the listeners want!Up top we dug into Kates excellent work covering the Superhuman founders new micro fund, or at least his attempt at raising such a fund.
Our main question is how can he be a good VC and a good executive at the same time? Folks dont tend to do both at the same time because theyre each more than full-time jobs.
Having two such gigs sounds hard.But hey, its not just athletes and musicians who can bring outsized interest to deals.
In-demand founders can have a similar effect.
Well be keeping a close eye on the upcoming fun.
Moving on.Next, we turned to the other end of the venture landscape, looking at Founders Funds new capital vehicles.
With a combined $2.7 billion in eventual capital, FF is hoping to build a financial redoubt from which they can rain capital down on late-stage targets, wherever they may be.Is it a bit late in the cycle to cut late-stage checks to companies that might otherwise go public? Thats the gamble so far, as we can see it, but perhaps with WeWorks IPO dreams turned to nightmares, theres demand among a group of companies for another 12 months in the private markets.
And that means more money is required.On the theme of more money, Lime is raising some more and we were treated to new financial results from The Informations great work getting the figures.
Our discussion asked the question of how far the companys unit economics could improve.
Kate said that Lime is investing a lot now in developing better hardware so their scooters can last more than five minutes on the roads before breaking down.
She thinks things will start looking up when its deploying only new, fancy, good scooters.
Alex is bearish.Before we could turn back to the early-stage market and wrap up, we had to cover the latest from WeWork.
SoftBank did, in the end, come and save the day (at least for now) for the company, meaning that WeWork lives on, though layoffs are expected sooner rather than later.
Who knows what the future holdsAnd finally, Vendr, a company that is profitable, raised a $2 million round.
This is interesting because, again, its profitable! And the startup willingly shared some financial data with us a rarity.
Read more about the recent Y Combinator graduate here.Equity drops every Friday at 6:00 am PT, so subscribe to us onApple Podcasts,Overcast,Spotify and all the casts.