Equity

Andreessen Horowitz just raised a whopping new $15 billion in funding. And a $1.7 billion chunk of that is going to its infrastructure team, the one responsible for some of its biggest, most prominent AI investments including Black Forrest Labs, Cursor, OpenAI, ElevenLabs, Ideogram, Fal and dozens of others.   A16z general partner with the infra team Jennifer Li (who oversees such investments as ElevenLabs – just valued at $11 billion); Ideagram and Fal, has a clear thesis on where the team is looking to spend it’s latest chunk of cash.  Today on TechCrunch's Equity podcast, Venture and Startups editor Julie Bort talked with Li about where a16z sees this AI super cycle going next, including the talent crunch hitting AI-native startups, why search infrastructure matters more than people think, and what kinds of companies are actually getting funded right now.    Listen to the full episode to hear about:  Where Li thinks the gaps still are when it comes to startups building an AI stack  What makes the most successful AI portfolio companies different  How tools like voice AI are rising in importance (yet still a bit uncomfortable to witness)  The AI startups she's still searching for and is ready to fund  Chapters: 00:00 Intro 01:01 Andreessen Horowitz's $1.7B infrastructure fund 05:00 Crossing the uncanny valley in AI-generated content 07:14 Agents finally becoming real in 2026 09:30 Building your first productivity agent 11:56 Why email agents aren't quite there yet 15:00 Which jobs will agents replace first? 18:05 The most unhinged opinion: Creativity belongs to humans 20:21 The limits of LLMs and the rise of world models 22:13 AI-designed chips are coming 24:00 The truth behind those viral ARR numbers 26:10 Hiring at AI speed: The talent shortage problem 28:47 The pricing mistake that became a big deal 29:21 The future of search for AI agents 30:45 Outro Subscribe to Equity on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Self-driving truck startup Waabi's billion-dollar fundraise isn't just about trucks.     The deal, for $750 million up front plus another $250 million from Uber tied to deployment milestones, marks a major expansion into robotaxis for the company founded by former Uber AI chief Raquel Urtasun. It also feels like another chip from Uber on the autonomous vehicle roulette table. With more than 20 AV partners worldwide, the question isn't just whether Waabi can deliver on its plans to deploy over 25,000 robotaxis, but whether Uber's bet-on-everything strategy actually works.    Today on TechCrunch's Equity podcast, hosts Kirsten Korosec, Sean O'Kane and Anthony Ha discussed Uber's AV partnership strategy, why Waabi's "simulation-first" approach might be different, and more of the week's headlines.  Listen to the full episode to hear about:  Anduril's drone race recruitment stunt and whether it's the future of hiring or just good PR  Phia’s $35M raise for an AI shopping assistant as brick-and-mortar stores close their doors  Northwood Space's $100M Series B and the booming space infrastructure market  Who’s really winning in TikTok's messy US ownership deal, and the competitors trying to capitalize  The IPO window cracking open, and how SpaceX plans to go through it  Chapters:  00:00 Intro  02:13 Palmer Luckey's bold recruiting strategy  04:04 Phia raises $35M for sustainable shopping  06:27 Browser extensions & the privacy problem  09:59 Northwood Space's $100M Series B & Space Force contract  12:17 The rise of dual-use space companies  14:01 Waabi's $1B valuation & beyond trucking  16:36 Uber's strategy: Betting on every AV partner  19:12 TikTok's US deal & immediate outage  21:46 TikTok competitors gain ground  24:03 IPO window opening: Ethos, Serve, and SpaceX  27:57 Will Elon actually take SpaceX public this time?  29:11 Outro  Subscribe to Equity on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

SpaceX is reportedly lining up four major Wall Street banks for a 2026 IPO that could provide the reset the market needs.  The company just completed a tender offer at an $800 billion valuation, and secondary market demand is through the roof. If SpaceX goes public anywhere near its rumored $1.5 trillion valuation, it could trigger an IPO cascade for other late-stage unicorns like OpenAI, Stripe, and Databricks.  Today on TechCrunch’s Equity podcast, Rebecca Bellan spoke with Greg Martin, Managing Director at Rainmaker Securities, to discuss why this IPO feels different, how tech employees are cashing out through secondary markets before companies go public, and what investors are actually looking for in pre-IPO shares.  Listen to the full episode to hear:  Which other late-stage unicorns are seeing the most secondary trading action right now.  Why SpaceX is ready to go public, despite previously saying it “wouldn't IPO until rockets were flying to Mars regularly” (and why Martin doesn’t think SpaceX will continue on its debut path if the market tanks)  The "Elon halo effect" and how much of SpaceX's valuation is based on Musk himself  What happens when SpaceX employees want to sell shares before the IPO  Chapters: 00:00 Introduction 01:39 The Booming Secondary Market for Pre-IPO Shares 04:06 SpaceX as an IPO Bellwether 06:31 Why Elon Musk Changed His Mind on Going Public 10:04 The Race to a Trillion-Dollar Valuation 12:27 The Elon Halo Effect on Valuations 15:17 What Signals an Upcoming IPO? 17:50 How Secondaries Drive Better Price Discovery 20:47 How SpaceX Secondaries Actually Work 24:03 What Investors Want from Pre-IPO Companies 25:11 The Have and Have-Not World of Secondaries 26:42 Outro Subscribe to Equity on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The World Economic Forum's annual meeting in Davos felt different this year, and not just because Meta and Salesforce took over storefronts on the main promenade. AI dominated the conversation in a way that overshadowed traditional topics like climate change and global poverty, and the CEOs weren't holding back. There was public criticism of trade policy, warnings about AI bubbles popping, and a lot of talk about what comes next for the industry.    Meanwhile, back in Silicon Valley, AI startup Humans& raised a $480 million seed round with no product on the market, just a vision for "social intelligence" AI and a team of ex-Anthropic, Google, and xAI employees.    Today on TechCrunch’s Equity podcast, Kirsten Korosec, Anthony Ha, and Sean O'Kane discuss why raising hundreds of millions before building a product is apparently the new norm, which conversations took over Davos this week, and more.    Listen to the full episode to hear more from the week, including:  Whether Meta's 10% layoffs at Reality Labs means the end for the metaverse, and who’s defending Meta's VR investments  Serve Robotics' acquisition of Diligent, a startup bringing delivery bots into hospitals  OpenAI’s rumored earbuds and what we expect to see from the AI company’s first hardware product.  Subscribe to Equity on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today on Equity, we're teaming up with our newest podcast, Build Mode. In this interview, Build Mode host Isabelle Johannessen sits down with Ross Fubini of XYZ Ventures and Leslie Feinzaig of Graham & Walker Ventures to pull back the curtain on how VCs build their own go-to-market strategies. They dig into what it’s really like raising a first fund, why founder-market fit applies to investors too, and how the best investor relationships start years before you ever need the money. Subscribe to Equity on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify, and all the casts. You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

AI companies are clustering around healthcare and fast.  In just the past week, OpenAI bought health startup Torch, Anthropic launched Claude for Health, and Sam Altman-backed MergeLabs closed a $250 million seed round at an $850 million valuation. The money and products are pouring into health and voice AI, but so are concerns about hallucination risks, inaccurate medical information, and massive security vulnerabilities in systems handling sensitive patient data.  Today on TechCrunch’s Equity podcast, Kirsten Korosec, Anthony Ha, and Sean O'Kane dig into why the AI world is suddenly obsessed with health care, what other products can expect an AI-makeover, and more.  Listen to the full episode to hear:   How Anthropic's co-work tool could threaten Salesforce and other enterprise software giants  Bandcamp’s move against AI, banning AI-generated music from its platform  Why fusion energy is heating up, with startups like Type One Energy suddenly raising hundreds of millions  The latest on Luminar's bankruptcy and a potential bidding war overits LIDAR assets  Chapters:  00:00 - Introduction   00:29 - Waymo testing in New York City?  02:13 - Bandcamp bans AI-generated music   04:57 - Luminar's bankruptcy and LIDAR fire sale   10:28 - Type One Energy's fusion funding frenzy   16:10 - AI's healthcare land grab   23:28 - Voice AI deals heat up   25:26 - Anthropic's co-work tool threatens enterprise software  Subscribe to Equity on ⁠YouTube⁠,⁠ Apple Podcasts⁠,⁠ Overcast⁠,⁠ Spotify⁠ and all the casts. You also can follow Equity on⁠ X⁠ and⁠ Threads⁠, at @EquityPod.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

AI agents are supposed to make work easier. Instead, they're creating a whole new category of security nightmares.    As companies deploy AI-powered chatbots, agents, and copilots across their operations, they're facing a new risk: how do you let employees and AI agents use powerful AI tools without accidentally leaking sensitive data, violating compliance rules, or opening the door to prompt-based injections? Witness AI just raised $58 million to find a solution, building what they call "the confidence layer for enterprise AI."    Today on TechCrunch’s Equity podcast, Rebecca Bellan was joined by Barmak Meftah, co-founder and partner at Ballistic Ventures, and Rick Caccia, CEO of Witness AI, to discuss what enterprises are actually worried about, why AI security become an $800 billion to $1.2 trillion market by 2031, and what happens when AI agents start talking to other AI agents without human oversight.    Listen to the full episode to hear:   How enterprises accidentally leak sensitive data through "shadow AI" usage.  What CISOs are actually worried about right now, how the problem has evolved rapidly over 18 months, and what it will look like over the next year.  Why traditional cybersecurity approaches don't work for AI agents.  Real examples of AI agents going rogue, including one that threatened to blackmail an employee.  Subscribe to Equity on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

After years of chatbots and image generators, AI is finally leaving the screen. At CES 2026, that shift became impossible to ignore.    The annual tech showcase in Las Vegas was dominated by "physical AI" and robotics, from Boston Dynamic's newly redesigned Atlas humanoid robot to AI-powered ice makers (yes, really). The companies in attendance clearly want consumers to know: AI isn't just capable of answering questions anymore. It's ready to movecar parts in factories, catchcatching drones with net guns, and dance in automaker booths.    Today on TechCrunch’s Equity podcast, hosts Kirsten Korosec, Anthony Ha, and Sean O’Kane break down everything we saw at CES 2026 and more deals from the week that caught our eye.    Listen to the full episode to hear about:   Discord’s rumored IPO, years after shutting down a Microsoft acquisition  xAI's massive $20 billion raise and the dark side of Grok's content moderation failures  How Mobileye is getting into the humanoid robotics game with its acquisition of Mentee Robotics  OpenAI's potential shift toward audio-first, screenless AI experiences  Chapters: 00:00 - Intro 00:38 - Discord's surprise IPO filing 03:24 - xAI's $20B raise amid CSAM controversy 11:06 - Mobileye's pivot to humanoid robotics 14:41 - Physical AI takes over CES 18:31 - Why humanoid robots still don't make sense 24:26 - OpenAI's war on screens and ambient computing 29:56 - Wrap-up Subscribe to Equity on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Vanessa Larco, partner at Premise and former partner at NEA, thinks 2026 will finally be the year of consumer AI.  Larco, who's been investing in consumer and prosumer for years, thinks we're about to see a shift in how consumers spend time online, with AI powering “concierge-like” services. The question is, will legacy consumer products like WebMD and TripAdvisor continue to exist as standalone apps, or will they just get absorbed into ChatGPT or Meta AI? And where can startups carve out an AI-powered niche for themselves?  Today on TechCrunch's Equity podcast, Rebecca Bellan sat down with Larco to talk about why consumer is back, what OpenAI won't kill, and where the real opportunities are hiding.  Listen to the full episode to hear about:  Why Larco thinks OpenAI won't build marketplace businesses that require managing real humans.  Larco’s take on "disposable software" and why AI apps “should be treated like Word docs.”  How Meta Ray-Ban smart glasses turned Larco into a believer in voice interfaces (and why she thinks screens are optional for most tasks).  More predictions for 2026, including another huge year for M&A.  What new business models stablecoins could unlock.   00:00 - Introduction   00:53 - Why founders are excited about consumer again   04:40 - The moat against OpenAI: Managing real humans   09:22 - Apps as disposable as Word docs   12:48 - Social media in the AI era  18:48 - Meta Ray-Bans and why wearables are actually good   23:35 - Stablecoins and consumer fintech opportunities   26:54 - M&A predictions for 2026  Subscribe to Equity on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Fizz is betting that Gen Z is tired of performing their lives on Instagram and TikTok.   What started as a pandemic-era group chat frustration has turned into the dominant social platform on college campuses across the US, focused on the 99% of life that doesn't make it into a highlight reel. Capturing the attention of a demographic typically glued to Instagram and TikTok, the app's hybrid anonymous model and hyperlocal focus has made it what Solomon calls "the biggest college social app since Facebook.”   Today we're bringing you a conversation that Dominic Madori Davis had with Fizz’s co-founder and CEO Teddy Solomon from this year's Disrupt, digging into why he thinks social media stopped being social.   Listen to the full episode to hear:  Why Solomon thinks Instagram and TikTok became pure entertainment platforms, and why that created an opening  How Fizz uses 7,000 volunteer student moderators plus AI to keep the platform safe  The company's expansion strategy beyond college and what "Global Fizz" actually means  Solomon’s case for why New York is a better place to build a consumer company than San Francisco  Subscribe to Equity on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod.     Chapters:   00:00 - Introduction   01:34 - What broke in social media   04:03 - Building for the 99% of life   07:29 - Content moderation at scale   11:16 - The risks of anonymous social   13:22 - Pandemic origins and IRL community   16:49 - Why the company moved to New York   19:45 - Scaling with "arguably the most retentive social product in history"   21:32 - Almost getting arrested at Pepperdine…for donuts  26:09 - The future of social media  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

TechCrunch's Equity crew is bringing 2025 to a close and getting ahead on the year to come with our annual predictions episode! Hosts Kirsten Korosec, Anthony Ha, and Rebecca Bellan were joined by Build Mode host Isabelle Johansson to dissect the year's biggest tech developments, from mega AI funding rounds that defied expectations to the rise of "physical AI," and make their calls for 2026.  The group tackles everything from why AI agents didn't live up to the hype in 2025 (but probably will in 2026), to how Hollywood will push back against AI-generated content, to why VCs are facing a serious liquidity crisis.   Listen to the full episode to hear:  Why world models are the next big thing in AI and how they're different from large language models  The death of "stealth mode" for AI startups and the rise of alternative funding sources  Predictions on regulatory chaos around AI policy and what Trump's recent executive order means for startups  Hot takes on IPOs: Will OpenAI and Anthropic actually go public in 2026?  Rapid-fire predictions including Johnny Ive and Sam Altman's inevitable public breakup, the return of dumb phones, and why everyone will be calling themselves "AI native"  What's coming in Build Mode season 2: A deep dive into team building, hiring, and finding co-founders  Subscribe to Equity on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod.    Chapters:   00:00 - Introduction   01:43 - Rating our 2025 predictions   04:19 - Funding in the bubble era   06:35 - World models and the future of AI   09:05 - The year of AI agents (for real this time)   11:58 - Physical AI everywhere   15:19 - AI meets Hollywood   16:25 - Regulatory chaos and federal preemption   18:34 - The liquidity crisis and LP direct investing   22:19 - IPO predictions for 2026   23:57 - Startup trends for 2026  27:06 - Buzzwords we're sick of hearing   28:15 - Rapid fire predictions   32:50 - What's next for Build Mode  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

There's plenty of hype around AI and robots in healthcare, but the problem that's actually costing hospitals money right now is operating room coordination. Two to four hours of OR time is lost every single day, not because of the surgeries themselves, but because of everything in between from manual scheduling and coordination chaos to guesswork about room turnover.      Today on TechCrunch’s Equity podcast, we're bringing you a conversation that TechCrunch AI Editor Russell Brandom had with Conor McGinn, co-founder and CEO of Akara, the startup that recently landed a spot on Time's Best Inventions of 2025 and is building what’s essentially air traffic control for hospitals using thermal sensors and AI.       Listen to the full episode to hear:  Why Akara pivoted from cleaning robots to ambient sensing, and how thermal sensors document surgeries without privacy concerns  How NHS vetting became McGinn's backdoor into US hospitals  The real bottleneck holding back medical robotics. (Spoiler: it's not the robots, it's the infrastructure)  Why 40% of the nursing workforce could leave in the next five years, and what that means for automation  Subscribe to Equity on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod.    Chapters:    00:00 - Introduction   00:54 - Air traffic control for ORs   02:35 - Where hospitals lose hours daily   03:54 - Selling into risk-averse hospitals   06:21 - Thermal sensors and edge AI  09:11 - NHS as proof of concept   13:16 - The AI under the hood   18:12 - Privacy benefits of thermal   21:22 - Infrastructure before robots  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The hardware world had a brutal week, with iRobot, Luminar, and Rad Power Bikes all filing for bankruptcy.  Each company faces its own mix of tariff pressures, supply chain issues, and shifting markets, but together they tell a larger story about the challenges of building physical products in an era of global trade tensions and cheap overseas competition. From the Roomba maker that almost got acquired by Amazon to the e-bike company that couldn't escape its Chinese supply chain, this week's bankruptcies are a warning sign for hardware startups everywhere.  Today on TechCrunch's Equity podcast, hosts Anthony Ha, Rebecca Bellan, and Sean O'Kane discuss what went wrong for three once-promising hardware companies, plus Amazon's massive OpenAI bet and Trump's new approach to AI regulation.  Listen to the full episode to hear more news from the week, including:  How "slop" became Merriam-Webster's word of the year — and why it's become bigger than just AI-generated content  Why Databricks raised $10 billion at a $134 billion valuation (in a Series L!) instead of just going public already  The Coursera-Udemy merger and whether online course platforms can survive the AI era  Chapters:  00:00 - Introduction  00:24 - AI slop is Merriam-Webster's word of the year  06:07 - Amazon's $10 billion OpenAI investment  10:43 - Databricks raises $10 billion in a Series L  14:14 - Coursera acquires Udemy  19:17 - Hardware bankruptcies: iRobot, Luminar, and Rad Power Bikes  26:21 - Trump's AI executive order targets state regulation  Subscribe to Equity on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Jiten Behl, partner at Eclipse Ventures and former chief growth officer at Rivian, thinks we're entering an era of major re-industrialization in the US — one where factories run on AI-powered robots, not cheap overseas labor.   Behl, who helped scale Rivian from a conference room idea in 2015 to a publicly traded EV maker, is now investing in the next wave of industrial and mobility startups, including two Rivian spinouts: Also and Mind Robotics. It's part of Eclipse's larger bet that the physical world is finally ready for the kind of disruption software saw a decade ago.  Today on TechCrunch's Equity podcast, Kirsten Korosec sat down with Behl to talk about why Rivian keeps spinning out companies, what founders in the "physical world" need that software founders don't, and why automation is becoming necessary if the US wants to compete without Chinese supply chains.  Listen to the full episode to hear about:  Why Behl looks for founders who are both "hyper-optimistic" and grounded in reality, and why that combination is surprisingly rare, even in Silicon Valley.  How vertical integration worked for Rivian but won't work for most startups today.  Behl's prediction that autonomy will become "real and something we can touch and feel" in the next five years.  Subscribe to Equity on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A baby was born in a Waymo this week, and it wasn't even the first one.  What started as a novelty story quickly became a reminder of how autonomous vehicles have quietly become part of everyday life, complete with all the messiness that entails. The real coming-of-age story this week, however, wasn't happening in San Francisco's robotaxis. It was playing out in Hollywood, where Netflix made an $82 billion bid to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery's streaming and studio business.    Today on TechCrunch's Equity podcast, hosts Kirsten Korosec and Anthony Ha discuss what happens when the startup that used to mail you DVDs grows up and tries to buy a legacy entertainment empire as well as the other headlines that caught their eye.  Listen to the full episode to hear about:  How Boom Supersonic is selling jet engines to data centers to fund its supersonic flight dreams  Why Hinge's CEO is leaving to start an AI dating app, and whether AI can actually fix dating  The rise of AI circular deals and what CoreWeave's CEO says about companies investing in their own customers  A fertility startup using AI-designed antibodies to expand beyond ovulation tracking  Subscribe to Equity on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

ElevenLabs has made a name for itself building realistic AI voices.     What started as two Polish engineers annoyed by terrible movie dubbing has grown into a profitable company now valued at $6.6 billion, doubling its valuation from just nine months ago. The company recently announced a $100 million tender offer led by Sequoia and ICONIQ, with participation from a16z and others, as its tech powers everything from Fortnite characters to customer service bots and goes toe-to-toe with OpenAI to become the default voice of AI.    Today on TechCrunch's Equity podcast, we’re bringing you a conversation with CEO Mati Staniszewski from this year's Disrupt, where he made a surprising admission: he thinks voice models will be commoditized in just a couple of years. So what's ElevenLabs' plan when everyone else catches up?    Listen to the full episode to hear about:   Why ElevenLabs is pivoting from just voice models to building a conversational AI agent platform  How the company is tackling deepfakes with watermarking, AI detection, and device authentication  Why Staniszewski believes there will soon be more AI-generated content than human content  ElevenLabs' push into music generation and partnerships to fuse audio with video models  Subscribe to Equity on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

AWS announced a wave of new AI agent tools at re:Invent 2025, but can Amazon actually catch up to the AI leaders? While the cloud giant is betting big on enterprise AI with its third-gen chip and database discounts that got developers cheering, it's still fighting to prove it can compete beyond infrastructure.  This week on Equity, Kirsten Korosec, Anthony Ha, and Sean O'Kane dig into the ROI on AI agents, plus the collision course between Hollywood and generative AI, and why everyone wants their own version of Spotify Wrapped.  Listen to the full episode to hear about:  Why Hollywood filmmakers are drawing hard lines between performance capture and AI, and another spiked attempt at AI regulation  Nothing's $5 million community funding round and whether letting consumers invest is genuine community-building or just IPO hype  Autolane's $7.4 million raise to build "air traffic control for robotaxis"  Wrapped battles from Spotify, YouTube, and others chasing their viral moment  Subscribe to Equity on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Tech is racing ahead while society struggles to keep up. Masha Bucher, founder and GP of Day One Ventures, built her firm around closing that gap by combining venture capital with hands-on PR to help portfolio companies not just raise money, but actually break through the noise.   Day One's been an early backer of companies like World, Superhuman, and Remote.com, with 12 of its portfolio companies hitting multibillion-dollar valuations.  Today on TechCrunch's Equity podcast, Rebecca Bellan sat down with Bucher to talk about why traditional PR is broken, how she picks founders, and why every startup founder now needs to be chronically online.  Listen to the full episode to hear about:  Why Bucher thinks being a VC first makes her better at PR, and why the traditional PR model is "misaligned" for startups.  How she vets building teams and finds the “most exceptional founders.”   Why founders can't just pick one platform anymore, along with Bucher’s simple – and potentially contentious -- advice for getting started on social media.  Subscribe to Equity on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Vibe coding has taken the tech industry by storm, and it's not just the Lovables and Replits of the world that are winning. The startups building the infrastructure behind them are cashing in too.  Supabase, the open-source database platform that's become the backend of choice for the vibe-coding world, raised $100 million at a $5 billion valuation just months after closing $200 million at $2 billion. But co-founder and CEO Paul Copplestone has a surprising strategy: he keeps turning down million-dollar enterprise contracts, betting instead that vibe coding will birth the next generation of companies.  Today on TechCrunch's Equity podcast, Julie Bort sat down with Copplestone to explore Supabase's rise and what it means for the database race.  Listen to the full episode to hear about:  Why Copplestone believes "the death of Oracle won't take a generation"  The technical moonshots Supabase is funding to make Postgres even more scalable  How he decides which enterprise deals to turn down, and why it still "feels very painful"  Subscribe to Equity on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices