The only take about the future of media is that media is the future

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 more than a little to noodle over, but not so much that we blocked out a second episode. We try to stick to our current format, but, may do more shows in the future. Have a thought about that? [email protected] is your friend and we are listening.

Now! We took a broad approach this week, so there is a little of something for everything down below. Enjoy!

• Hims is going to SPAC itself onto the public markets

  , which should prove interesting for other D2C startups eyeing the same move.

• The final quarter of 2020 and the full year brought an ocean of capital to bear on U.S. startups

  , something that we delighted in chewing on. Fintech is also hot as all heck

  .

• Plaid is building a fintech accelerator

  , which we thought was cool.

Plaid launches FinRise, an incubator for underrepresented fintech founders

• An edtech startup based in Nigeria raised a $7.5 million Series A

  on the back of a really neat distribution model. The march of live, tech-powered tutoring

  lives on!

• TripActions raised a pallet of new capital

  despite having had a somewhat rough 2020 due to the pandemic. It’s a fascinating wager, and one that we will track as it earns out.

• There was lots of news in the movement space, including Microsoft helping put $2 billion into self-driving startup Cruise

  , electric vehicle startup Rivian raising $2.65 billion from Amazon

  and others, and Bolt Mobility expanding to new markets

  .

Microsoft invests in Cruise in new $2 billion round

• Danny’s GPS story

  .

• Wattpad exits for $600 million

  , leading to Alex detailing his love of science fiction.

• a16z is doubling-down on its in-house media project

  , and Forbes is building out a paid newsletter service

  that we think is very neat.

Like we said, it’s a lot, but all of it worth getting into before the weekend. Hugs from the team, we are back early Monday.

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

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