This week Mary Ann, Natasha and Alex enjoyed the warming climate and the fact that there are some positive vibes in the venture market as well. Hell, we even had a nine-figure round to chew on from Clear Street! We dove into deals of the week, news that made us say, "Oh, REALLY?" along with unicorns' renewed rarity, regulation and on-the-ground dynamics at play in the AI space, and the opportunity that opportunity funds may afford venture firms.

This week, Natasha spoke with a founder, a psychiatrist and a venture capitalist about founder mental health, a topic that has been a conversation in Silicon Valley for as long as we can remember. The theme has gained renewed momentum due to the startup and venture downturn in general, and exacerbated by a bank failure that still has some folks reeling.

Today, Alex is talking about crypto, Uber, and how to be petty at scale. We dug into the world of YC startups and valuations, Uber selling part of Careem in a $400 million deal, and the Musk v. Substack battle.

This was Y Combinator week in a sense, with the well-known accelerator showing off hundreds of startups over a two-day period. We had some thoughts about that. But! There was a lot more for Mary Ann, Natasha and Alex to dig into, so we have a little something for everyone today from Q1 numbers to deals of the week, Latin America's return to the show, and a Frank chat that frankly had us shaking our heads

To celebrate the end of Q1 2023 and the start of not only another earnings cycle, but also the data deluge that we expect to arrive starting this morning, Alex spoke with PitchBook Senior Analyst Kyle Stanford. Stanford and his company are key providers of data concerning the domestic and global venture capital markets making him a perfect guest to help kickstart our look at recent venture results, and trends.

Alex is back with the first episode of our Q2 run. Welcome to the new tranch of 2023! We're covering stocks and crypto, Paris cracking down on e-scooters, Zamp Finance, Fourthline, and Tesla's Q1.

AI? Crypto? Equity crowdfunding and former startup founders trying to bribe China? We had it all this week, friends, so please strap in and get ready for another catchup with your besties Mary Ann, Natasha and Alex.

This week, Natasha interviewed a Jack of all trades in the AI world with a focus on governance: Navrina Singh. We're talking about everything from Navrina's work as the founder and CEO of CredoAI to governance going from a lonely conversation to a global focus.

On today's weekend rundown, Alex took a look at the global stock market, the latest on the sale of Silicon Valley Bank's commercial banking operations, Salesforce getting a reprieve from certain activist pressure after it took a cleaver to its staffing, France's crackdown on TikTok, Twitter's source code, and Turo.

What did Mary Ann and Natasha and Alex dive into today? TikTok's CEO standing before Congress on Thursday, Duolingo's new music product, a new DAO fund, the latest eToro investment, HR tech unicorns, and AI. So, so much AI.

 Natasha interviewed one of venture's most iconic duos: Mitch Kapor and Freada Kapor Klein of Kapor Capital. The investors recently published a book, "Closing the Equity Gap: Creating Wealth and Fostering Justice in Startup Investing," connecting scrappy stories of entrepreneurs to their investment thesis to the returns that other venture capitalists are clamoring to land.

Alex is here to do our Monday show, and after a hectic few weeks, are we done with banking news? No! Here's what we got into: the UBS-Credit Suisse deal, the crypto markets have had a few good weeks, what's going on with TikTok and Bytedance, and some startup news with Parker and PitchBook.

While our dear Mary Ann is away for a much needed break (and birthday celebration!), Alex and Natasha are holding down the fort. Here's what we got into this week: the M&A spree that captured Qualtrics, Cvent, and Mint Mobile, what's followed the SVB collapse, GPT-4, and why Y Combinator is scaling back from late stage.

This week, Natasha interviewed Series CEO Brexton Pham, who has been building a full-stack enterprise platform for institutions and enterprises since March 2021. Brexton was pushed out of stealth this week in the wake of Silicon Valley Bank's crash, which of course was the main topic of our conversation. What else did you expect?

Given how bonkers the last few days have been, this is not a normal show. Sure, we're talking money up top, but Alex also dragooned Natasha into running us through her amazing reporting from over the weekend on all things SVB. (Please excuse the Friends joke in the headline, we are very tired!)

This week, Alex, Mary Ann and Natasha gathered to riff through the week's biggest startup and venture news, starting with the situation at Silicon Valley Bank. Then we dove into deals of the week with Roami, Qualtrics, and the VC-AI affair at Upfront Summit. We dug deeper on the latest ADHD startup boom, how fintech investors are coping in the new venture climate and how some female VCs are navigating bias.

This week, Natasha interviewed Lizzie Matusov, the co-founder and CEO of Quotient, which wants to fix the "leaky pipeline problem" in tech onboarding that doesn't set up engineers for success.

Alex is ready to kickoff the week with our Monday show, and here's what we have for you this morning: a look at stocks around the world and crypto's recent price swings, IPO news (huzzah!) from ARM, a fintech startup's massive round, Tesla price cuts, and more.

It’s the moment we’ve all been waiting for—the winner is announced! In this episode, we get to know the winner of the 2022 Startup Battlefield competition. We’ll hear what’s next for their company and get insight from TechCrunch staff, VCs, and audience members on why they were the right choice. Be sure to check out all of the other podcasts in the TechCrunch Podcast Network: Found, Equity, The TechCrunch Podcast, Chain Reaction and The TechCrunch Live Podcast.

Mary Ann, Becca, and Alex gathered to riff through the week's biggest startup and venture news including: Divert and Trust & Will's latest rounds, what's happening in the land of NFTs, TechCrunch's Boston City Spotlight, AI vs crypto in venture hype cycles, and Amazon's unlikely partnership.

This week, Mary Ann interviewed Mark Goldberg, partner and fintech lead at Index Ventures. The pair talked about: the party that was 2021 and the hangover that was 2022, Mark's Twitter prediction that raised some eyebrows ON twitter, and why 2023 is shaping up to be a survival of the fittest.

Alex is back and bringing our Monday show off the page and into your ears bright and early. Today, he got into: a rise in stocks, crypto, and NFTs, the US turning its attention to the Adobe-Figma deal, more layoffs at Twitter, and why the fintech market is not dead, and startup news with ProsperOps and Flock.

Inside Startup Battlefield is back in our feed with episode three. There are 180 companies solving crucial problems that didn’t make it to the Disrupt stage, but that doesn’t mean they’re making any less of an impact. TechCrunch writers Devin Coldewey and Harri Weber take us on a walk through the Expo Hall and let us listen into their conversations with a handful of the most interesting companies in the Battlefield 200. New episodes of Inside Startup Battlefield drop every Monday. Be sure to check out all of the other podcasts in the TechCrunch Podcast Network: Found, Equity, The TechCrunch Podcast, Chain Reaction and The TechCrunch Live Podcast.

This week Natasha, Mary Ann, and Becca Szkutak welcome back a familiar voice - Alex Wilhelm! We had the whole gang back together to dig through the week's pile of news: FreshToHome, Den, and Klarna's recent deals, the possible return of IPOs, an accelerator backing startups of laid off tech workers, and accountability at the early stage.

This week, Natasha interviewed Kaisa Snellman, an economic sociologist and an associate Professor of Organizational Behavior and Academic Director of the INSEAD Gender Initiative. (We know, we know, it's a flex.) We talked about Kaisa’s recent Harvard Business Review piece with Isabelle Solal: For Female Founders, Fundraising Only from Female VCs Comes at a Cost.