Welcome back to the transcribed edition of the popular podcast Equity. This week, TechCrunch writers Kate Clark and Connie Loizos were joined in the studio by Canvas Ventures’ general partner Rebecca Lynn.
This week, the crew talked about the big rounds raised by shoe resale marketplace StockX, which raised $110 million at a $1 billion valuation. And Cameo, which provides personally recorded messages by celebrities and influencers to whomever will pay for them, raised $50 million at a reported $300 million valuation.
The group then discussed Brandless and the amount of money that SoftBank poured into it. Being the recipient of such large sums at an early age adds a lot of pressure to produce.
Kate Clark: …Brandless raised this $240 million round, only one year after launching. So they’re a very young company. And now fast forward another year, SoftBank is pressuring them to be profitable. But right now they’re only two years old. So I mean, what two year old startup is even at that point?
Rebecca Lynn: Well and what other SoftBank company is profitable?
Clark: Yeah.
Connie Loizos: Right.
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San Francisco | October 27-29, 2025Lynn: So I think when you look at this, I think for me as an investor, I don’t know the ins and outs of what’s happening here exactly. But for me this just really underscores the importance of having a very aligned set of goals and missions and values and everything else, when you sign up to work with an investor, right? I mean the company and the investor have to be sort of in lockstep. And when you have an investor that hasn’t been around for a really long time and you don’t know how they’re going to behave really in a downturn or when the company runs into bumps.
And I think that kind of behavior sort of through the highs and the lows is a really important thing that founders and other investors need to take a very close look at.
And finally they talked about WeWork’s latest acquisition, Waltz, a smartphone app and reader that allows users to enter different properties with a single credential.
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Kate Clark: Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital podcast. I’m TechCrunch’s Kate Clark and I am joined this week by TechCrunch’s Silicon Valley editor, Connie Loizos. Hi Connie. How’s it going?
Connie Loizos: Hello Kate, how are you?
Clark: And our special guest, Rebecca Lynn, a general partner at Canvas Ventures. Thanks for joining us Rebecca.
Rebecca Lynn: Thank you.
Clark: Okay, so it’s been a busy week as usual in startup land and we want to start off by discussing two of the biggest rounds this week. Connie, do you want to start us off with StockX?
Loizos: Yes, I would love to. So StockX. StockX, as many of you probably already know, is an online marketplace for selling sort of limited edition or high value sneakers, streetwear, handbags, watches. It raised $110 million in funding this week at a post money valuation of $1 billion, which is none too shabby for a four-year-old company that’s based in Detroit, but it’s really exploded in popularity in the last couple of years.
Loizos: I guess the company is positioning itself for an IPO. The co-founder and founding CEO, Josh Luber stepped aside and an e-commerce veteran from Ebay and StubHub, Scott Cutler, took the reins. Though, I guess Luber will remain on the board. So what do we think of this one guys?
Lynn: I think this one’s really interesting. One, it is from Detroit, which I think is interesting, in and of itself. It’s the second company I’ve seen in just a couple of days out of Detroit. And what I’ve been told there is that’s a real up and coming kind of environment to keep an eye on potentially for the future.
Loizos: I think it’s actually the biggest round maybe for Detroit, is that?
Lynn: It might be actually. It might be the biggest round ever for a company out of Detroit in this area, especially in the startup area. And it really is two big trends that we’re seeing.
One is this proliferation of shoe brands, right? So although they don’t have their own shoe brand, we’re seeing new Allbirds and Rothy’s and others come up and create these huge new brands, which I think is interesting. And the other one is this proliferation of very verticalized, specialized second hand consignment marketplaces. So we see the RealReal, we’ve seen GOAT, we’ve seen several of these come up. Poshmark is one as well, that we’ve been following pretty closely. And these, you know, these very verticalized marketplace consignment stores are important just because of the proliferation of counterfeit and fraud. And so people look to them to provide that stamp of authenticity.
Loizos: Right. And it’s interesting. So you mentioned the RealReal, which is actually going public, at long last on Friday. I’m very excited for this.
Lynn: So exciting.
Loizos: Very exciting. The CEO, Julie Wainwright is, was actually the CEO of pets.com long ago and has been through the cycle numerous times.
Loizos: But I love her company and I’m excited for her. But it’s interesting, I, the Journal wrote a story this week asking if the resources that it pours into authenticating its luxury items could sort of be a tax over time. The company’s not profitable. This company is also not profitable and it’s, there’s sort of like a science to authenticating shoes. Or actually, there’s, there’s not much of one, but it’s like my sons are sort of old enough to be into this a little bit. So we’d watched a video where this guy was sort of like, you’ve got to check the box, you have to smell the shoes for toxins because I guess there’s sort of like certain glues that fake factories use. And anyway, I just, I think it’s very interesting, but it’s quite the opposite of a science. I think there’s just sort of like a lot of pattern recognition in the shoe market that goes into authenticating things.
Lynn: Well I think that’s what makes this one potentially really interesting is there’s just one kind of product they’re selling. It’s just the shoes. And they are, they’re starting to branch out. Right? Into some other things. I think as you add those categories on your operational efficiency, you’re just really has to scale with that. But you know, doing one vertical and doing it incredibly well, can really help with those efficiencies I think.
Loizos: Yeah, absolutely.
Clark: I think we’re going to see a lot more copycats too in this space. Like with really specific to streetwear and the marketplaces for these kinds of sneakers. I don’t know a lot about that. Just, you know, not as somebody that really is into streetwear or sneakers like that. But I know we also have GOAT, which raised a ton of money as well. And that’s another one that’s focused completely on, I think authentication of a secondhand, really nice sneakers.
Loizos: It’s just interesting how it’s become so pervasive in two years time. Like the editor of TechCrunch, Matthew Panzarino. It’s like a renowned shoe obsessive person, but even my kids are at camp summer camp this week and the little one was telling me how his camp counselor, who’s a college senior, has 300 pairs of shoes and he wears a different pair of shoes every day. So I think that’s kind of, you know, like insane.
Lynn: Wow.
Loizos: But that’s the culture. You know, you buy these shoes. You sell these shoes. It’s really becoming very kind of, you know, ridiculous.
Lynn: Well you trade them like an asset essentially. And so it’s a, it’s a way for people to sort of invest in an asset and buy and sell as well. But it is interesting.
Loizos: And Rebecca, I don’t know how much you can cover like blockchain stuff, but I’ve even heard of startups that are starting to, I can’t remember the name of the company, but it basically photographs a rare pair of shoes. And then it creates like photographs it and documents it in other ways.
Loizos: And then you can buy like cards, sort of, through the blockchain. So you have like a special representative of that particular shoe because everyone’s like, you never end up wearing them anyway. But here you have like a limited edition card of the shoe. So it’s getting stranger and stranger, but.
Clark: Well have you heard of that one company, Rally Road?
Loizos: Mm-mm.
Clark: I can’t, there, it’s a company, a former TechCrunch writer now works there. And they, they allow you to like invest in things like cars, like you own a piece of a car.
Loizos: Oh for actual ownership. Okay.
Clark: And then they later on, it’s very confusing and I’m not going to do a great job explaining it, but it’s kind of along, in the same vein.
Lynn: So I think the most, the most brilliant sort of execution of this I’ve might’ve seen is called Chic Shoes. Totally not venture backed. They’re over here on Market Street and the guy basically is completely bootstrapped and he owns tons of real estate and his own stores. But what he does is he uses these really high-end shoes and he announces it ahead of time to get a line out the door. But he produces his own brands of much less expensive shoes where he makes very high margin on them. And he does incredibly well by using these, sort of like high end sneakers, as ways to get sort of foot traffic and then he can sell his own shoes. Which makes a ton of sense.
Loizos: Yeah. And I guess culturally, again, not knowing anything, so please don’t like tweet me, tell me what an idiot I am. But I guess culturally it’s better to get something that’s sort of influenced by another shoe rather than a knockoff. Like that’s perfectly acceptable. Something that’s a little bit more affordable.
Clark: Okay. Well, we try to move on to the next big round of the week. And that was for a company called Cameo. So anyone who uses Instagram has probably come across this. I know, just because I follow celebrities and influencers on Instagram. I’d seen ads for Cameo, but it’s an app and website where you can pay to have a celebrity, an athlete, an influencer, or some kind of thought leader or maybe even a CEO send you a personalized video message. So I think it kind of gained popularity because people were paying to have their favorite B celebrity, send them a happy birthday note or something like that. Which is, you know, really exciting. And you pay anywhere from five to $10 to $3,000 to have these video messages sent to your, to yourself or to your friend, presumably.
Clark: So they raised $50 million this week from Kleiner Perkins, with participation from The Chernin Group, Spark Ventures, Bain Capital and Lightspeed. And this round valued the company at about $300 million we’ve heard. So pretty notable fundraise for this relatively young company. I think they launched in 2017.
Loizos: And also the co-founders kind of came from nowhere. I mean, Steve Galanis, who I think is the CEO, was like last a senior account executive at LinkedIn. His co-founder, I don’t know if you know anything about him. Devin Spinnler was apparently a star on Vine, the now defunct social media service.
Clark: Interesting.
Loizos: And he had tons of views, but he was sort of aggravated that he could never monetize his popularity. So I guess this was sort of where they came, you know the genesis of the idea came from.
Clark: Yeah. I mean I think it’s a really great idea because people will pay for those kinds of things. And they’ll pay. $10 is not a significant amount of money and they said, they’re hyper focused on those smaller purchases because the more, you know, your average person pays $10 for a Cameo video, the more that video is shared online, the more free advertising they get.
Clark: But someone pays, uh, here’s what Steven told me, nine people have paid Snoop Dogg three. Well yeah, I’ve paid 3000 for a Snoop Dogg shot.
Lynn: Wow.
Loizos: Oh is that right.
Clark: Yeah. And he was like, that’s great and all. But like those, well, it may bring in, you know, the company a lot of money because they do take a 25% cut of each transaction. It’s less influential I think, in actually getting the brand out there.
Lynn: Yeah. I love this new revenue stream. I mean, influencers are forced. I think they’re here to stay and they’re definitely growing. It’s a channel and category we’re paying a lot of attention to, in Venture. And it’s really great to see these new revenue streams for sort of self-made influencers and these sort of micro celebrities that have a really loyal following of people to be able to monetize their popularity and monetize their work.
Clark: Yeah. I think one thing Steven said on our call, it’s like a lot of influencers are, in order to make money on say Instagram, they partner with brands that they don’t really believe in or who mistreat them or whatever it may be. But I mean they’re taking ownership over their own earnings by working with companies like Cameo, which all they’re doing is, you know, maybe saying happy birthday. Like it’s a pretty innocent and great way for them to make money.
Loizos: That’s interesting. But, but the micro celebrity angle is interesting too. So they have 15,000 celebrities that they said they believe could expand to 5 million internationally.
Lynn: Hard to believe, but.
Loizos: So do you know, like of those 15,000, are they like people that we would recognize? I saw some of the names where like Gary Busey and Jennifer Love Hewitt and people that you..
Lynn: You have to have those right.
Loizos: Right! You have to have those.
Lynn: And you have to have the halo effect. Right, right.
Loizos: But otherwise I wonder how do they sort of establish who else?
Clark: Yeah, I mean they do, I did. I perused the list of people that got on their roster. You know, it’s like Charlie Sheen, some people you mentioned. I mean like it’s almost entirely B-C level celebrities with the few, the occasional Snoop Dogg. And he said it’s helped people like Snoop Dogg have kind of an evangelist for the brand. Like he said Snoop Dogg brought Ice-T into the mix. So I think there’s a little bit of that.
Loizos: No pun intended.
Lynn: How do they vet just what the content is that’s being…
Clark: That is, yeah, I didn’t get a good answer. I wondered the same because I was reading the New York Times had a great story on Cameo, you know, a few months back. And the writer paid for like 10 different Cameos and one of the ones she paid for was from Lindsay Lohan’s mom, whose name is Dina Lohan.
Clark: Who is, you know, I guess somewhat known just for being a bit of a character. And her videos were just like, she was saying the wrong names. She was just not even saying the person’s name. She was doing all sorts of things that like would probably be irritating if you paid any amount of money for her video. So I kind of wondered how they’re moderating that. It probably will come up more as they expand.
Loizos: I did tell my husband, in fairness, that I would pay a lot of money to have Christian Bale make me a little specialized message. [crosstalk] So there probably are sort of edge cases.
Clark: But yeah, so with the funding, they said their big focus now is actually going to be international markets, focusing on areas where they haven’t really put any effort into. And I think they’ve seen a lot of organic growth in the U.S. and I think they’re kind of counting on, you know, if they do hire teams that are based out in these other markets, sales teams who pretty much are charged with just talent acquisition, they’ll also see a lot of gross skyrocket.
Loizos: Yeah. And it’s certainly appealing for the talent. I think they told Variety, maybe, that they’re, some of their top top makes more than a hundred thousand dollars a month.
Lynn: Oh wow.
Loizos: Which is pretty nice.
Lynn: Just on Cameo?
Loizos: Yeah, just-
Lynn: Well and the talent will bring the consumers into their platform too.
Loizos: Sure.
Lynn: So they’ve got the influencers. They will actually pull everyone in and then yeah.
Clark: [crosstalk] There are so many use cases. Like I was so surprised when I, when I talked to them. Like they said, they’ve noticed a lot of enterprise sales teams paying for Cameos to congratulate when like a big sale is made.
Loizos: Yes.
Clark: Yeah.
Loizos: I thought that was really interesting.
Clark: Yeah, totally.
Loizos: And job recruitment. Also so smart.
Clark: So using them as job offers. So sending someone a Cameo instead of an offer letter. I mean I’m sure you also get the offer letter, but like. So he said that and then Ilya Fushman, who’s the DP at Kleiner, that invested, he actually signed up. I mean he’s an investor, makes sense. But he signed up and to his surprise, somebody paid for him to send them a Cameo. It was another startup. But yeah, they paid for him to send a little shout out to somebody who had, some lead engineer.
Loizos: Okay.
Clark: So it’s just really funny that the way people are using it.
Lynn: So now it’s going to cost for like thumbs ups and things and likes. Likes will cost money.
Loizos: Right, right, right.
Speaker 1: Hey everyone. Don’t forget, this episode is brought to you by SharesPost.
Clark: Okay. So let’s pivot into the big drama of the week. So there was a really interesting report. The information published on Brandless. Connie, can you tell us a little bit about what’s going on there?
Loizos: Yes. So Brandless is, it’s a three year old San Francisco based direct to consumer company that sells food, beauty, personal care products, baby products, dog food. And it’s sort of special thing is that it says every item is non genetically modified, kosher, fair trade, gluten free, et cetera, et cetera. And for a long time, it was all priced at exactly $3, which also sort of set it apart from competitors. And it was building up a following. It had this founder, a CEO, Tina Sharkey, who is a marketing whiz. But I don’t think it had become a clear breakout winner, when last year, it took on a very, very big round of funding. which at the time I think startled people because it was such a young company.
Loizos: It raised $240 million — $200 million of which came from our favorite big backers SoftBank. and in exchange SoftBank took 40% of the business. The company now, according to The Information, has run into some trouble. I think basically, from the point of SoftBank investing the money, it’s lost customers. I think it’s customers are down an estimated like 25% from this point a year ago. They’ve had quality-control issues. They’ve had some problems with inventory. These are all sort of like normal growing pains I think for a startup of its age. But you know you add to the mix, this investor, who’s got a lot of money in the company and according to The Information wants to see them turn a profit.
Clark: Right.
Loizos: Which is putting a lot of pressure on.
Clark: Exactly. So I was interested. I mean Brandless raised this $240 million round, only one year after launching. So they’re a very young company. And now fast forward another year, SoftBank is pressuring them to be profitable. But right now they’re only two years old. So I mean, what two year old startup is even at that point?
Lynn: Well and what other SoftBank company is profitable?
Clark: Yeah.
Loizos: Right.
Lynn: So I think when you look at this, I think for me as an investor, I don’t know the ins and outs of what’s happening here exactly. But for me this just really underscores the importance of having a very aligned set of goals and missions and values and everything else, when you sign up to work with an investor, right? I mean the company and the investor have to be sort of in lockstep. And when you have an investor that hasn’t been around for a really long time and you don’t know how they’re going to behave really in a downturn or when the company runs into bumps.
Lynn: And I think that kind of behavior sort of through the highs and the lows is a really important thing that founders and other investors need to take a very close look at.
Clark: One thing that was interesting in the story at the very end it said that SoftBank had been giving them that that capital in tranches. Is that the right?
Lynn: Traunches. Yeah in traunches.
Clark: Yeah.
Lynn: So yes. So what happens if there’s a traunch set up? Right? So you know, in Silicon Valley, reputations are incredibly important, right? And so if there are traunches set up and there are certain milestones to hit, you know, I don’t know what the mechanism would be in this case if, let’s say they just decided not to go forward. I don’t know. And I think that’s something to sort of ask, of other entrepreneurs, have had similar experiences.
Clark: This might be a dumb question, but why not just give them like, say you give, you’re going to give them, break it up into four traunches. Why not just give them like an $80 million investment in the beginning and just leave it be?
Lynn: Yeah. We often ask that question ourselves. I think some founders and some boards feel like there’s more assurance of having that, you know, having that money in the bank. I personally think it brings more risk, because if for any reason, you know that traunch doesn’t come through, it’s sort of-
Loizos: Scares off other investors.
Lynn: It does scare off other investors. Yeah. It’s sort of like a house that falls out of escrow, right? People kind of scratch their head and say, hey, you know what happened? It presents a lot more questions. And so, I mean they may have been in a situation where maybe the 80 wasn’t on the table, let’s say, and maybe the only way they could get the deal done was by, you know, structuring it in this way.
Clark: Yeah.
Lynn: But yeah, I think it’s a risky bet for people to take.
Loizos: I’m also wondering why, if accurate, and I feel like the information is very reliable outlet, but, you know why SoftBank would be pressuring them. I’m just wondering, you know, SoftBank’s obviously had I mean this comes at a bad time for SoftBank. SoftBank is reportedly having trouble raising it’s vision fund. I thought it was sort of interesting that another one of it’s fairly young bets, but that’s fast growing, Lemonade, was rumored to be thinking about an IPO already. SoftBank owns a lot of Lemonade. I’m just sort of thinking is it pressured to, you know, produce more in the way of returns faster than maybe it had in mind originally? I don’t know.
Lynn: Yeah, I mean any fund will tell you, you know, when you’re out raising your next fund, you know, your investors in your first fund want to see that liquidity before they re app, so that might be what’s going on here.
Clark: Yeah. But I mean that just doesn’t seem like the best path forward for SoftBank to start pressuring it’s really young companies. Cause I think if it’s indeed pressuring and see that’s a tough word to use.
Loizos: We don’t know.
Lynn: [crosstalk] And we don’t know what’s going on inside.
Clark: Right. We have no idea. So and I agree. I’m sure that the information is a reliable outlet, but I wonder kind of exactly what they meant by that. There might just be a culture that’s developed, cause I’m sure Brandless is attempting to grow and scale very quickly with all that cash. There’s probably a cult, you know, I mean oftentimes when you’re, when you do raise a lot of money and you’re a very young company, the culture is, is a sacrifice.
Loizos: And it’s not even probably really set. But you’re right. I mean it sounded like there’s a lot of drama internally. They talked about a meeting where people were in tears. They’ve lost a number of people. I think their COO, their head of business development, their head of supply chain operations. So, but you a bigger concern for the company is the fact that, you know, people are talking. Once people start complaining about the situation, it’s often, I mean my experience, covering startups over many years, is that it’s hard to come back from.
Lynn: Well that’s interesting too. I mean, I don’t know if it’s even true that they’re pushing the profitability, but you look at the other companies from, you know, Uber and Lyft and WeWork, you know, most of which they’re in and they’re nowhere near profitable. Right. And then that’s okay. But this really young company is, has supposedly, if you believe what was written, and I’m, you know, has that expectation.
Clark: Yeah. I mean more likely they’re being pressured just to grow on, you know, increase revenue.
Lynn: That’s much more likely.
Clark: Yeah.
Lynn: I think the truer piece of this is, it’s probably more on the top on the top end, right? More on the revenue piece of it.
Loizos: But why don’t we transition to another, since we’re talking about WeWork. WeWork has made another announcement or another acquisition this week. This was Waltz, which is a building access and security management startup. So this is a smartphone app and reader that allows users to enter different properties with a single credential and should make it easier for WeWorks enterprise customers, which it’s been sort of amassing as fast as it can, including GE Healthcare, excuse me, and Microsoft. It helped them manage their memberships to these spaces. So it makes perfect sense, not disclosed. I feel like a lot of WeWork’s acquisition prices are not disclosed.
Loizos: I think I usually get the feeling that they’re fairly small. They made a bigger bet on an office management startup called Teem. I remember maybe like-
Lynn: Yeah, managed by Q, too.
Loizos: Managed by Q.
Clark: Yeah, I think they go after smaller startups most of the time. And this one is a transaction that I think makes sense. It’s a little more obvious, but they’ve made a ton of acquisitions over the last two years.
Loizos: Well, three just this year already.
Clark: Yeah. So they, I mean not only have they been really active this year, but I think just in general there, there are a lot more of an active acquirer than some of the other, some of the biggest unicorn companies.
Loizos: Yeah. You’re probably right and I think they’ve also been acquiring sort of, I like rivals, smaller rivals coming up internationally around the world, but WeWork is also under pressure. And The Information had written in this week, they talked to some secondary brokers. I don’t know if you guys saw this. It’s basically trading at like a 21 to $23 billion valuation on the secondary market.
Clark: Despite having a like-
Loizos: $47 billion valuation by its investors, namely SoftBank. Which I guess let us-
Lynn: When they go public is going to be another Uber situation I think where like it seems like Uber peaked on the valuation when it was trading secondary markets as private company.
Loizos: Yeah, and also I guess it’s mutual fund investors. I think Fidelity, and I can’t remember if it’s also T. Rowe, have marked down their investments. So, and Fidelity’s sold like 10% of its stake in the company. Which I think that could just mean you know, Fidelity’s taking money off management.
Clark: Right, right, right, exactly.
Loizos: After liquidity and things like that. But it’s always kind of-
Lynn: Well they already have these mini IPOs with the SoftBank investments. So I think it-
Clark: Right.
Lynn: It just completely changes.
Loizos: But you know, I think a lot of people wanted to get out. So SoftBank wanted to invest a $16 billion, buy $16 billion worth of shares or whatever. I think back in December. Its limited partners would only allow to sell or to invest $2 billion. But I think people were hoping to sell into that round, which didn’t kind of come together the way they wanted.
Clark: That round was the strangest round. Because I remember reading, oh SoftBank’s gonna invest $16 billion in WeWork and everyone being like, wow, that’s a lot of money. And then all of a sudden they’re like let’s just put $2 billion. And that’s a huge difference.
Lynn: Still a lot of money. Well, they burned that last year. Right? Yeah. So yeah.
Clark: But imagine being WeWork, being counting on 16 billion dollars and then ending up with 2 billion. Yikes.
Loizos: There’s one other thing, but you’ve covered IPOs for a long time but it’s also being sued by two former employees who are accusing it of I think gender and age discrimination.
Lynn: Right.
Loizos: One was a former senior vice president who said that an overwhelming number of large pay packages went to male executives and then there was a former construction executive who said he was replaced by someone younger. I’m sure this is not that unusual, but it’s not a good look for the company. You know, nobody wants this kind of publicity. WeWork does try to stress that it’s equal. I think it’s got like a 50%, half of its workforce is men, half is women, but you are noting Rebecca earlier that its entire board is made up of men.
Lynn: Yeah, the entire board is made up of men and I think you know saying you’re 50-50 is amazing and terrific. I think where the rubber meets the road is with is when you look at total comp for a company, is that total comp, you know, anywhere near sort of 50-50. My guess here just based upon sort of allegations that are, you know, if the, if they prove to be true, would that be like that it wouldn’t be close to 50-50 at all, in terms of total comp. And so I think, you know my, where we stress, you know on boards and things is just when you look at comp and you look at how that’s distributed, it’s not just about having a couple of women around the table. That’s great. We need that.
Lynn: It’s also about, you know, that comp also being sort of somewhat equitable and if not, then we know we have some kind of issue that we should be working towards. But it did shock me that their whole board, especially post Uber and all these issues, that the entire, pre IPO that… I mean usually that would be something you would try to be working on if that was really your goal and their whole board is men, which did surprise me a bit.
Clark: But Adam Newman is a very unique type of CEO too. I wonder if that’s even something he, to be frankly, even cares at all about.
Loizos: Well, I dunno, I have no idea. I mean he does consider that his wife Rebecca as a co-founder, even though I don’t think she is actively involved in the company’s sort of day to day management, she’s kind of gotten involved in a subsidiary that’s a school that they’re trying to start.
Loizos: But I do think publicly traded companies is, you know, remember when Twitter changed its board. I mean everybody’s sort of like-
Lynn: Yeah, you’ve been at their other VC’s and board members on that board that should be at least managing this issue.
Loizos: Right. [crosstalk] But I think he’s had an enormous amount of power though too.
Lynn: Oh yes, absolutely.
Loizos: So speaking of WeWork, you know what’s amazing to me is this coworking craze that it’s kicked off. I mean it’s hard to throw a cat these days without hitting a coworking space. I wrote about this startup that CNN had first reported on last week called Alma, which is a coworking space for therapists. Office Depot was launching more covert working spaces and they called them workonomy hubs. Hotels are doing it. Restaurants are turning their dining rooms into coworking spaces during the afternoon. I think it’s really interesting. I mean basically every under utilized space is becoming a coworking space. And beyond that there’s so many verticals.
Lynn: I love this. I mean I love this space for a few reasons. One is yes you can, these real estate assets become much more liquid. Right? So if from an investor hat, I think that’s great. I think the more verticalized they are, just the more powerful they are. But the thing I saw on this trend that made me smile was really this backlash to the loneliness of social media. Right?
Loizos: Sure.
Lynn: So we’re seeing these coworking spaces as an opportunity for people to actually interact face to face, to get real value from other people that are interested in the same thing they’re interested in. And I think that sort of gives me hope that, that everything is not lost with social media.
Loizos: Absolutely. So I wonder about the vertical plays in terms of whether there are any more or less sticky than general spaces. I, on the one hand, I do think they probably are because you’re around like minded people. You’re probably talking about your similar projects. Maybe you have, you know, contacts that are relevant to your colleagues. But on the other hand, it’s limiting, obviously, like Alma, if it’s appealing to psychiatrists and psychologists and other people of their ilk who want to sort of share office space and maybe even, you know, sort of drama patients together, I think that’s great. But I wonder like how big a company could that be? Just-
Clark: Yeah, I have the same thought too.
Lynn: I think it depends on the vertical. I think with The Wing for example, you know, it hits a cord for women in general, and I think that can be very big. And you look at the Soho houses, Battery, things like that, which you could argue is sort of the same type of idea on a different kind of dimension.
Lynn: And I think, I mean I, I think what they’ve shown is they’re fairly sticky and I think in terms of how big, it really depends just what that vertical is they’re going after. I think.
Loizos: So The Wing, obviously there’s a lot of women, right?
Lynn: 50 percent right. Yeah, that’s a pretty big press. That’s a pretty big slot.
Loizos: So I guess, right, as you say, it just depends on the vertical.
Clark: Okay. Well I think that’s great for today. Thanks you guys for joining me. And I do just want to say really quickly, that this is a little bit of a historical episode for Equity because it was the first ever one with an all female production and hosting and guests.
Lynn: Whoo-hoo!
Loizos: Totally unplanned.
Clark: So there’s four women in the room.
Lynn: Yeah.
Loizos: Completely unplanned but great.
Clark: So that’s awesome. And please come back next week to hear us again.
Loizos: Thanks everyone.
Lynn: Thank you.
Clark: Bye.
