Welcome back to another recap of Equity, TechCrunch’s flagship podcast about the business of startups. Today’s episode is packed with M&A talk, how one YouTuber succeeded at the creator economy, why Twitch is still losing money and an autonomous vehicle company that is making a comeback.
First up, senior reporter Rebecca Bellan took a look at fintech giant Stripe’s acquisition of four-year-old competitor Lemon Squeezy. The buy beefs up Stripe’s ability to calculate and pay global sales tax for customers, according to Stripe CEO Patrick Collison. Deal terms weren’t disclosed. It’s worth noting that Lemon Squeezy has a reputation for turning down other investments, including a $50 million Series A. The company’s founder said he was holding out for the right partner to take the business to the next level, and apparently Stripe was it.
This comment led Rebecca to explore the idea of M&A as an exit strategy. Does this practice create perverse incentives in venture capital, where investors are becoming more risk-averse and looking for a surer path to regaining capital, at the long-term expense of competition? Other startups have turned down such opportunities so they can go it alone. Just look at Wiz’s decision not to get acquired by Google for $23 billion, something we discussed on last Friday’s episode.
Next, Rebecca touched on MatPat, the first big YouTuber to successfully exit his company, Theorist Media. Matthew Patrick turned his successful video series, The Game Theorists, into a full-fledged media business called Theorist, with 40 million subscribers across channels. But he was getting tired of the ceaseless content uploading and found a way to convince investors that the business could go on without him. Now he’s on Capitol Hill educating politicians about what creators need to succeed as small businesses.
Speaking of creators and acquisitions, Rebecca pulled up a Wall Street Journal report that found after 10 years, Twitch is still losing Amazon money. Amazon bought Twitch for $1 billion in 2014, but the company still isn’t profitable. And will it ever be? Twitch generated in 2023 about $667 million in ad revenue and $1.3 billion in commerce revenue, which accounted for less than 0.5% of Amazon’s total 2023 revenue. Amazon defended its buy, saying Twitch has a long-term path to profitability. But broader trends that seem to favor short-form videos over watching someone play an entire video game live say otherwise.
Finally, while we’re on the subject of comebacks, autonomous delivery startup Nuro is gearing up for one of its own. Nuro has been quiet for the past year or so after two big rounds of layoffs. Once the darling of the AV industry with over $2 billion in funding from high-profile investors, Nuro was burning money fast as it tried to scale and commercialize all at once. Now, the company is back with better AI and a new vehicle, the R3, which it will be testing later this year in the Bay Area and Houston.
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.
Welcome back to another recap of Equity, TechCrunch’s flagship podcast about the business of startups. This episode is packed with some significant fundraises, a potentially…
Maven Ventures general partner Sara Deshpande has been investing in the consumer tech space for a decade. Over time, the seed-stage venture firm has backed…
On today’s episode of Equity, Rebecca Bellan did a deep dive into the CrowdStrike outage that affected around 8.5 million Windows devices around the world,…
Welcome back to another recap of Equity, TechCrunch’s flagship podcast about the business of startups. This episode is packed with deals, antitrust musings, AI and…
Renegade Partners co-founders Renata Quintini and Roseanne Wincek have seen it all in their careers — notably over the past four years when they launched…
On today’s episode of Equity, Rebecca Bellan explored Google’s reported talks to acquire Wiz, a cloud security company, for around $23 billion. Wiz provides an…
Welcome back to another recap of Equity, TechCrunch’s flagship podcast about the business of startups. This episode is packed with deals, antitrust musings, AI and…
Mike Maples Jr. is a prolific angel investor and co-founder of early-stage venture firm Floodgate. Over the years, he’s taken a lot of bets. Some…
On today’s episode of Equity, we’re taking a look at news you might’ve missed over the holiday weekend here in the U.S., starting with the…
What’s the common thread between Tesla, building startups, General Motors venture capital and Lyft? Jon McNeill, co-founder and partner of DVx Ventures, joins TechCrunch editor…
Welcome back to another recap of Equity, TechCrunch’s flagship podcast about the business of startups. This episode is jam-packed with deals, hot topics and the…
Apple has been named the first of tech’s so-called “gatekeepers” to be charged for violating the EU’s Digital Markets Act. In a press release this…
Get ready for a jam-packed episode of Equity, TechCrunch’s flagship podcast about the business of startups! This week, co-hosts Mary Ann Azevedo and Haje Kamps…
In this week’s episode of Equity, Haje Kamps and Mary Ann Azevedo delve into the recent decision by fintech company Brex to abandon its co-CEO…
This week on Equity, we discussed some big news that really matters: How Black founders are addressing the diversity gap in AI chatbots. We’ve all…
In today’s episode of TechCrunch’s Equity podcast, Mary Ann Azevedo, Becca Szkutak and Haje Kamps dug into three very different but all interesting deals of the week. Haje…
Vanessa Larco, a partner at New Enterprise Associates (NEA), believes that generative AI’s impact on the world of SaaS could be huge. The investor joined…
Apple’s WWDC is just hours away, and we’re gearing up for big announcements on — you guessed it — AI. TechCrunch’s Brian Heater tells us…
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.…
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…
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…
Welcome back to Friday Equity! We kick things off with the Deal of the Week. First up, xAI. Elon Musk has once again proven that…
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,…
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…
It was an event-filled week in startup land, and the Equity crew had a blast breaking it down for you. On today’s episode of TechCrunch’s…
For this episode of Equity, we spoke to two Aussie VCs: Dan Krasnostein of Square Peg and Gabrielle Munzer of Main Sequence.
Last week was a big one for AI news, and one thing that stood out to us was OpenAI’s deal with Reddit. Per the terms of…
If there was one thing we heard about this week, it was AI. As a matter of fact, there were so many AI updates to…
When Newchip, an online accelerator promising to help startups, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in March 2023, it was revealed that the company had just…
Featured Podcast
OpenAI gears up for a big announcement, and Apple Store workers authorize a strike
Last week was a busy one for some Apple Store employees. Over the weekend, workers at Apple’s Towson, Maryland, store — the first Apple retail store to have a formally recognized union — voted to authorize a strike. While the date of the strike is still being determined, the union has been negotiating with Apple…
11 Min
