The hosts dive into Amazon's $8.45 billion acquisition of MGM, discussing its implications for Prime Video. They explore the challenges faced by SPACs, particularly with Lordstown Motors and its post-merger reality. A major milestone is celebrated with a Black-led firm successfully closing a $50 million fund to support Black entrepreneurs. The conversation shifts to Resolve, a new player in buy now, pay later financing for businesses, and wraps up with discussions on asynchronous communication trends revolutionizing workplace meetings.
32:28
forum Ask episode
web_stories AI Snips
view_agenda Chapters
auto_awesome Transcript
info_circle Episode notes
insights INSIGHT
Amazon Buys MGM
Amazon acquired MGM Studios for $8.45 billion, its second-largest acquisition.
This acquisition adds 4,000 films and 17,000 TV shows to Amazon Prime Video.
insights INSIGHT
Questioning Amazon's Media Strategy
Alex Wilhelm questions Amazon's media strategy, as it seems non-core to their e-commerce and tech platform business.
He wonders why Amazon invests heavily in media, a challenging industry, instead of focusing on core areas.
question_answer ANECDOTE
Avocados and Echoes
Natasha Mascarenhas recalls Amazon placing Echoes next to avocados at Whole Foods after their acquisition.
This anecdote highlights Amazon's attempts to integrate their products into different parts of their business.
Get the Snipd Podcast app to discover more snips from this episode
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.
This week had the whole crew aboard to record: Grace and Chris making us sound good, Danny to provide levity, Natasha to actually recall facts, and Alex to divert us from staying on topic. It's teamwork, people - and our transitions are proof of it.
And it's good that we had everyone around the virtual table as there was quite a lot to get through:
Team felt all kinds of ways about the Amazon-MGM deal. Some of us are more positive about than the rest, but what gists out from the transaction is that for Amazon, the purchase price is modest and the company is famously playing a supposedly long-game. Let's see how James Bond fits into it. Alex receives four points for not bringing up F1 thanks to the Bond-Aston Martin connection.
After launching last June with just $2 million, Collab Capital has closed its debut fund at its target goal: $50 million. The Black-led firm invests exclusively in Black-led startups, and got checks from Apple, PayPal, and Mailchimp to name a few. We talk about this feat, and note a few other Black-led venture capital firms making waves in the industry lately.
We Resolved our transition puns and eventually spoke about the Affirm spin-out, which raised $60 million in a funding round for BNPL for businesses. There's bigger questions there around the accessibility and point of BNPL, and if its really re-inventing the wheel or just repackaging it with simpler UX.
Next up, we got into a can of worms about the future of meetings thanks to Rewatch, which raised a $20 million Series A this week led by Andreessen Horowitz. The startup helps other startups create internal, private Youtubes to archive their meetings and any video-based comms. We could only spend a second on this, so if you want our longer thoughts in the form of text, check out our 3 views on the topic on Extra Crunch! (Discount Code: Equity)
From there we had Interactioand Fireflies.ai, two more startups that are tackling the complexities of meetings in the COVID-19 era, and whatever comes next. Both recently raised new funding, and Alex brought up Kudo to add one more upstart to the mix.
Noom, a weight loss platform, bulked up with $540 million in funding after nearly doubling its revenue from 2019 to 2020. The pandemic has made many people gain weight, but we chew into why Noom's moment might be right now after a decade in the works.
Thanks for hanging out this week, Equity is back on Tuesday with our usual weekly kickoff, thanks to the American holiday on Monday. Chat then, unless you want to follow us on Twitter and get a first-look at all of Chris' meme work.
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.
Equity