Hello and welcome back to Startups Weekly, a weekend newsletter that dives into the weeks noteworthy startups and venture capital news.
Before I jump into todays topic, lets catch up a bit.
Last week, I wrote about the differences between raising cash from angels and traditional venture capitalists.
Before that, I summarized DoorDashs acquisition of Caviar.Remember, you can send me tips, suggestions and feedback to [email protected] or on Twitter @KateClarkTweets.
If you dont subscribe to Startups Weekly yet, you can do that here.Its Friday morning and I dont want to dig into another IPO prospectus.
The startups dont care though, theyre in a mad dash to get to the public markets, reporters be damned.This week, three billion-dollar venture-backed unicorns unveiled S-1 filings, the paperwork necessary to complete an IPO.
First came WeWork, the $47 billion co-working giant beloved by SoftBank.
Then came Cloudflare, a business that provides web security and denial-of-service protection for websites.
Then this morning, after we all thought it was time for a breather, teledentistry company SmileDirectClub made its filing public.Theres plenty to read on each of these high-profile IPOs; heres a quick reading list:WeWorkWeWork reveals IPO filingWeWorks S-1 misses these three key pointsMaking sense of WeWorks S-1 (or trying to)CloudflareCloudflare files for initial public offeringCloudflare says cutting off customers like 8chan is an IPO risk factorIn its IPO filing, Cloudflare thanks a third co-founder: Lee HollowaySmileDirectClubSmileDirectClub files to go public amid concerns from dental associationsOn to other thingsMeet the startups in Y Combinators summer batchAs you may know, YC summer demo days are next week.
A whopping 176 companies are expected to present and well be there reporting live, as usual.
In preparation, weve been cherry-picking companies in the latest batch that interest us.
Heres a look at our latest more to come:Equity PodcastThis was a very special week for Equity.
We taped two great episodes, one in which we hung out with Axios Dan Primack in Boston, the other featuring me recording out of a New York City Blue Bottle Coffee shortly after WeWork dropped its S-1 filing.
You can listen to our latest episodes here and here.
Equity drops every Friday at 6:00 am PT, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.Extra CrunchIn our latest installment of EC-1, in which go deep on an up-and-coming startup, TechCrunchs Eric Peckham tells the founding story of Kobalt, the worlds next music tech unicorn.
Heres a passage from Peckhams extensive piece: You may not have heard of Kobalt before, but you probably engage with the music it oversees every day, if not almost every hour.
Combining a technology platform to better track ownership rights and royalties of songs with a new approach to representing musicians in their careers, Kobalt has risen from the ashes of the 2000 dot-com bubble to become a major player in the streaming music era.
It is the leading alternative to incumbent music publishers (who represent songwriters) and is building a new model record label for the growing middle class of musicians around the world who are stars within niche audiences.