Welcome to Extra Crunch Tuesday

In today’s edition of The Exchange, Alex Wilhelm takes a closer look at blank-check offerings for digital asset marketplace Bakkt and personal finance platform SoFi.

In a detailed analysis of the investor presentations for both offerings, he set out to answer two questions:

1. Are special purpose acquisition companies a path to public markets for “potentially-promising companies that lacked obvious, near-term growth stories?”
2. Given the number of unicorns and the limited number of companies that can IPO at any given time, “maybe SPACS would help close the liquidity gap?”

Thanks very much for reading Extra Crunch this week!

Walter Thompson
Senior Editor, TechCrunch
@yourprotagonist

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What is up with Tesla’s value?

Alex drinks a lot of coffee, so he followed up his Friday morning column on Roblox’s $520 million Series H with another story that afternoon questioning Tesla’s sky-high valuation of approximately $822 billion.

As ever, I learned something new while editing: a “melt up” occurs when investors start clamoring for a particular company because of acute FOMO (the fear of missing out).

Delivering 500,000 cars in 2020 was “impressive,” says Alex, who also acknowledged the company’s ability to turn GAAP profits, but “pride cometh before the fall, as does a melt up, I think.”

Note: this story has Alex’s original headline, but I told him I would replace the featured image with a photo of someone who had very “richest man in the world” face.

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Extra Crunch Live is back in 2021!

Sponsored by TechCrunch

Join the conversation for a chance to get expert feedback on your pitch deck from experienced founders and VCs.

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Flexible VC: A new model for startups targeting profitability

Growth-stage startups in search of funding have a new option: “flexible VC” investors.

An amalgam of revenue-based investment and traditional VC, investors who fall into this category let entrepreneurs “access immediate risk capital while preserving exit, growth trajectory and ownership optionality.”

In a comprehensive explainer, fund managers David Teten and Jamie Finney present different investment structures so founders can get a clear sense of how flexible VC compares to other venture capital models.

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Affirm boosts its IPO price target, more than doubling its latest private valuation

Buoyed by investor confidence and steady growth, buy-now-pay-later startup Affirm this week raised its IPO range from $33-$38 per share to $41-44.

“Per Affirm’s latest S-1/A filing, it could raise more than $1 billion in its debut,” wrote Alex in a detailed breakdown of the fintech unicorn’s revised valuation.

“That’s a lot of money.”

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