Equity Live: This is what leadership smells like

Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.

This week we did something fun and different and good: a live show! A good number of people came, and asked questions, and altogether, it was a blast.

Danny, Natasha, and Alex had a lovely time with the regular work, while Grace and Chris and Kevin made the whole operation function. We'll likely post a bonus episode of the Q&A on Saturday if people are interested in Equity After Hours.

That aside, what did we talk about in a longer-than-usual episode? Here's the rundown:

Buzzfeed is going public! Alex wrote about the news here, but the gist is that the media company is merging with a SPAC, buying Complex, and raising some capital at the same time. We have thoughts about it. Maybe neobanks will break even? We dug into some fintech news through the perspective of some recent news from the neobank market. MAJORITY raised MONEY for migrants to the United States, while MFast, a Vietnamese financial services app, got some funding of its own amid the neobank boom. Alex interviewed a leading venture capitalist. So, we talked about that. What's going on with the early-stage venture capital market? That's something we tried to parse. The gist is that the rapidly-evolving world of investing in startups is in the midst of a few trends that are worth understanding. Even if they are slightly contradictory. A16z tripled down on crypto with a new $2.2 billion fund, giving it a total of $18.8 billion in assets under management. Edtech leaders rallied around a memo of their own this past week. And then to close, we raced through some of our recent reporting on a new fund that will invest in American military institute graduates, Figma's huge new round of capital, and WaitWhat?It's always fun to play around with our show, and thank you to everyone who came out and supported us in our first-ever, but probably not last-ever, virtual live show. We are back to regular, however, starting Monday.

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.