Author: Katie Roof

Equity podcast: Stocks swing after earnings for Tesla, Apple, Spotify, Snap It was another big week for earnings on “Equity,” TechCrunch’s podcast about venture capital and the tech business. But this week, it wasn’t all good news. Spotify stumbled after its first quarterly report since joining the stock market. Tesla shares were down after Elon Musk’s unusual earnings call. Snap hit a record low after failing to gain traction with its redesign. Apple, however, surprised Wall Street when iPhone sales didn’t disappoint. We also recapped the successful IPOs for DocuSign and Smartsheet. Our special…

Pandora shares up 8% after surprise earnings beat Pandora’s quarterly earnings report was music to investor’s ears. The digital radio platform reported a better-than-expected first quarter report after the bell on Thursday, sending shares up 8% in after-hours trading. Wall Street liked that the company showed a sizable increase in subscriber revenue, posting $104.7 million, a 63% increase from last year. Pandora has 5.63 million paid listeners, up 19% from the same timeframe in 2017. By contrast, Apple Music says it has 40 million subscribers and Spotify has 75 million,…

Birchbox ownership changes hands after beauty business does recap Beauty-in-a-box brand Birchbox has changed up its ownership structure. The New York-based startup, which has raised almost $90 million in funding from noted venture firms like Accel Partners and First Round Capital, has a new majority owner in hedge fund Viking Global, sources confirm to TechCrunch. First reported by Recode, Birchbox made some changes to its cap table after failing to find a suitable buyer. We are told that the details are still getting finalized, but that Viking is expected to take on a…

DocuSign raises 9 million after pricing IPO DocuSign priced its IPO Thursday evening at $29 per share, netting the company $629 million. It was a better price than the e-signature company had been expecting. The initially proposed price range was $24 to $26 and then that was raised to $26 to $28. The price gives the company a valuation of $4.4 billion on the eve of its public debut, above the $3 billion the company had raised for its last private round. The IPO has been a long-time coming. Founded in…

Amazon up 7% following earnings beat Amazon reported first-quarter earnings after the bell on Thursday, sending shares up 7% in after-hours trading after its significantly better-than-expected report. The company reported earnings per share of $3.27, well above the $1.26 that analysts had been expecting. This worked out to $1.6 billion in net income, up from $724 million last year. Revenue was $51.04 billion, above the $49.78 billion that Wall Street forecast and a 43% increase from the same time last year. $31.6 billion came from products and $19.4 billion came…

Rocketrip raises million to reward cost-saving employees If your company lets you expense the nicest hotel when you travel, why wouldn’t you? But what if you got to split the savings with your employer by selecting a less expensive hotel? A New York-based startup called Rocketrip believes most employees will opt to save companies money if they are incentivized to do so. It’s built an enterprise platform that rewards employees with gift cards if they go under budget on travel and transportation. After five years of signing up business clients like Twitter and…

BigCommerce raises million to build e-commerce sites Austin, Texas-based BigCommerce has completed a big round of funding. The growth stage startup, which builds e-commerce sites for Sony, Toyota and 60,000 other merchants, has raised $64 million to accelerate its business. The investment was led by Goldman Sachs, with participation from General Catalyst, GGV Capital and Tenaya Capital. And it brings BigCommerce’s total raised to over $200 million since it was founded in 2009. BigCommerce has developed a template for its customers to launch websites with manageable shipping and payments tracking. It also…

Pivotal Software closed up 5% following IPO, raised 5 million Stock market investors showed lukewarm enthusiasm for Pivotal Software’s debut on Friday. After pricing the IPO at $15, the company closed the day at $15.73. Although it didn’t “pop” for new investors, pricing at the midpoint of its proposed range allowed Pivotal to raise $555 million. Its public company market cap exceeded $3 billion. The enterprise cloud computing company has been majority-owned by Dell, which came about after its merger with EMC in 2016. It was spun off from Dell, EMC and VMware…

Drift raises million to be an Amazon for businesses When you’re raising venture capital, it helps if you’ve had “exits.” In other words, if your company has been acquired or you’ve taken one public, investors are more inclined to take a bet on anything you do. Boston -based serial entrepreneur David Cancel has sold not just one, but four companies.  And after a few years running product for HubSpot, he’s in the midst of building number five. That startup, Drift, managed to raise $47 million in its first three years. Now it’s announcing…

Utah’s Pluralsight unveils IPO filing Pluralsight, the Utah-based education technology company, has revealed its IPO filing.  Given the timing of the unveiling, the company is likely targeting a May public debut. Its core business is online software development courses, helping people improve their skills in categories like IT, data and security. Businesses small and large pay Pluralsight to help train their employees. It also has offerings for individual subscribers. In the filing, the company acknowledges that it is a competitive landscape, and names Cornerstone OnDemand, Udacity, Udemy, LinkedIn Learning as others…