Why calendar invites are worth $3B – TechCrunch

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

Natasha and Danny and Alex and Grace hopped online for our weekly show, sans Gamestop news (which you can find here) to talk about all the other busy news happening in startup world right now.

Here’s a taste of what we got into:

•  Qualtrics IPO pricing, and the future of major acquisition pricing schemes. This company’s path to the public markets has been a long-time coming, so we had plenty to say.
•  How Atlanta’s Calendly turned a scheduling nightmare into a $3 billion company. This story was not only neat, but also operated as a sort of palate cleanser for the team.
•  Rhino‘s interesting insurtech play, and how it is pre-IPO pretty damn early. Revenue questions, the power of insurtech, and public markets impacting startups? This story had it all!
•  Alex talks about how Fast is raising fast money ($102 million to be exact). Even more, the Fast story fits into a broader narrative of online checkout startups raising a zillion dollars in recent weeks.
•  A boom in food delivery and restaurant startups, and why Danny is bearish on a plastic-free play. Natasha is in favor. Alex gets a company’s model mixed up with Spoon Rocket.
•  Natasha explains how Clubhouse isn’t the first company to raise millions off of millions of users with no known near-term monetization plan. Her piece on ClassDojo illustrates how a quiet edtech giant finally turned its 51 million users into a profitable base. There’s also a new edtech investor survey for you to check out (Discount code: EQUITY).
• TCV’s record fund, and a female-focused angel fund coming out of Africa.

As always, it was a ton to get through because there is just so much going on. More Monday morning, until then stay cool!