Solution-Max: Pinterest and Lyft move closer to IPO, and LPs question the Vision Fund’s investment strategy

Friday, February 22, 2019

Pinterest and Lyft move closer to IPO, and LPs question the Vision Fund’s investment strategy

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

What a week. It had looked a bit quiet with just a few big rounds to cover. I was looking forward to a relaxed episode, frankly. But no, as Kate and I were prepping the show notes, the News Gods opened the heavens and dropped a fifty-weight of mana right on our heads.

It was a lot of news.

In quick order, here’s what we tried to run through while keeping it brief:

Pinterest has filed to go public, albeit privately. At long last, Pinterest’s IPO is underway. The social company is gunning for liquidity this year, could go public in June and is not targeting a down IPO. It’s looking like $12 billion and up for Big Pint.
Lyft’s IPO is racing along. Lyft filed to go public back in December, dropping private filings neck-and-neck with Uber. The two ride-hailing companies are both slated to get out this year, but it seems that Lyft is going to lead the way. Even more, it’s tipped to get out at a $20 billion to $25 billion valuation. As grounding, here’s the best math I could come up with concerning those numbers.
DoorDash gets $400 million more. The rumored DoorDash round has landed, though it’s shaped a bit differently than we expected. DoorDash did not raise $500 million at a $6 billion valuation, it instead picked up $100 million less, but at a stronger $7.1 billion valuation. And, of course, the Vision Fund was involved.
More Vision Fund largesse lands on Clutter and Flexport. What’s a week with just one Vision Fund round? A waste, of course. So, here are two more. Clutter picked up $200 million while Flexport raised a much more impressive $1 billion. Clutter has now raised around $300 million while Flexport’s capital sheet is flush now to the tune of $1.3 billion. As we touched on during the show, the two companies are now going to have more money than they have ever had before to use; let’s hope that that goes well.
Speaking of which, what about those valuations? Two quick things to wrap up here. First, discontent among Vision Fund investors. The Vision Fund’s LPs (the sources of its capital) aren’t perfectly happy with some of its choices. That, and what happened to people not taking blood money? We asked that again, probably shouting into the wind while we do so.