Equity podcast: DocuSign files, IPOs pile up, Dropbox soars and the markets gyrate

Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.

This week Katie Roof and Alex Wilhelm were joined by Byron Deeter of Bessemer Venture Partners, who was an excellent selection to have on deck as we tooled through the most recent news. And there was a lot to get through, as a host of companies have decided to go public before the markets turn south.

Up first, we took a look at this week’s biggest filing: DocuSign, a massive firm with lots of raised capital, lots of revenue, lots of GAAP losses, and slimming cash consumption. To summarize ourselves gently, the firm is doing what it needs to do to show a path to profits while still scaling rapidly.

But there were even more IPOs in the offing (not to mention two recent, China-based, US-listed IPOs this week), including Pivotal Software and Smartsheet (more financial notes here). They join Zuora in having their numbers in the market.

Keeping to the public theme, we took a moment to look at Dropbox’s recent run and got into a discussion about its trailing revenue multiple. That’s a metric that you either care about or don’t, based largely on where you land on the pessimism-optimism spectrum, as our conversation implies.

All that and we got to say “Microsoft” on the crowd and I gave out homework. Hit play, and we’ll be back in a week. Stay cool!

Equity drops every Friday at 6:00 am PT, so subscribe to us on iTunes, Overcast, Pocketcast, Downcast and all the casts.