Natasha Mascarenhas

Senior Reporter, TechCrunch

Natasha Mascarenhas was a senior reporter at TechCrunch covering early stage startups and venture capital trends.

Natasha Mascarenhas

Welcome to Startups Weekly, a nuanced take on this week’s startup news and trends by Senior reporter Natasha Mascarenhas.  Startups Weekly readers know I love a pivot story, and now…

A pivot, in this market‽

Clearly, VC firms are landing on different conclusions while debating how to jump into AI during its nondebatable watershed moment.

The debate happening inside of every VC firm

Hello, and welcome back to Equity, a podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines. Mary Ann, Natasha and Alex are…

Venture-backed everything for real-world problems, please

Better Tomorrow Ventures’ Sheel Mohnot landed some of his biggest wins before he ever started a venture firm. The investor previously worked as a partner at 500, previously known as…

The Mint, started by Better Tomorrow Ventures, wants to be the accelerator fintech needs

How do you know when it’s time to shut down?

Hello, and welcome back to Equity, a podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines. This is our Wednesday show, where we niche down to a single person, think about their work and unpack the rest. This week, Natasha spoke to Kristen Anderson, the co-founder and CEO…

How do you know when it’s time to shut down?

“The medium is the message” is the common phrase, but entrepreneur Alexis Traina believes that messages, themselves — text messages to be exact — deserve attention, too. Traina is the…

This app, backed by Marissa Mayer and Peter Thiel, is making texts more expressive

Featured Article

Mayfield raised just shy of $1B to avoid unicorn hype

Navin Chaddha, the storied investor running Mayfield Fund, doesn’t want to be running a billion-dollar fund like many of his peers. “Everyone wants to be Sequoia or a16z,” he said, in an interview with TechCrunch. “We want to be who we are: just copying somebody else is strategy for disaster, strategy for failure.” “We could…

8:01 am PDT • May 8, 2023
Mayfield raised just shy of $1B to avoid unicorn hype

Welcome to Startups Weekly, a nuanced take on this week’s startup news and trends by Senior Reporter and Equity co-host Natasha Mascarenhas. To get this in your inbox, subscribe here. It’s been a…

This week in tech acronyms: FRB and GPT

Chegg’s dramatic post-earnings valuation flop will not be the last time that we see new AI tooling run headlong into existing enterprises.

OpenAI’s ChatGPT is shaking up the edtech markets

Hello, and welcome back to Equity, a podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines. This week Mary Ann, Natasha and Alex got…

Aaron Burr’s tech angle, blue skies and no photos at this time

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

The outside advantage that your investor may be interested in

In the wake of FRB’s collapse, founders and investors continue to wonder: Where is the best place to protect important assets?

As another startup bank partner collapses, tech feels the gap

Ann Lai, a general partner at Bullpen Capital, has been fired from the firm, she says. The investor described the termination experience as “discriminatory and retaliatory” in a LinkedIn post…

Ann Lai says she was fired from Bullpen Capital after helping deliver a $145M fund

Welcome to Startups Weekly, a nuanced take on this week’s startup news and trends by Senior Reporter and Equity co-host Natasha Mascarenhas. To get this in your inbox, subscribe here. Tech’s guiding principles…

Pitch for the check you want 

Hello, and welcome back to Equity, a podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines. This week Mary Ann, Natasha and Alex…

Is First Republic just a victim of SVB’s collapse?

Clubhouse, a once skyrocketing social audio app built by Paul Davison and Rohan Seth, has laid off more than half of its staff. The startup’s co-founders made the decision in…

Clubhouse needs to fix things, and today it cut more than half of staff

Chief, a professional network designed for women in leadership, has cut 14% of staff, or 43 jobs today, saying in an email seen by TechCrunch that the move is a…

Chief, a professional network for women leaders, cuts staff amid restructuring effort

Featured Article

Founders change their pitch

Now that it has been over a year since tech’s current period correction first began, founders are getting more innovative in how they approach tweaking their pitch.

6:00 am PDT • April 27, 2023
Founders change their pitch

Register for this TechCrunch Live right here. The show broadcasts live today, Wednesday, April 26 at 12 p.m. PDT. Sam Chaudhary takes his time. The founder of ClassDojo, an edtech…

Register now to attend today’s filming of TechCrunch Live with ClassDojo and SignalFire

A modern take on what an entrepreneur can, and should, spend their time on

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

A modern take on what an entrepreneur can, and should, spend their time on

Sam Chaudhary takes his time. The founder of ClassDojo, an edtech consumer app that focuses on student classrooms, spent eight years building the company before introducing a formal revenue model.…

Hear ClassDojo and SignalFire unpack edtech’s opportunity ahead on TechCrunch Live

We can learn quite a lot from venture capital investments themselves.

Despite regulatory concerns, the US is far from losing its venture crown

Welcome to Startups Weekly, a nuanced take on this week’s startup news and trends by Senior reporter Natasha Mascarenhas.  After a Tahoe-based tech conference, Sheel Mohnot, the fintech investor behind…

Yep, ‘Learning Man’ is becoming a thing 

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

Unicorns are rare, but what about real?

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

Founders shouldn’t have to choose between mental health and grit

Soon after launching Ocho, a startup offering personal finance support for business owners, Ankur Nagpal realized that the company’s debut product — a solo 401(k) retirement account — “is not…

This fintech startup ideally wants to be ‘a lot more boring’ than Robinhood

When Silicon Valley Bank’s collapse was first unfolding, a belated disclosure colored some of the chaos: The bank spent most of last year without a chief risk officer, and the…

Silicon Valley Bank’s chief risk officer is out, months after taking the job

Reach Capital, one of the first venture firms to focus exclusively on edtech, closed its last investment vehicle during an unprecedented boom within tech. The San Francisco-based venture firm saw…

In edtech, history matters: Reach Capital just closed its largest fund to date

Welcome to Startups Weekly, a nuanced take on this week’s startup news and trends by Senior Reporter and Equity co-host Natasha Mascarenhas. To get this in your inbox, subscribe here. Y Combinator’s new…

We’re still talking about Y Combinator valuations

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

Don’t ever leak data, but especially if you’re building this