WeWork and Uber are proof that evaluations do not make sense – TechCrunch

Hello and welcome to Equity, TechCrunch's venture capital podcast, where we reveal the numbers behind the headlines.

This week Kate and Alex were back to cover a lot of last-step news, which they completed with early-stage notes towards the end. As a reminder, come see the show at Disrupt SF if you're in town, we'll come out among the startups, discuss everything related to startups and money.

At the top, we explored WeWork and the latest in the company's IPO saga. The question regarding the public offer of the joint venture has been changed to whether the IPO will take place this year, not at what price can the company attract enough investment to become public.

Alex has repeatedly written about the company's appetite for cash, which raises the question of how long it will survive without a large, external investment. If SoftBank is ready to commit more capital, the question is open.

While going to Uber, the company has again suffered layoffs this week. More than 400 people, or 8% of the operations, were fired as the company tried to streamline operations, reduce costs and, finally, take another step towards profitability.

For the first part of the world, there is a new, early stage venture capital fund, Work Life Ventures, which aims to bring small checks to promising SaaS companies. The company is led by Brianne Kimmel, founder of SaaS School, a renowned angel investor in the corporate sector. So far, she has financed three companies on the fund, including the recent tandem Y Combinator.

We finished the episode with … cereals. A company called Magic Spoon (their website is present, as promised) has raised $ 5.5 million this week for its D2C breakfast business. Our point of view is that the price is a little too high for the comfort of its current iteration. It will be interesting to see if the start-up can lower its prices now that it has new capital.

We will be back in a week! Talk soon and stop telling us to become angel investors!