'Super weird' is the best way to describe this startup's pivot

Equity

TechCrunch

Founders, Silicon Valley, Finance, Ipo, Vc, Technology, Business News, Startups, Business, Venture Capital, News, Stock Market, Entrepreneurship, Techcrunch

4.2 • 365 Ratings

🗓️ 20 September 2024

⏱️ 26 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

This week on Equity, the crew rounded up several weird things from the week and at least one cool thing. Kirsten Korosec, Devin Coldewey, and Rebecca Bellan first talked about the least weird thing of the week, how nice it is that Cohere co-founder Nick Frosst has a band that people really like. Then we get weird. First the good weird: a helmet that squeezes your head, but for a really good reason. It prevents hair loss from chemotherapy. Devin covered Luminate’s latest fundraise and news, and everyone was pleased that money was going to a startup that may really be helping people feel better about themselves during a difficult time. The company is hoping to improve at-home care as well. Next, Kirsten explained the weird phenomenon of Flink, the “quick commerce” startup that just recently was rumored to be on the block for about $106 million, instead raising $115 million. Quite a turnaround! But as the team discusses, it may be that investors see the possibility that the “tumultuous time” for this sector is ending and Flink may have a good grip on the German market. Still… Then the weirdness begins in earnest. Rebecca is at the “Principled Business Summit,” aimed at “reclaiming capitalism” from, apparently, itself. She is getting mixed messages from the crowd and the content, which seems to combine enthusiasm for doing the right thing with some fringe tendencies to do… other things. And weirdest of all, autonomous trucking startup TuSimple’s pivot to… AI-generated animation and video games. What?! Though there is some overlap between simulation and animation/gaming, it’s a wild and unexpected change for the company, and a lot of shareholders are not going for it. Apparently the new division is working on another adaptation of “The Three-Body Problem,” so that’s good… but what about the $450 million they were going to spend on trucks? That conflict is playing out before our eyes. Press play, and catch up!

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello and welcome back to Equity, Tech Runch's flagship podcast about the business of startups.
0:16.5	Today is Friday, September 20th, I'm Kirstenkorisek, and joining me today is Tech Runch Senior
0:22.4	editor Devon Coldaway.
0:24.3	Devon, I thought about you this week because I see Amazon is pushing a return to
0:28.8	office, which does affect you as a Seattle light.
0:32.7	How are you feeling about this?
0:34.5	Well, it's not great.
0:35.3	I live like 100 feet away from the Amazon area
0:38.2	of the city, South Lake Union, and it's already,
0:41.0	the traffic there has been bad ever since it was converted from like a
0:44.8	industrial wasteland to Amazon land but after the pandemic there was like this this
0:50.0	blessed period of freedom when you could just drive through there and then they had
0:54.5	you know three days out of the week returned to office and now they're trying to do full I mean
0:58.8	the traffic in Seattle is already everybody says about every city, but like truly, especially in this particular area of Seattle, it's a nightmare every single day, and this is only going to make it worse.
1:08.8	And nobody at Amazon wants it except for Andy Jassy. I don't know why.
1:12.3	And the office managers, I guess guess so they can order more snacks and take home the extra. That's my guess.
1:18.8	Those snacks I mean that is a reason to go into the office and to see people you know in real life yeah people I've heard about this
1:27.6	All right well you're the hermit so I get it just a note Rebecca Belon will be joining us later in the show. We're going to be talking about
1:35.8	too simple and this interesting pivot. Also, she's at this summit that we're going to dig into today and she'll give us her boots on the ground.
1:44.1	It's a weird summit. It's a weird, it sounds weird.
1:46.8	I'm intrigued. The rest of the show we're going to talk about Loominate and Flink. So before we even get into Deals of the Week, did you read this really fun story about the co-hear co-founder, Nick, I think it's Nick Frost.
2:01.1	Yeah, yeah, and his band. Yeah, I think that's pretty cool.
	...

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