Equity Monday: Market pessimism, new iPhones, and IPOs

This is Equity Monday, our weekly kickoff that tracks the latest private market news, talks about the coming week, digs into some recent funding rounds and mulls over a larger theme or narrative from the private markets. You can follow the show on Twitter here. I also tweet. Vacation was good, and a big thanks to Mary Ann and Natasha -- not to mention Grace and Chris! -- for keeping things flowing while I mostly sat around reading books and playing video games. But enough being maudlin! To the news! Investors are kinda thinking that the run-up in stocks needs to take a breather. And that the reset could land between 5% and 10%, with another 10% of respondents expecting a correction of more than 10%. Yowza. China may break up Ant, keeping the pace of its regulatory deluge going as this week starts. And the Chinese government thinks that its country has too many EV companies. If the market or central planning will wind up taking point on solving the "problem" is not clear. The Apple v. Epic decision is still driving conversation. Here's TechCrunch's coverage, and here's the MG piece I mentioned. Toast and Freshworks have new filings up. Which is good news if you want to dig into new S-1/A reports. Forge is going public via a SPAC. And Babyscripts and Commercetools raised rounds, while Jungle Ventures raised a fund. Got all that? Ok good. Chat you Wednesday! Credits: Equity is produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. Bryce Durbin is our Illustrator. We'd also like to thank the audience development team and Henry Pickavet, who manages TechCrunch audio products. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

• 0:09Speaker 00

  Good morning. It is September 13th, 2021, and you are listening to Equity, TechCrunch's Venture Capital and Startup Focus Podcast, where we work to understand the numbers behind the headlines. This is Alex and I am back after a week off, which means that I am currently trying to recall how to do my job. But all the same, I am pretty stoked to be back in the saddle as it is going to be a very, very interesting week. Why? Well, there's an Apple event tomorrow, which means that the world of tech and startups will grind to a halt for 24 hours as a deluge of news from Cupertino washes over our Twitter feeds and bank statements. Do we need new iPhones? Probably not. Do we want new iPhones? Yes. Yes, we do.

• 0:48Speaker 00

  All right. Kicking off this Monday roundup show, let's start with a quick markets update. The key news this morning impacting the value of companies around the world is that pessimism is rising. A survey from Deutsche Bank indicates that 58% of respondents to a monthly survey from the financial giant expect a 5% to 10% correction by the end of 2021. That's pretty serious. Another 10% expect a correction of more than 10%, CNBC notes. That's even more material. More regulatory news from China is shaking certain companies from the country as well, which we'll talk about in just a minute. Broadly, European shares are higher today. Asian stocks are mixed with a slight bias towards positivity and American shares are set to jump when trading starts in a reversion from their slide last week. They kind of brought us to a bit of a denouement as Friday closed.

• 1:34Speaker 00

  All right. Our key news is not incredibly thematic this morning, so please excuse a lack of structure in the following. We are going to power through the larger items and then turn our sights to some pretty neat early stage news to close out. We have some funding rounds, a new fund, and something that Danny wrote about a bookstore. But on the subject of big events, shares of Alibaba are off this morning on news that China may force its Ant affiliate to break itself into several pieces. Recall that China's government previously scuppered Ant's IPO, a move that kind of kicked off the country's recent crackdown on culture, technology companies, business more broadly, education, and more. The other key event from China that is making news this morning is Morning is its government indicated that there are too many EV companies in the country. EV, of course, stands for electric vehicle and that it anticipates consolidation.

• 2:18Speaker 00

  It's not immediately clear how large a role the Chinese government expects to play in the impending mergers, but people aren't exactly excited by it. Turning to the United States, takes are still rolling in in the wake of the Apple v Epic Games ruling. Former tech cruncher and present day venture capitalist M G Siegler says that Apple won a battle, but still suffered a quote, "major blow because the decision quote, "continues and accelerates the boulder rolling down the hill of real reforms to the App Store." Or kind of summarizing that, in his view, there's more to come. Your perspective on the matter will vary based on your priors and if you work for Apple or not, but changes to how Apple's mobile app ecosystem operates are a huge deal for startups, both large and small, not to mention the mobile gaming market. So this is, uh, you know, one of the more important things we're going to do in the next 10 years.

• 3:05Speaker 00

  Alrighty, time to chat private companies. More specifically, you know what that means. It is time for some startup news. Breaking news this morning is that Toast and Freshworks, two software companies pursuing IPOs in the U.S. have set early price targets for their debuts. Toast expects to go public at the moment at a price range of between $30 and $33 per share, while Freshworks expects a range between $28 and $32 per share. Of course, keep in mind that given different share accounts, you know, share prices that seem similar don't really mean they're worth the same amount of money. We'll get into the numbers later today because we love an S1. Also Forge Global, a startup that has raised more than a quarter billion dollars, according to Crunchbase, is going public via a SPAC. The company facilitates trades in private companies.

• 3:47Speaker 00

  So a private company focused private company is using a public company to go public. And, uh, that's pretty 2021. The deal value is forged at around $2 billion. And once we get our hands on the investor deck, we will have more over on techcrunch.com. And on the early stage side of the coin, obstetrics, virtual care company Baby Scripts raised $12 million in a first round of a series B investment that will enable the company to accelerate the rollout of its virtual maternity care tool platform to providers. Our own Christine Hall reports. Baby Scripts is new to me. And I've never seen a company kind of drop the first of a series B. That's interesting. More about that when I figure it out. Also, Southeast Asia's funding boom is set to continue, according to TechCrunch's Catherine

• 4:30Speaker 00

  Shu, with Jungle Ventures announcing today a $225 million first close to its fourth fund, started raising that in mid-May and it currently is targeting a $350 million full ticket. And our own Ingrid London reports this morning that, quote, "Commerce Tools," a provider of e-commerce APIs that larger retailers can use to build customized payment, checkout, social commerce, marketplace and other services, has closed $140 million in funding, a, quote, "series C," that CEO Dirk Horik confirmed values the company at $1.9 billion. It's a lot of money. Also, less than 10% dilution. Not bad. Finally, Danny writes that Bookshop.org, which has, quote, "become the go-to platform for independent local bookstores to build an online storefront and compete with Amazon's

• 5:13Speaker 00

  juggernaut," is doing well in the pandemic book buying boom. Good news for smaller bookstores around the world. TechCrunch writes that Bookshop now hosts 1,100 stores on its platform and has seen more than 30,000 affiliates who carry book recommendations, which seems to be a pretty impressive list of stats. And if you didn't know that there was a pandemic book buying boom, you haven't seen my credit card statement. Books, not dead. That's good.

• 5:38Speaker 00

  All right, we are nearly out of word count, so a reminder that Apple's event is tomorrow and that TechCrunch Disrupt is just around the corner, which of course does mean that your humble blogging team will be just a little bit busy. Don't forget to follow Equity on Twitter because Chris posts funny edits there and we use the account as the main hub for our live chat, so you can drop in and hang out and help us put together some fun, special episodes. In the meantime, please do stay safe, stay cool. The show is back on Wednesday with an episode featuring one of the most beloved members of the larger TC family, returning to our shores to chat about one of our favorite topics and one of our favorite countries. So we'll see you then Wednesday morning. Bye.