Natasha Mascarenhas

Hello and welcome back to Equity, a podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines. To start off the year, we are welcoming Rebecca Szkutak as a returning host who will be joining us while Alex is out on paternity leave. We’re lucky to have her for a […]

Welcome back to Equity, the podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines. As promised, I’m taking over Equity Monday for the beginning of this year as Alex is out on paternity leave. Big hugs to his growing family! We’re starting the year with big post-PTO energy, because […]

To expand modernized healthcare, Juno raises $12 million round co-led by Serena Ventures and NEXT Ventures.

Teachable founder Ankur Nagpal is back to build his next startup: Ocho, a modern take on the solo 401(k) account.

Maven raised $90 million at a $1.35 billion valuation to provide women’s healthcare benefits to the masses. It’s still in growth mode.

Day One Ventures has launched a program aimed explicitly at those impacted by tech layoffs at Stripe, Twitter and more this year.

Clubhouse, Chief and On Deck all give us a snapshot into how community startups are doing right now. Hint: It’s more complicated these days.

Sarah Guo raised $101 million for her new fund to back companies that are building artificial intelligence and what she describes as software 3.0.

NextView Ventures announced a $200 million new venture fund and added on a San Francisco-based partner, Stephanie Palmeri.

Fidu wants to help LatAm private schools better digitize operations. The startup just raised $5 million from Lightspeed, NFX and others.

Duolingo, a popular language learning app, has bought Gunner. Over a year after going public, this marks its first acquisition to date.

This week on the Equity podcast, Natasha Mascarenhas asked: How does the ‘build in public’ mindset impact the way that startups are built?

The founder said that Metafy has most of the team needed to build over those next two years, but will hire in critical roles moving forward.

“If LinkedIn is a network for full-time opportunities, we’re sort of the network for collaboration opportunities.”

Maria Salamanca is leaving Unshackled Ventures for Ulu Ventures

In some ways, Y Combinator’s biannual Demo Day is somewhat predictable: There will be Stanford dropouts, last-minute pivots, and, as always, promises of near-term profitability. Y Combinator stands by the fact that it backs people, not ideas, so its Demo Day technically unveils two things: who the…