It’s not just about e-mail, stupid

NelsonG · June 19, 2020

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

Your humble Equity team is pretty tired but in good spirits, as there was a lot to talk about this week. But, first, three things to start us off:

First: Read this piece from TechCrunch’s Megan Rose Dickey about Juneteenth and tech companies. This podcast is going out on Juneteenth, so before you hit play, please take a minute to learn more about the day and its significance.
Second: Danny and Arman from the TechCrunch team have finally launched TechCrunch List, a huge effort to determine which investors are really willing to write early checks. You can find out more here.
Third: Equity is now on Twitter. Follow us here or understand that you are not cool.

All that said, here’s what we talked about on the show:

Epic Games is looking to raise a huge stack of cash (Bloomberg, VentureBeat) at a new, higher valuation. We were curious about how its lower-cut store could help it gain inroads with developers big and small. That part of the chat, the take-rate of the Fortnite parent company on the work of others was very cogent to the other main topic of the day:
Apple vs. DHH. So Hey launched this week, and the new spin on email quickly overshadowed its product launch by getting into a spat with Apple about whether it needs to add the ability to sign up for the paid service on iOS, thus giving Apple a cut of its revenue. DHH and crew do not agree. Apple is under fire for anti-competitive practices at home and abroad — of varying intensity, and from different sources — making this all the more spicy.
Upgrade raises $40 million for its credit-focused neobank.
Degreed raises $32 million for its upskilling platform.
And, at the end, our take on the current health of the startup market. There have been a sheaf of reports lately about what is going on in startup land. We gave our take.