Natasha Mascarenhas
Senior Reporter
The Latest from Natasha Mascarenhas
A pivot, in this market‽
Welcome to Startups Weekly, a nuanced take on this week’s startup news and trends by Senior reporter Natasha Mascarenhas. Startups Weekly readers know I love a pivot story, and now I have one of m
The debate happening inside of every VC firm
Clearly, VC firms are landing on different conclusions while debating how to jump into AI during its nondebatable watershed moment.
Venture-backed everything for real-world problems, please
Hello, and welcome back to Equity, a podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines. Mary Ann, Natasha and Alex are closing out another news-fi
The Mint, started by Better Tomorrow Ventures, wants to be the accelerator fintech needs
Better Tomorrow Ventures’ Sheel Mohnot landed some of his biggest wins before he ever started a venture firm. The investor previously worked as a partner at 500, previously known as 500 Startups, wh
How do you know when it’s time to shut down?
Hello, and welcome back to Equity, a podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines. This is our Wednesday show, where we niche down to a single pe
This app, backed by Marissa Mayer and Peter Thiel, is making texts more expressive
“The medium is the message” is the common phrase, but entrepreneur Alexis Traina believes that messages, themselves — text messages to be exact — deserve attention, too. Traina is the CEO and
Mayfield raised just shy of $1B to avoid unicorn hype
Navin Chaddha, the storied investor running Mayfield Fund, doesn’t want to be running a billion-dollar fund like many of his peers. “Everyone wants to be Sequoia or a16z,” he said, in an intervi
This week in tech acronyms: FRB and GPT
Welcome to Startups Weekly, a nuanced take on this week’s startup news and trends by Senior Reporter and Equity co-host Natasha Mascarenhas. To get this in your inbox, subscribe here. It’s been
OpenAI’s ChatGPT is shaking up the edtech markets
Chegg’s dramatic post-earnings valuation flop will not be the last time that we see new AI tooling run headlong into existing enterprises.
Aaron Burr’s tech angle, blue skies and no photos at this time
Hello, and welcome back to Equity, a podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines. This week Mary Ann, Natasha and Alex got right into it &
The outside advantage that your investor may be interested in
Hello, and welcome back to Equity, a podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines. This is our Wednesday show, where we niche down to a duo, thin
As another startup bank partner collapses, tech feels the gap
In the wake of FRB's collapse, founders and investors continue to wonder: Where is the best place to protect important assets?
Ann Lai says she was fired from Bullpen Capital after helping deliver a $145M fund
Ann Lai, a general partner at Bullpen Capital, has been fired from the firm, she says. The investor described the termination experience as “discriminatory and retaliatory” in a LinkedIn post publ
Pitch for the check you want
Welcome to Startups Weekly, a nuanced take on this week’s startup news and trends by Senior Reporter and Equity co-host Natasha Mascarenhas. To get this in your inbox, subscribe here. Tech’s gu
Is First Republic just a victim of SVB’s collapse?
Hello, and welcome back to Equity, a podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines. This week Mary Ann, Natasha and Alex were especially chat
Clubhouse needs to fix things, and today it cut more than half of staff
Clubhouse, a once skyrocketing social audio app built by Paul Davison and Rohan Seth, has laid off more than half of its staff. The startup’s co-founders made the decision in response to customer ha
Chief, a professional network for women leaders, cuts staff amid restructuring effort
Chief, a professional network designed for women in leadership, has cut 14% of staff, or 43 jobs today, saying in an email seen by TechCrunch that the move is a response to the economy and that the ou
Founders change their pitch
Now that it has been over a year since tech’s current period correction first began, founders are getting more innovative in how they approach tweaking their pitch.
Register now to attend today’s filming of TechCrunch Live with ClassDojo and SignalFire
Register for this TechCrunch Live right here. The show broadcasts live today, Wednesday, April 26 at 12 p.m. PDT. Sam Chaudhary takes his time. The founder of ClassDojo, an edtech consumer app that fo
A modern take on what an entrepreneur can, and should, spend their time on
Welcome back to Equity, a podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines.