A knock against bootstrapping

Sep 17, 2021

Get ready for a rich discussion as the team welcomes a new co-host and dives into hot funding news from diverse markets. The spotlight shines on record-breaking seed rounds in Pakistan and innovative agtech developments in Nigeria. Atlanta emerges as a startup powerhouse with a massive acquisition grabbing attention. The conversation takes a turn to employee equity, addressing the tug-of-war between bootstrapping companies and fair compensation. Plus, layoffs at a major mattress company spark insights into market transitions and the impact of app tracking policies.

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ANECDOTE

Record Seed Round in Pakistan

BridgeLinx secured a $10 million seed round, the largest in Pakistan's history.
This investment highlights growing venture capital interest in non-traditional startup ecosystems.

INSIGHT

Releaf's Palm Oil Strategy

Releaf, a Nigerian agtech company, focuses on palm oil production.
They plan to introduce higher-quality oil after gaining market share with standard purity.

INSIGHT

Stord's Ambitious Goal

Stord, an Atlanta-based logistics firm, raised $90 million at a $1.125 billion valuation.
Founded by young college dropouts, they aim to compete with Amazon Prime's two-day shipping.

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Natasha and Mary Ann and Alex were all aboard this week under the guidance of Chris and Grace, which meant we had the full team. And speaking of teams, Mary Ann is joining the Friday show on a weekly basis now. She's been a friend for years, and a colleague now twice-over for Natasha and Alex and we could not be more excited.

That personal news aside, here's the rundown for today's show!

Funding rounds in the logistics and infra markets: We went physical-world with our funding round roundup this week. BridgeLinx put together the largest Seed round in Pakistan's history, Releaf is doing incredibly interesting agtech work in Nigeria, and Stord's huge round from earlier in the week brought us to Atlanta.
And oh boy has Atlanta had a week. TechCrunch did a deep dive into the city's superlative startup fundraising in recent quarters, and, of course, one of its home-grown startups sold to Intuit for $12 billion just a few days ago. We had a few thoughts on the Intuit-Mailchimp transaction, even if we tried to steer clear of territory that we've already tread. For more about the controversy, Business Insider wrote about how some Mailchimp employees are reacting to the deal.
From there we turned to a layoff story. Casper, the DTC mattress company that is now public, had another round of layoffs that cut three C-suite executives. It brought us into a conversation about how Apple's tracking updates are impacting startups in this category more broadly, and if more layoffs are on the horizon.
And then there were IPOs to discuss. Natasha talked us through the news that Quizlet may go public soon, which meant we had to chat edtech for a minute. Rounding out the Going Public conversation was notes on both Toast and Freshworks. Alex does not apologize for his lame joke, we hasten to add.

Disrupt is next week, so expect some possible changes to the regular Equity show lineup if the news cycle gets dicey. Hugs!

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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