Spotify steadies, DocuSign’s big year, and scooters are the new blockchain

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 I were joined by David Welsh, part of KKR’s growth equity shop. (His formal title: Member and Head of TMT Growth Equity, where “member” actually means “partner,” it turns out.)

And what a week it was. There was news aplenty to get through, not the least of which that Spotify’s shares — as of airtime, at least — were being pretty reasonable. After rising sharply above their reference price, they fell some and then recovered a bit on Thursday.

That success, to pick a word, you might think would be an inspiration to other startups. However, our guest made a good case that the market is not about to see a bunch of other companies follow suit in putting together direct listings. Spotify was a bit of an outlier, it seems.

Moving along, we peeked into DocuSign’s latest numbers, which show declining net losses (GAAP, of course), and growing revenue. In short, the firm’s updated numbers that include calendar 2017 (long story, more here) look pretty good, and now DocuSign’s impending IPO’s only real question left concerns pricing.

But there was more to chew on, most especially the recent $2.7 billion buy of Mobike, a heavily-funded Chinese bikeshare company. However, how material or real or substantive the deal really was is up for debate. The short riff there is that Tencent, an Internet giant, backed both Mobike, and its acquirer. So, how much of the deal was cosmetic?

And finally, Katie’s piece on a potential Uber-JUMP Bikes tie-up brought us to the domestic bike and scooter market. I can proudly confirm that I didn’t crash on the way home on the LimeBike Scooter. I am sorry for your disappointment.

Hit play, stay cool, and we’re back in a week.

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