Hello and welcome back to
Equity
, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast (now on Twitter!
), where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
This is the fourth episode of the week, pushing our production calendar to the test. Happily we’ve managed to hold it together amidst the news deluge that the last few days have brought. It was a good week for our scheduling change, with the main episode of the show coming to you on Thursday afternoon versus Friday morning.
Change is good.
But unchanging this time around was our hosting lineup, with
Natasha Mascarenhas
and Danny Crichton
and myself
yammering with Chris Gates
on the mix. Here’s what we got into:
-
The CEO of TikTok is out
, bids are swirling, and whom will wind up owning a piece of all of TikTok’s global operations is not clear. Walmart is in the mix, apparently, which feels very 2020.
-
The New York Stock Exchange has gotten approval from the SEC
for a new type of direct listing, one in which the company going public can sell a bloc of shares during the normal price discovery process. This means that all the banker-faff of setting a price and roadshowing to various investor groups could be going the way of the buffalo.
-
About time, maybe? That was our take after reading this Bill Gurley note
and the latest SEC news.
-
But while the direct listing world is getting more interesting, the SPAC world is taking flight. Desktop Metal is going public via a SPAC
which is all sorts of fascinating. A younger, Boston-based unicorn going public in this manner is eye catching!
-
And then two funding rounds, the first from Finix
, which can’t stop adding to its Series B. And Mural
, which raised the largest Series B we can recall
.
And with that, we’re all going to bed. We’re tired. No more news, thanks!
Equity
drops every Monday at 7:00 a.m. PT and Friday at 6:00 a.m. PT, so subscribe to us on
Apple Podcasts
,
Overcast
,
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and all the casts.