Solution-Max: SoftBank pays big, SurveyMonkey goes public and JUUL’s next step

Friday, September 28, 2018

SoftBank pays big, SurveyMonkey goes public and JUUL’s next step

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

This week on Equity, the gang was back together. We had the ever-excellent Connie Loizos on hand, along with TechCrunch’s Danny Crichton, and myself, on loan from Crunchbase News. Even better we had Iris Choi on the show. When she’s not hanging out with us for the pod, she’s a partner at Floodgate.

This week was another that offered a panoply of topics that we couldn’t get to in detail. Stripe’s huge new round, and attendant valuation bump, for example. Oh, and new Lyft financials too!

But we picked out the best, divvied them up, and here’s what we chose:

The SoftBank Payroll: SoftBank was super active in the past week, dropping capital into a number of companies. OYO was up first, a budget hotel startup based out of India. SoftBank has been a recurring investor in the firm, but most recently helped drop a billion dollars more into the company.
Also on the SoftBank front was a brace of real estate companies: Opendoor and Compass. Both raised $400 million this week, and SoftBank is backing each with checks. If the move was oddly internally competitive or not, is up for debate. Still, more huge checks from the Vision Fund.
SurveyMonkey’s IPO: After a long road to the public markets, the venerable SurveyMonkey managed to raise its IPO price above-range, and sold more shares than planned as well. Its stock then took off.
Bitmain’s IPO numbers, redux: After posting an incredible Q1, Bitmain had a pretty lacking Q2. Will this scuttle an IPO that was supposed to be a hot ticket? Can one of the most famous crypto-focused companies go public at all?