It’s not a rug pull if it’s an accident • TechCrunch

Hello and welcome back to Equity, a podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines.

We thought that last week was a lot. It was, but this week was somehow more. More chaotic, rapid-fire change at a number of massive tech companies kept us on our toes. So, while our beloved co-host Natasha was out, we couldn’t do the recording down a set of hands, so we brought Becca aboard with Mary Ann and Alex.

The list of news was so long that we were cutting entire sections up until we hit record, and even still we went over time. If you like longer episodes, this one is for you.

• Deals of the Week: What’s going on with the former Peloton CEO’s new rug startup? And how is Tellus going to offer much better consumer savings rates? And, finally, how wrong can Alex get the Harmonic business model until he figures it out live on the show?
• Mega-layoffs: From there, we had to sit down and discuss the massive Meta layoffs. Our read is that the company is doing right by the folks it is cutting, which is not as much as we can say about some other companies in the world also undergoing massive staffing cuts. Naturally, this brought up Twitter to a degree, the smaller social network being the Main Character in tech news up until, well:
• WTF FTX? Ah, FTX. Last week it was worth $32 billion and its founder was arguably the face of crypto around the world. And now Sequoia has pulled its on-site hagiography, SBF is a pariah and FTX may be going to zero. There’s going to be a mini-series about this, isn’t there?

We are back Monday! Have a lovely weekend!