Do you need a SPAC therapist?

@alex / @nmasc_ / 7:00 am PDT • April 16, 2021

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

Natasha and Danny and Alex and Grace were all here to chat through the week’s biggest tech happenings. It was yet another busy week, but that just means we had a great time putting the show together and recording it. Honestly, we had a lot of fun this week, and we hope you crack a smile while we dig through the latest as a team.

Ready? Here’s the rundown:

The Coinbase direct listing! Here are our notes on its S-1, its direct listing reference price and its results. And we even wrote about the impact that it might have on other startup verticals!
Grab’s impending SPAC! As it turns out, Natasha loves SPACs now, and even Danny and Alex had very little to say that was rude about this one.
Degreed became a unicorn, proving yet again that education for the enterprise is a booming sub-sector.
Outschool also became an edtech unicorn, thanks to a new round led by Coatue and everyone’s rich cousin, Tiger Global. The conversation soon devolved into how Tiger Global is impacting the broader VC ecosystem, thanks to a fantastic analysis piece that you have to read here.
Papa raised $60 million, also from Tiger Global. What do you call tech aimed at old folks? Don’t call it elder tech, we have a brand new phrase in store. Let’s see if it catches on.
AI chips! Danny talks the team through grokking Groq, so that we can talk about TPUs without losing our minds. He’s a good egg.
And, finally, Slice raised more money. Not from Tiger Global. We have good things to say about it.

Investors’ SPAC push could revamp the private market money game

And that is our show! We are back on Monday morning!

Equity drops every Monday at 7:00 a.m. PST, Wednesday, and Friday at 6:00 AM PST, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts!