Equity

TechCrunch's founder-focused podcast, Build Mode, is back. This season we’re breaking down what it really takes to build a world-class founding team starting with your cap table, equity structures, and startup compensation strategy. 

We kick off with Yuri Sagalov, managing director at General Catalyst and former founder, YC partner, and seed investor at Wayfinder Ventures. Yuri has worked with hundreds of pre-seed and seed-stage startups, and he shares practical advice on how early-stage founders should think about startup equity, cap table design, investor selection, and compensation structures from day one. 

He breaks down: 


The 3 types of investors (and which one to avoid) 


Why your cap table is part of your team 


The 20–25% seed dilution rule 


How to split equity with a co-founder 


How to talk to early employees about risk and compensation 

No matter where you are in your startup journey, this episode will help you get the incentive structure right from the beginning.  

Chapters: 

00:00 - Why your first hires deserve more equity 00:31 - Meet Yuri Sagalov (YC → General Catalyst) 02:12 - Your cap table is part of your team 02:50 - The 3 types of investors (avoid this one) 05:02 - How to split equity with a co-founder 07:55 - How much equity to give early employees 09:37 - How to talk compensation and risk 12:31 - Red flags in formation docs and vesting 18:27 - Advisors for equity? Usually a mistake 20:05 - The 20–25% seed dilution rule 26:03 - The shift to 10-year stock options 34:11 - Don’t scale before product-market fit 39:23 - Final advice: Just start and choose your co-founder carefully 

New episodes of Build Mode drop every Thursday. Hosted by Isabelle Johannessen. Produced and edited by Maggie Nye. Audience development led by Morgan Little. Special thanks to the Foundry and Cheddar video teams. 
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The creator economy is evolving fast, and ad revenue alone isn't cutting it anymore. YouTubers are launching product lines, acquiring startups, and building actual business empires. Even MrBeast's company bought fintech startup Step, and his chocolate business is outearning his media arm. This isn't just one creator's strategy. It's the new playbook. 

 

On this episode of TechCrunch's Equity podcast, hosts Kirsten Korosec, Anthony Ha, and Rebecca Bellan unpack how creators are diversifying beyond ads, what happens when influence becomes infrastructure, and whether this model can scale beyond the top 1%. 

 

Listen to the full episode to hear about: 


How Date Drop raised “a few million” on the idea that one curated match per week can fix college dating burnout 


Ex-Tesla VP Drew Baglino's $140M raise for solid-state transformers powering AI data centers 


The handshake that didn't happen: Sam Altman and Dario Amodei's moment at India's AI summit 


India's $200B AI infrastructure push and why its first AI IPO flopped 


ByteDance's Seadance 2.0 and whether AI video tools democratize creativity or just create an endless flood of content 

Subscribe to Equity on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod. 
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Startup founders are being pushed to move faster than ever, using AI while facing tighter funding, rising infrastructure costs, and more pressure to show real traction early. Cloud credits, access to GPUs, and foundation models have made it easier to get started, but those early infrastructure choices can have unforeseen consequences once startups move beyond free credits and into real cloud bills. 

 

On this episode of TechCrunch's Equity podcast, Rebecca Bellan caught up with Darren Mowry, Google Cloud’s vice president of global startups who is right at the center of those tradeoffs. Together, they discuss what Mowry’s seeing across the startup ecosystem, how Google Cloud is competing for AI startups, and what founders should be thinking about as they scale. 

 

Listen to the full episode to hear about: 


How Google positions against AWS and Microsoft in the AI startup race. 


TPUs vs GPUs: How much does hardware choice matter for early-stage companies? 


Which AI verticals are seeing real growth, and what’s standing out in biotech, climate tech, developer tools, and world models. 


What red flags will signal that a startup isn’t going to make it.  

Subscribe to Equity on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod. 
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AI companies have been hemorrhaging talent the past few weeks. Half of xAI’s founding team has left the company — some on their own, others through “restructuring” — while OpenAI is facing its own shakeups, from the disbanding of its mission alignment team to the firing of a policy exec who opposed its “adult mode” feature. 

On this episode of TechCrunch’s Equity podcast, hosts Kirsten Korosec, Anthony Ha, and Sean O'Kane dig into the week's biggest deals and departures, from billion-dollar bets on fusion and robotics to the tech exodus reshaping AI companies. 

Listen to the full episode to hear about: 


Why humanoid robot startups are raising nearly $1 billion and partnering with Google DeepMind 


Whether fusion power startup Inertia Enterprises can actually deliver on its 2030 timeline, and why investors keep betting millions 


What the Epstein files reveal about Silicon Valley dealmaking, particularly during the EV boom 


Why AI Super Bowl ads might not be landing outside Silicon Valley 

Chapters

00:00 Intro

02:46 AI Super Bowl ads ⁠aren’t quite landing⁠ outside of Silicon Valley 

04:31 Apptronik raises $935M for humanoid robotics

09:05 Will automakers partner with humanoid robotics startups?

13:05 Inertia Enterprises raises $450M for fusion energy

18:44 What the Epstein files reveal about ⁠Silicon Valley dealmaking⁠

30:56 The exodus at xAI and OpenAI, and what it means for the AI race

37:22 Outro

Subscribe to Equity on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod.
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Enterprise AI is shifting fast from chatbots that answer questions to systems that actually do the work across an organization. But who will own the AI layer that powers all of it? 

 Glean, which started as an enterprise search product, has evolved into what it calls an “AI work assistant,” aiming to sit underneath other AI experiences, connecting to internal systems, managing permissions, and delivering intelligence wherever employees work.

On this episode of TechCrunch's Equity podcast, Rebecca Bellan sits down with Glean’s CEO and founder Arvind Jain at Web Summit Qatar to break down how enterprises are thinking about AI architecture, what's driving consolidation, and what's real versus hype in the agent space. 

Listen to the full episode to hear about: 


The fight between bundled AI from tech titans like Microsoft, Google and platform layers like Glean and its competitors. 


How AI adoption is reshaping leadership and organizational design. 


Why permissions and governance are harder problems than most companies realize. 

Subscribe to Equity on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod. 
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