Inside TC’s Techstars investigation and how AI is accelerating disability tech

The downturn in venture capital funding that the world has seen since the bust of the 2021-era bubble has impacted startups, VC firms, and accelerators alike. One company in the final category, Techstars, has been shaking up its operations for some time now, leading to certain departures from its ranks. TechCrunch’s deep-dive into how it all went down is well worth your time.

So, we had author Dominic-Madori Davis on Equity to chat with us about her reporting. But that wasn’t all. Mary Ann Azevedo, Kirsten Korosec, and Alex Wilhelm had a lot to parse this week.

We had notes on wallet-as-a-service’ startup Ansa’s latest fundraise, and how Alex initially misunderstood its business model. Then Kirsten talked us through a simply massive deal in the self-driving space, while Alex wanted to riff on Beehiiv and its own funding round. $33 million is no small Series B in 2024!

And we had a few minutes to discuss Anna Heim’s recent reporting on disability tech and how AI is taking and industry and accelerating it. Even better, there appear to be a mix of business models approached by the startups we discussed. That means that there could be many avenues to making tech that works better for more folks into real, and large businesses.