Pod Insights Equity Podcast Equity Monday: Women's employment drops, as Delta's drama continues About this episode This is Equity Monday, our weekly kickoff to catch up on weekend news and prep for the days ahead. We're here on Tuesday this week since us folks in the United States had off for labor day. You can follow the show on Twitter here, and while you're at it, throw me a follow too.
Jobs report: Over the weekend, the US government posted the Jobs Report. It wasn't ideal, with a sharp drop in percentage of women rejoining the workforce. I give you the startup angle, and talk about a somewhat poetic unicorn.
Instacart, meet Instagram: WSJ reports that new Instacart CEO Fidji Simo is expanding the grocery delivery store's consumer-product advertising business, with a goal of hitting $1 billion in revenue next year. I riff on why this makes sense and what challenges the business make come up against.
Behemoths, beware: The largest Series A within Africa just closed, and it's not even close. Wave is taking on telecom-led mobile money, now with four-big name backers. It's not the only startup trying to take on a behemoth. I also gave a shout out to Glass, which wants to take on Instagram as a new go-to destination for photographers to share their content.
And that's a wrap. I have a fun edtech piece coming out on Extra Crunch this week, so keep your eyes out for it.
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.
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Transcript 0:09 Speaker 00 Hey, hey. It is September 7th, 2021, and you are listening to Equity, TechCrunch's venture capital and startup-focused podcast where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines. This is Natasha, and I hope you had a lovely, long weekend, if you had one, and a wonderful start for those who celebrate to Rosh Hashanah. That said, there's a lot of work and news to catch up on because news doesn't wait for anyone, so let's jump right into it. To start, global stock markets are mixed. Asia markets are on the rise, Europe markets are slightly down, and the US stocks were somewhat flat. Value of cryptocurrencies kind of looks the same. We saw some tokens and cryptocurrencies off
0:50 Speaker 00 a few points this morning, but not enough to start an entire Twitter debate. The mixed feelings could be due to a lot of things. First, traders are back from vacation, and analysts always have a ton of thoughts. Some people think it's inflation. Some said it's an upcoming European Central Bank meeting. But what I want to focus on is a less-than-ideal job support. Ready? Let's go. I'll start with the good news. We learned that in August, overall unemployment declined to 5.2% from July's overall employment rate of 5.4%. It's 0.2%, but I will take it because that represents a lot of people that now have paychecks coming in to their mailbox. That's kind of where the good news stops, though. This report,
1:34 Speaker 00 we learned that the US economy added only 235,000 jobs in August, which was a sharp drop from analyst expectations, but even looking at July's total, which was 943,000 jobs. To make matters worse, Fortune actually digged a little deeper and looked at the National Women's Law Center. They say that women only accounted for 11.9% of those jobs in August. Again, if we look at July, women were 68.8% of the new jobs. It's a reminder that we aren't back to pre-pandemic-level employment and that women are disproportionately Leaving and now reentering the workforce at alarming rates. In case you're wondering, I did dig out the startup angle.
2:17 Speaker 00 To me, this latest jobs report is a reminder that we aren't entirely back to normal, even if new funding grounds and fresh venture capital boosts are all around us. This jobs report gives us at least one sign that startups are being impacted by this new variant. If I had to guess, I would say startups, especially those in high-touch industries, are preparing new game plans in case a pullback is in the cards. Beyond that, expect return to office plans continue to get pushed back. And maybe the local VC beginning to remind their founders that it's important to conserve cash, not just spend it. As for the drop in women reentering the workforce, I will point to Maven, a recent startup-turned-unicorn that I covered in August, actually, the same month that these numbers are being pulled from.
3:03 Speaker 00 Maven is a startup that began in 2014 to offer support services to women through their employers, ranging from preconception to post-pregnancy to family care. These numbers show just how important and how well-aged that focus really has been. And this drop in percentage of women reentering the workforce shows how much this area is a venture-backable area, and the opportunity is massive when it comes to how employers can really support women in the workforce.
3:34 Speaker 00 Speaking of women in the workforce, I want to move us on to our next section, which gives us a look at what Instacart's new CEO, Fidji Simo, formerly worked at a little startup called Facebook, is on about. So I'd like to call this section "Instacart Meet Instagram." Simo announced through The Wall Street Journal that Instacart's ad business is getting a little bit of a rethinking. So per The Wall Street Journal, Instacart is no longer going to be only focusing on search result placement when it comes to advertising brands. It's a fancy way of saying essentially that right now, most brands can up their placement within Instacart's search engine by giving them money. Instacart wants to go one step deeper and experiment with video, email marketing, and other graphics, per the Journal.
4:20 Speaker 00 Instagram's ad business generated about 300 million in revenue last year, and it's seeking to increase it to 1 billion by next year. To me, I mean, we know this works, right? D to C brands like House, OmSOM, and Fly by Jing are fantastic at marketing directly to consumers, and it lends itself really nicely to virality, TikTok-friendly products, and just fresh, committed content. I don't know what it looks like if Instacart gets flooded with new manufacturers looking to get consumer interest. It's different than scaling in OmSOM, for example, because it has one product and it isn't at risk of being too noisy to consumers. Instacart, meanwhile, has 55,000 brick-and-mortar stores across more than 5,500 cities in the US and Canada.
5:02 Speaker 00 So while Instacart is disrupting its own advertisement business, it's going to have a lot of work to do. One last note that I'll add is that I was checking out its website, and it actually is introducing a new advertising initiative, committing up to 1 million to amplify Black-owned CPG brands within the Instacart marketplace, which I think is fantastic. All this to say, I think this is Instacart and Fiji's biggest move yet since she joined a few months ago. And I'm hoping it will help them prove that grocery delivery does have a chance of becoming a sustained and profitable, keyword profitable, business.
5:38 Speaker 00 Moving along, I have two startups to unpack with you. Let's go big and then we'll go small. First, Sequoia Heritage, Stripe, and a ton of others just poured money into the largest Series A to ever happen in Africa. And per Tej, our reporter, it's not even close. African fintech Wave announced today that it has raised 200 million at a 1.7 billion valuation. Put differently, Wave just became a unicorn after raising only two rounds. Getting into what Wave does, it doesn't surprise me to see an African fintech becoming a unicorn and raising the largest Series A. Fintech is one of the continent's most paid attention to and focused sectors. Tej reports that Wave is taking on telecom-led mobile money. Here's how he describes it.
6:22 Speaker 00 "The DocCar-based platform is akin to PayPal, with mobile money accounts not bank accounts, and runs an agent network that uses their cash on On hand to service Wave users. According to the company, users can make free deposits and withdrawals and charge a 1% fee whenever they spend money. Wave technology is also different because other telecom mobile money focuses on USSD, while Wave is solely app-based. My takeaway here is that mobile money is still a massive problem, but opportunity in Africa. And maybe an app-based solution is the answer we've been waiting for. It's also really fun to see a company go up something like telecom-led money, because I feel like that's something you look to integrate with instead of compete with.
7:04 Speaker 00 And so whenever a startup surprises me with ambition, I know they're doing something right. Which is actually a perfect segue into the second startup I'm talking about, which wants to take on Instagram casually. Glass, as TC Amanda Silberling pointed out, is kind of a response to photographers' needs today. Instagram recently announced that it's no longer just a square photo-sharing app. It's integrated shopping, it's doing a lot of stuff with e-commerce, which means that photographers don't actually know where to go, and Glass may be the response. Here's what TC's Amanda Silberling had to say. "When you follow photographers in Glass, their photos will appear on a feed of images designed to minimize distractions. The photos take up the entire screen. You can only see who posted them if you drag to the right. And when you click on an image, you can see the caption and other information
7:49 Speaker 00 about how the photograph was shot." Now, I want to pay attention mostly to the last bit, because that's kind of how Glass is setting itself apart from Instagram and VSCO. It's offering XIF data, which, as she describes in the story, is kind of like candy for photography nerds. XIF data shows what camera a photographer used, as well as the photo's ISO, aperture, shutter speed, and focal length. As someone who got a B+ in photography in college, I do know how important this data is and how hard it is to pull off. And so imagine finding a photographer you really respect and being able to look behind the photo in a way. I love that perspective, and I'm always excited to see a startup going up against an incumbent with a fresh take and an opinion how to beat it, or should I say shatter it? Sorry, I had to.
8:33 Speaker 00 The waitlist is open for Glass, and it's a really exciting, yet in the beginning-stage sort of startup.
8:41 Speaker 00 Okay, that is the show. Thank you so much for starting your week with me. It is always a pleasure. You can follow me on Twitter at Nmask underscore. I also write a weekly newsletter called Startups Weekly, where I include a lot of my opinions on the past week's news. I also want to remind you guys to follow us on Twitter at EquityPod. I'm obviously biased, but if you have been procrastinating following us on Twitter, this might be the time because we've been doing a lot more experimentation on Twitter Spaces and I would love to see and shout you out there. Think breaking news with your favorite co-hosts and always a special guest or Ted. That's all. Have a lovely Monday, everyone. You're the best.
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