TechCrunch podcasts roundup: Bill Gates on climate, the current health of fintech, and Latashá on what web3 offers artists

TechCrunch is more than just a site with words. We’re also building a growing stable of podcasts focused on the most critical topics relating to the startup and venture capital worlds. Embedded below are the latest from the TechCrunch Podcast from Darrell who talks to TC writers about their own stories of the week; Chain Reaction, our crypto-focused podcast hosted by Lucas and Anita; Found, a long-form bit of work that goes deep on the real saga of company formation from Jordan and Darrell; and Equity, our long-running, Webby-award-winning podcast focused on venture capital and the latest startup news, hosted by Natasha, Mary Ann and Alex. Be sure to subscribe where you listen to podcasts!

The TechCrunch Podcast

This week on the TechCrunch Podcast our host, Managing Editor Darrell Etherington talks with Bill Gates (yes, that Bill Gates) about whether we can still avoid climate disaster, the importance of crypto and Elon Musk’s time management skills. He also talks with TC writer Ingrid Owen about Spotify’s acquisition of the Voice AI startup Sonatic. And as always, you’ll get a rundown of the week’s top news on TechCrunch.

Articles from the episode:

Other news from the week:

Chain Reaction

Welcome back, this week Anita and Lucas discuss the $258 billion Dogecoin lawsuit facing Elon Musk, how crypto collectible lovers are partying through the pain at the NFT NYC event and how some DAOs are showing the dark side of digital democracy.

In their interview this week, Lucas and Anita got the chance to talk with musician and visual artist Latashá. In addition to creating crypto art, Latashá is the head of Community at NFT startup Zora, which recently raised a big round of funding. We talked with her about how the downturn will impact crypto creators and what web3 really has to offer artists.

Subscribe to the Chain Reaction newsletter to dive deeper: https://techcrunch.com/newsletters

Helpful links:

Found

Anja Health CEO and founder, Kathryn Cross, knows all too well that banking cord blood stem cells can be life-saving. Anja Health’s mission is to make storing stem cells accessible to everyone — regardless of race, socioeconomic status or income and she’s getting her message out in an unlikely space. The 23-year-old TikTok influencer turned founder is a staunch believer in the power of marketing on social media. In this episode, she walks Darrell and Jordan through how the different social channels can be helpful to founders in different industries and why she thinks every company will have to be its own influencer.

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TechCrunch Live

According to Mike Ghaffary, GP at Canvas Ventures, NuBrakes founder Walker Drewett is building a high-growth business powered by a marketplace model, which is why Ghaffary led the company’s Series A. The product is simple: On-demand vehicle brake repair services. Hear how Drewett raised capital and built NuBrakes on the learnings from his previous startup, NuWash (it’s on-demand car washes, of course). TechCrunch transportation editor Kirsten Korosec hosts.

TechCrunch Live records weekly on Wednesdays at 12:00 p.m. PDT.

Equity

Alex and Grace are back to cover the biggest, boldest and baddest technology news. This is our Monday show, coming to you this week on a Tuesday was a holiday for many American workers, in honor of Juneteenth. So, we’re doing our weekly kickoff one day later than usual. Here’s what we got into:

Stocks are higher globally, while the crypto market is somewhat quiet after a tumultuous few weeks.
We’re coming up on the end of Q2 2022, which means that we’re at once heading into earnings season (woo!) and another venture capital data set to parse. Get excited.
Musk has been busy around the world, helping keep Ukraine online, seeing his cars come under some censure in China and still talking his way through buying Twitter.
In startup land: LeadSquared raised a huge round and is now a unicorn. Platform.sh raised a huge round, but we aren’t sure what it is worth. And Stashfin also put a huge amount of capital and debt onto its own books.
The fintech VC market is still alive, despite warning bells from, well, everywhere. Magic Eden just raised for an NFT marketplace, we note. (Though prices are, yes, coming down.)

This is our Wednesday show, where we niche down to a single topic, think about a question and unpack the rest. This week, Natasha and Alex asked: After a multi-year fundraising boom, what is the current health of the fintech startup market?

The episode was inspired by a rigamarole of news, including but not limited to Klarna’s potential valuation haircut, Apple’s BNPL announcement, Brex’s partial market retreat and Wealthsimple’s staffing cuts.

The other reason that we’re chatting fintech is that after attracting a simply huge chunk of venture capital in the last few years has gone into the sector. And that means that so very many startups are in play when we discuss the fintech niche. This is not just a few unicorns, and decacorns, but a flat-out fleet of companies that are now stuck waiting for the venture capital market to reignite.

With Affirm and Klarna showing just how far prices for fintech revenues have fallen, what’s ahead? How worried should founders be? We dug into all that and more!

Natasha and Alex were on the mics for our Friday show, kicking back and riffing through the biggest technology stories of the week. Our dear Mary Ann was off this week, but will be back in short order.

What did we get into? A bevy of blistering bromides, naturally:

Accel has a new $4 billion fund, focused on the late stage, which is at once a pile of duckets and fascinating timing for such a large capital vehicle.
FalconX doubled its valuation in a new round, which was also a huge pile of money at an odd moment in time.
Oh, and Suze Orman was also on the show today, in spirit and story.
From there we noodled on the big changes at Brex, the latest in executive turnover and why the metaverse actually had some good news this week?

All in all it was a good time and we are back Monday!

Equity drops every Monday at 7 a.m. PDT and Wednesday and Friday at 6 a.m. PDT, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts