meta_pixel
Tapesearch Logo
Equity

The AI secondary shares market is giving Beanie Babies economics

Equity

TechCrunch

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

4.2365 Ratings

🗓️ 6 September 2024

⏱️ 30 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

The Equity podcast crew is wrapping up another eventful week, with real estate, AI agents, gambling, and secondary markets — which are, of course, a form of legalized gambling. Mary Ann Azevedo, Becca Szkutak, and Devin Coldewey started off this Friday's episode with the acknowledgment that the X/Twitter ban situation in Brazil is possibly too complicated an issue to even have an opinion on. Let us cook on that for a bit. In the deals of the week, Devin first talked about You.com's $50 million play to take on more difficult AI tasks, things that can't be solved with a quick Google search. The company is hoping to be the go-to for complex stuff that mixes live search, coding, and natural language understanding — and unlike a lot of its competition, some of its customers actually pay for themselves! Becca, as someone who hazards a buck on a game now and then, is intrigued by DubClub, a startup that claims to systematize and legitimize professional betting handicappers. These are folks who claim to be able to beat the odds, but tend to offer their services by more informal methods. Can DubClub make a clean business out of this popular, but legally fraught, line of work? A 9-figure deal is always worth chatting about, and Mary Ann brings up Paylocity's acquisition of Airbase for $325 million — though, as she points out, the real value of the deal is probably considerably higher. It's a lot of money, yes, but compared with earlier valuations... no? Somehow we don't think founder Thejo Kote is shedding too many tears over it. Anyone who's bought a house or tried knows the sting of the realtor's fee. How many percent? Well, due to a recent court ruling overturning an established business practice in real estate, percentage fees may be on their way out — if startup Landian has its way. They want to make flat fees and pay-on-close the standard. Redfin is not amused! But they aren't mad either, or so they'd like us to think. Investing in AI is so popular people are investing in the investors investing in AI — on the secondary market, where positions on Anthropic, OpenAI, and xAI are now commanding a staggering 30% premium. That gives the actual equity holders a lot of leeway, and potentially gives smaller investors a chance to ride the hype train, but it also gives the whole thing the feel of, as Devin put it, "a beanie baby economy." That reference is just for the millennials as a "thank you" for listening.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:16.4

Hello and welcome back to Equity Tech Runches flagship podcast about the business of startups. Today is September 6, 2024.

0:19.1

I'm Marianne Asavado and joining me today is TC Senior Reporter on the Venture Beat.

0:24.2

Becca, how are you?

0:26.2

What's been going on in your world this week?

0:28.6

Oh, you know, dealing with a tunnel or apartment maintenance issue, but that's a weekly occurrence now so just

0:35.2

happy the weather is not as boiling I would say.

0:38.0

Yeah yeah for sure and I know you've had some interesting stories that we're going to dig into later so that's going to be fun.

0:44.4

Hey we're also joined by Tech Crunch senior editor Devon Koldaway. Devon what's been going on with you?

0:51.2

I just made my first prints in my dark room. They turned out all right. I'm very

0:56.2

very glad I put together a little dark room in a spare sort of shed we have out in the sort of yard and And it works. I've got it larger and paper and everything,

1:05.0

and it's just as fun as I remember doing it years and years ago.

1:08.0

So I'm looking forward to getting back into that as a hobby.

1:11.0

Oh, that's really, really cool. I love photography. I'm definitely an

1:16.1

amateur photographer and probably not even as good of an amateur photographer as you are, but I love taking pictures. My family reminds me of it all the time how annoying I am. But yeah, old school like that with a dark room and actual development and prints. I mean, love it. So you'll have to share some of those prints with us sometime.

1:36.0

I will, I will.

1:37.0

Well, we've got a busy show today.

1:39.0

A lot of news, a lot of variety.

1:41.0

Deals of the week, we're looking at you.com,

1:44.7

aerobase and dub club. For our first theme we're going to be looking at some

1:48.4

disruption in the real estate space and lastly we're going to look at venture secondary market

1:54.6

SPVs and how they may be an AI bubble of their own. Okay well but

2:00.6

before we get into the deals of the week there was something that happened over the

...

Transcript will be available on the free plan in -160 days. Upgrade to see the full transcript now.

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from TechCrunch, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of TechCrunch and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.

Copyright © Tapesearch 2025.