Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
This is Equity Monday, our weekly kickoff that tracks the latest big news, chats about the coming week, digs into some recent funding rounds and mulls over a larger theme or narrative from the private markets. You can follow the show on Twitter here and myself here — and don’t forget to check out last Thursday’s edtech deep dive from our own Natasha Mascarenhas.
Right, now through the first of America’s national Q4 feast days, it’s time to get back to business. Namely, the business of VC and startups. Here’s what we got into this morning:
- It’s Cyber Monday, which means that the Internet is going to be annoying today, but the fake-holiday is boosting ecommerce players like Etsy. That should be good news for payments processors incumbent and startup, as well as other ecommerce businesses, again large, small, and even platform-focused.
- Zappos founder Tony Hsieh passed away this weekend. It was a surprise. He was loved.
- The UK is banning China’s Huawei 5G gear next year as Australia condemns China over a different matter. So if you are keeping tally of countries where Chinese tech may no longer be welcome, the list is certainly longer than merely India, which has banned all popular China-built apps from its mobile phones.
- These broader tensions are changing where VCs are investing their money, notably.
- Primer, the fintech helping merchants consolidate the payments stack, raises £14M Series A
- HungryPanda raises $70M for a food delivery app aimed at overseas Chinese consumers
- Firstminute Capital launches second $111M fund, featuring a who’s-who of founders as LPs
- And finally, we are heading into a deluge of IPOs over the next few weeks. So strap in, it’s going to be messy and fun.
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 Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts.
