Facebook’s debacle, $100M rounds and Slack links up with Atlassian

NelsonG · July 27, 2018

Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.

This was one hell of a week. Happily, we had our own Connie Loizos, Matthew Lynley, and Alex Wilhelm on hand, along with Initialized Capital’s Alexis Ohanian to pick over the mix.

First up we had zero choice but to talk about Facebook. The social company’s epic repricing in the middle of the week blotted out the news sun. It may keep us in the shade for another week, too. Facebook’s dive has implications for social startups and competing public companies alike. Like, say, Reddit.

Moving along, Crunchbase News recently dropped a report digging into the rise of $100 million and larger rounds. From a turning point in 2013 to today, megarounds have been on the rise. Why? When does it stop? Whose fault is it really? And is going public really that bad? We worked through each question, even tagging the structure of the stock market along the way. (Even more data here.)

From there we took a quick pivot to a company that is known for raising megarounds — Slack — and its new IRL BFF Atlassian. Yes, the Slack-Atlassian deal dropped right before we recorded. Our take is that the agreement makes sense, especially in light of a competitive landscape that keeps getting tougher for Slack.

That said, everyone agreed that Slack is one hell of a business.

And then we ran out of time. But, happily, we also worked in an advertisement for Melbourne and riffed one of Ohanian’s recent investments.

Thanks for comin’ round, and we’ll see you all in a week!

Equity drops every Friday at 6:00 am PT, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Pocket Casts, Downcast and all the casts.