The pure hell of managing your JPEGs

Aug 27, 2021

Mary Ann Azevedo, a TechCrunch senior reporter known for her insights into startups and venture capital, joins the discussion to dive into the booming Latin American tech ecosystem. They explore impressive funding rounds, including Ramp's $300 million and NoRedInk's $50 million Series B. The conversation shifts to the contest for talent in a changing hiring landscape and how the fintech and edtech sectors are reshaping financial inclusion. Azevedo also highlights the innovative strategies of emerging companies challenging established giants like Dropbox.

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ANECDOTE

Design Asset Hell

Jessica Coe, ex-Head of Design at Google/Opendoor, found managing design assets chaotic.
She founded Playbook to solve this, raising $4M seed.

INSIGHT

Fintech Focus: Inclusion vs. Improvement

Latin American fintech focuses on financial inclusion, unlike US fintech which prioritizes improving existing services.
This approach addresses the region's underbanked population.

INSIGHT

Hiring over Runway

Hiring is the current top concern for startups, surpassing runway.
This shift highlights the competitive talent landscape.

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Natasha and Alex and Grace and Chris were joined by none other than TechCrunch's own Mary Ann Azevedo, in her first-ever appearance on the show. She's pretty much the best person and we're stoked to have her on the pod.

And it was good that Mary Ann was on the show this week as she wrote about half the dang site. Which meant that we got to include all sorts of her work in the rundown. Here's the agenda:

Funding rounds from: Ramp, which raised $300 million at a $3.9 billion valuation; NoRedInk which put together an impressive $50 million Series B; and Playbook, which is building a sort of Dropbox for designers. Each company gave us something different to noodle on, be it the diverging strategies at Ramp and Brex, how NoRedInk is different from Grammarly, and why Dropbox is not the Dropbox for designers.
Then we spun the globe to narrow our focus to Latin America, a booming startup scene that Mary Ann recently profiled for Extra Crunch. In a nutshell, venture capital is helping drive an enormous wave of startup activity in the region -- or perhaps a wave of startup activity is driving a boom in venture investment? -- leading to huge companies, and perhaps some tech-powered inclusion of more folks into the modern banking, and digital economy. (For more, here are notes on the Brazilian market's rising exit tally! And Flink raised, which was worth chewing on as well.)
We quickly pivoted to the hot button issue of the moment for every startup (and business): hiring. Natasha noted how startups used to focus on runway, and now they are looking to fill empty seats amid the great resignation.
Finally, we nattered about huge venture results from Boston, big numbers from Austin, and what increasingly feels like an everything bubble. Chicago is doing well, too. Pick a city, it's putting up big numbers.

And that's a wrap, for, well, at least the next 5 seconds.

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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