VCs are hungry for Instacart, big money for bikes and a slew of enterprise IPOs
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
This week was a damn corker. Instacart is fighting back! Zuora went public and it went well! There were other IPOs! Uber loves bikes! And what is #AllRaise? We happily had a good crew on hand to sift through the mix, including Katie Roof, myself, and Kara Nortman, a general partner at Upfront Ventures.
Up top we dug into the massive new Instacart round, the completion of its Series E. The new $150 million brings Instacart’s valuation to a staggering $4.35 billion, up from $4.2 billion when it closed the first $200 million of its latest round of capital. It’s an incredible bet from the private markets, and we dug into it as a possible anti-Amazon bet.
Moving along, it was an IPO run for the ages:
- Zuora went public, and it went super well for the subscription billing firm. I had a few questions about why it went so well, but, at a minimum, the company had an amazingly good run: it raised its range, priced above that range, and then popped miles higher. Not bad.
- Carbon Black is bringing more security equity to the public markets with its new S-1, which we spent a few minutes poking into. Sadly, who actually understands what security companies do? I don’t.
- And finally, Pivotal Software is going public. We unpack its revenue mix and try to figure out why it thinks that it is worth what it does. Mysteries all abound!
Moving along, we wandered back into the hottest region of Silicon Valley conversation: bikes scooters. The JUMP-Uber deal finally wrapped — as expected — and we discussed the finer points of what a scooter is and how they fit into our lives.
We wrapped on #AllRaise and the fact that Kara may or may not have been on the cover of a magazine.
Hit play and we’ll see you all next week!
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