A lake house architect, a Miami VC, and homeowner walk into a wine bar

Feb 4, 2021

This week’s discussion dives into Robinhood’s remarkable $3.4 billion raise and its solid growth despite past trading troubles. UiPath makes waves with a $750 million funding at a whopping $35 billion valuation, while Databricks sizzles after raising $1 billion. The buzz around Bumble's public debut offers insights into the dating market. Plus, Uber's $1.1 billion acquisition of Drizly signals big changes in alcohol delivery. Tune in for a peek into innovative real estate solutions and Miami's blossoming startup scene.

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INSIGHT

Robinhood's Capital Crisis

Robinhood's trading restrictions stemmed from insufficient capital for collateral.
Their rapid growth and payment for order flow model incentivized investor bailout.

INSIGHT

UiPath's Big Raise

UiPath's $750M raise at a $35B valuation demonstrates investor confidence in RPA.
They address the challenge of connecting legacy systems in modern businesses.

INSIGHT

Databricks' Lakehouse Vision

Databricks reached a $28B valuation with its $1B Series G round.
The company aims to establish "Lakehouse" as a new data category.

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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. The good news is that we managed to fit it all into a single episode this week. The bad news is that that means the show is pretty long. Sorry about that!

So, what took us so much time to get through? All of this:

Robinhood raised $3.4 billion after its trading hiccups, and we also chatted over what we know about the company's Q4 2020 numbers. In short, the company is growing nicely.
RPA is big and UiPath is cashing in on the trend, raising $750 million at a $35 billion valuation. That's a lot of cash for very little dilution.
Databricks raised $1 billion at a $28 billion valuation, after reaching $425 million in ARR. The company's growth is hot, but its valuation may be even hotter.
Bumble is going public, so we chatted about its results, and how founder- and venture-friendly the dating market may be in the future.
In a big exit for the Boston startup ecosystem, alcohol delivery platform Drizly has sold to Uber for $1.1 billion.
Sticking to the alcohol beat, Danny talked us through the Vivino news, describing himself as a wine sophisticate with a distaste for sommeliers, which is just about the most Danny thing he has ever said. But the company really is neat.
Divvy homes raised a $110 million Series C to make it easier to buy a home, after financing five times as many homes in 2020 as it did in pre-pandemic times.
And then there were some neat early-stage rounds to chat about: Balance raising $5.5 million to bring B2B payments to the modern world, Alloy Automation raising $4 million for ecommerce automation, and Beam raising $9.5 million to build a new browser.
Make sure to read Natasha's profile of the new Expectul CEO here.
And, we closed on some Miami news.

And somehow we still have another entire day before the weeks is up! So much for 2021 calming down after 2020's storms.

Credits: Equity is produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. Bryce Durbin is our Illustrator. We'd also like to thank the audience development team and Henry Pickavet, who manages TechCrunch audio products.

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