Equity Live: This is what leadership smells like

Hello and welcome back to

Equity

, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.

This week we did something fun and different and good: a live show! A good number of people came, and asked questions, and altogether, it was a blast.

Danny,

Natasha

, and Alex

had a lovely time with the regular work, while Grace and Chris and Kevin made the whole operation function. We’ll likely post a bonus episode of the QA on Saturday if people are interested in Equity After Hours.

That aside, what did we talk about in a longer-than-usual episode? Here’s the rundown:

• Buzzfeed is going public!

  Alex wrote about the news here, but the gist is that the media company is merging with a SPAC, buying Complex, and raising some capital at the same time. We have thoughts about it.

• Maybe neobanks will break even?

  We dug into some fintech news through the perspective of some recent news from the neobank market.

• **MAJORITY raised MONEY

  ** for migrants to the United States, while MFast, **a Vietnamese financial services app

  ** , got some funding of its own amid the neobank boom.

• Alex interviewed a leading venture capitalist

  . So, we talked about that.

• What’s going on with the early-stage venture capital market?

  That’s something we tried to parse. The gist is that the rapidly-evolving world of investing in startups is in the midst of a few trends that are worth understanding. Even if they are slightly contradictory.

• A16z tripled down on crypto with a new $2.2 billion fund,

  giving it a total of $18.8 billion in assets under management.

• Edtech leaders rallied around a memo of their own this past week.

• And then to close, we raced through some of our recent reporting on a new fund that will invest in American military institute graduates

  , Figma’s huge new round of capital

  , and WaitWhat

  ?

It’s always fun to play around with our show, and thank you to everyone who came out and supported us in our first-ever, but probably not last-ever, virtual live show. We are back to regular, however, starting Monday.

*Equity drops every Monday at 7:00 a.m. PST, Wednesday, and Friday morning at 7:00 a.m. PST, so subscribe to us on *

Apple Podcasts

*, Overcast

, Spotify

and all the casts.*