Not-so-fake dry powder, AI and the future of DAOs

Hello, and welcome back to Equity, a podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines.

We had the whole gang together this week, which was fitting given the sheer number of news stories that we simply had to get through. So, what did Mary Ann and Natasha and Alex dive into? Here’s the rundown:

• A quick update on TikTok: The CEO of the popular social media service toptechtrends.com/2023/03/22/tiktok-gears-up-for-its-big-day-in-congress/”>went before Congress today. It was a pretty darn hostile meeting. Alex caught a chunk of it live, and also has a few toptechtrends.com/2023/03/23/tiktok-coinbase-sec-regulations/”>thoughts on the matter.
• From there it was time for our ‘deals of the week’ section, which today included toptechtrends.com/2023/03/20/duolingo-for-music-app/”>Duolingo’s new music product, a toptechtrends.com/2023/03/21/seed-club-ventures-emerges-from-stealth-with-25m-fund-focused-on-daos/”>new DAO fund, and the toptechtrends.com/2023/03/21/after-calling-off-spac-fintech-etoro-secures-250m-at-a-3-5b-valuation/”>latest eToro investment.
• Then it was time to talk payroll. We started with toptechtrends.com/2023/03/17/a-500-million-term-sheet-in-12-hours-how-rippling-struck-a-deal-as-svb-was-melting-down/”>the Rippling deal to raise $500 million during the SVB crisis, and then toptechtrends.com/2023/03/22/rippling-gusto-deel-velocity-global-ipo/?tpcc=tcplustwitter”>discussed the larger HR tech space, which is both bigger and valuable than we realized.
• We closed toptechtrends.com/2023/03/21/google-opens-early-access-to-bard-its-ai-chatbot/”>with AI. So, toptechtrends.com/2023/03/21/googles-bard-lags-behind-gpt-4-and-claude-in-head-to-head-comparison/”>so much AI. Everyone toptechtrends.com/2023/03/21/googles-bard-lags-behind-gpt-4-and-claude-in-head-to-head-comparison/”>and their least favored parental unit is building a large language model, and TechCrunch is toptechtrends.com/2023/03/22/the-top-10-ai-mobile-apps-have-already-pulled-in-over-14-million-this-year/”>busy covering in all their glory, or lack thereof.

Whew! What a week. The show is back Monday morning. We’ll see you there.

For episode transcripts and more, head to Equity’s Simplecast website. 

toptechtrends.com/2023/03/24/not-so-fake-dry-powder-ai-and-the-future-of-daos/”>Not-so-fake dry powder, AI and the future of DAOs by toptechtrends.com/author/natasha-mascarenhas/”>Natasha Mascarenhas originally published on toptechtrends.com/”>TechCrunch