Equity podcast: Too much damn Uber news and Jeff Bezos buys a grocery chain

Hello and welcome back to Equity, a weekly podcast of high finance gossip and low GAAP intrigue.

It’s TechCrunch’s show focused on all things venture capital.

This week, Katie Roof, Matthew Lynley and I — Alex Wilhelm — were joined by Cyan Banister, a prolific investor on her own (Uber, Postmates, the list goes on), and partner at Founders Fund, a team with more than $3 billion under management.

This week we hit on three core topics: Uber’s turmoil, Amazon’s epic M&A moves, and Slack’s appetite for more cash

On the Uber front, Cyan told us about she came to invest in the company when it was nigh a tot, and as a group we dove into the biggest recent news from the troubled ridesharing behemoth: The departure of now-former CEO Travis Kalanick, the departure of now-former board member Bill Gurley, and Uber’s shifting valuation on the private markets. Perhaps next week there will be no Uber news.

Moving along, Amazon’s mega-deal continues to reverberate through Silicon Valley and Cloud Town (Seattle), raining on Instacart’s proverbial on-demand parade and providing endless fodder for Twitter users to claim that they saw the deal coming.

What else? Slack of course, a firm that if Amazon doesn’t buy the whole thing may pick up a $500 million round at a $5 billion post-money valuation. Why does it need more money? And why now? I have a hunch, but we toss around a few ideas.

We had fun this week, and we hope you had a laugh as well. Stay cool, and we’ll see you in seven days.

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