Alex Wilhelm
TechCrunch
San Francisco, CA, United States
Contact Alex
Discover and connect with journalists and influencers around the world, save time on email research, monitor the news, and more.
| Recent: |
|
| Past: |
|
Recent articles by Alex:
The Peloton effect –
During the most recent quarter, only a few earnings reports stood out from the rest. Zoom’s set of results were one of them, with the video-communications company showing enormous acceleration as the world replaced in-person contact with remote chat. Another was Peloton’s earnings from the fourth quarter of its fiscal 2020, which it reported September […] → Read More
Equity Monday: The TikTok mess, and a grip of neat European VC activity –
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines. This is Equity Monday, our weekly kickoff that tracks the latest big news, chats about the coming week, digs into some recent funding rounds and mulls over a larger theme or narrative from the private markets. You can […] → Read More
Was Snowflake’s IPO mispriced or just misunderstood? –
Welcome back to The TechCrunch Exchange, a weekly startups-and-markets newsletter. It’s broadly based on the daily column that appears on Extra Crunch, but free, and made for your weekend reading. Ready? Let’s talk money, startups and spicy IPO rumors. Was Snowflake’s IPO mispriced or just misunderstood? With an ocean of neat stuff to get through […] → Read More
Unity Software has strong opening, gaining 31% after pricing above its raised range –
Whoever said you can’t make money playing video games clearly hasn’t taken a look at Unity Software’s stock price. On its first official day of trading, the company rose more than 31%, opening at $75 per share before closing the day at $68.35. Unity’s share price gains came after last night’s pricing of the company’s […] → Read More
Chime adds $485M at a $14.5B valuation, claims EBITDA profitability –
In the midst of IPO week we have to add another name to our future debuts’ list, namely Chime, which announced a huge new round of capital today. The $485 million Series F values the consumer fintech giant at $14.5 billion, a huge figure given that Chime was most recently worth $5.8 billion after raising […] → Read More
3 investors discuss the state of SaaS investing in 2020 –
Yesterday during Disrupt 2020 I sat down with three investors who know the SaaS startup market very well, hoping to get my head around how hot things are today. Coming on the heels of the epic Snowflake IPO (more to come on that in this weekend’s newsletter), it was a great time for a chat. […] → Read More
Schools are closing their doors, but OpenDoor isn’t –
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast (now on Twitter!), where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines. This week Natasha Mascarenhas, Danny Crichton and myself hosted a live taping at Disrupt for a digital reception. It was good fun, though of course we’re looking forward to bringing the live show back to the conference […] → Read More
Which 5 cloud startup categories are the hottest? –
Hello from the midst of Disrupt 2020: after this short piece for you I am wrapping my prep for a panel with investors from Bessemer, a16z, and Canaan about the future of SaaS. Luckily, The Exchange this morning is on a very similar topic. The Exchange explores startups, markets and money. Read it every morning on […] → Read More
Join Accel’s Andrew Braccia and Sonali De Rycker for a live Q&A on September 22 at 2 pm EDT/11 am PDT –
In the midst of Disrupt 2020, we’re busy keeping tabs on all the panels, chats, demos and battling startups, but we’re also prepping for what comes next. Next Tuesday, the Extra Crunch Live series of Q&As with founders and investors resumes, this time with guests Andrew Braccia and Sonali De Rycker from Accel. If you […] → Read More
Go public now while software valuations make no sense, Part II –
On August 5th, TechCrunch wrote that startups should “go public while software valuations make no sense.” What came next was a happy coincidence. Just a few weeks after that post, Unity, JFrog, Asana, Snowflake and Sumo Logic all filed to go public. Today we’re seeing some data from those debuts, most notably the incredibly strong […] → Read More
Unity raises IPO price range after JFrog, Snowflake target steep debut valuations –
On the heels of two IPOs pricing above raised ranges, Unity boosted the value of its own impending debut this morning. The well-known unicorn is currently set to begin trading this Friday, pricing after the bell Thursday. If that happens, the gaming platform company expects to be worth between $44 and $48 per share, up […] → Read More
JFrog and Snowflake’s aggressive IPO pricing point to strong demand for cloud shares –
After raising their IPO price ranges, both JFrog and Snowflake priced above their refreshed intervals last night. At their final IPO prices, the two debuts are aggressively valued, showing continued optimism amongst public investors that cloud shares are an attractive bet, even if their growth is financed through a history of steep losses, as in […] → Read More
What’s ahead in IPO land for JFrog, Snowflake, Sumo Logic and Unity –
Welcome to Tuesday of TechCrunch Disrupt week. In a few hours, I’m hosting a panel about how startups can reach $100 million in annual recurring revenue (ARR) with the CEOs of Egnyte, GitLab and the President of Kaltura. It’s going to be a jam. Bring your questions! Right now, however, let’s talk about some bigger companies, […] → Read More
Opendoor to go public by way of Chamath Palihapitiya SPAC –
Today, Social Capital Hedosophia II, the blank-check company associated with investor Chamath Palihapitiya, announced that it will merge with Opendoor, taking the private real estate startup public in the process. The transaction comes during a wave of market interest in special purpose acquisition companies, or SPACs, often called blank-check companies. They exist as publicly traded […] → Read More
Snowflake and JFrog raise IPO ranges as tech markets stay hot –
What market selloff? Despite last week’s market declines, two big IPOs are rolling ahead this week, with Snowflake and JFrog both boosting their IPO price ranges this morning. The jump in expected pricing means each IPO will likely raise more capital, valuing the firms more richly than their initial ranges made clear. Snowflake’s first IPO […] → Read More
As low-code startups continue to attract VC interest, what’s driving customer demand? –
Investor interest in no-code, low-code apps and services advanced another step this morning with Airtable raising an outsized round. The $185 million investment into the popular database-and-spreadsheet service comes as it adds “new low-code and automation features,” per our own reporting. The round comes after we’ve seen several VCs describe no- and low-code startups as […] → Read More
Equity Monday: The TikTok mess, two funding rounds, and NVIDIA will buy ARM –
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines. This is Equity Monday, our weekly kickoff that tracks the latest big news, chats about the coming week, digs into some recent funding rounds and mulls over a larger theme or narrative from the private markets. You can […] → Read More
Is the vaunted cloud acceleration falling flat? –
Welcome back to The TechCrunch Exchange, a weekly startups-and-markets newsletter. This week we’re taking a look at the bad side of the cloud software market. Tech and software stocks are struggling. → Read More
China may kill TikTok’s U.S. operations rather than see them sold –
The controversial push to force Chinese tech unicorn ByteDance to divest part or all of its smash-hit TikTok social media service to a US-based company could be in doubt after a report today indicated that China’s government may oppose the transaction. According to reporting by Reuters, the Chinese government may prefer TikTok to simply shutter […] → Read More
VCs pour funding into edtech startups as COVID-19 shakes up the market –
A few weeks back, The Exchange looked into the pace of edtech exits, noting that over time, the sector has delivered rising exit volume. All startup verticals want to demonstrate a history of liquidity, so you might imagine that even before the COVID-19 pandemic, edtech fundraising was rising due to its improving exit profile. The […] → Read More