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My guest today is the talented Mary Ann Azevedo, Senior Reporter at TechCrunch, where she’s responsible for covering all things Fintech, co-hosts the Friday episode of the Equity podcast, and recently launched the newsletter The Interchange.
In this episode, we discuss:
Why she loves covering the startup world and some tips on how to pitch your story to tech reporters
“Startups to me represent hope. Not every startup makes it, of course. And not every startup has super honorable intentions… And that's fine too, right? But I feel there's a lot of potential for startups to change the world and do amazing things to help people.”
The summer slowdown and fall bounce back. Deal activity during the summer was definitely slower, but according to Mary Ann she’s now as busy as ever, yet some things have changed.
“At TechCrunch, we would talk about it internally that it just wasn't sustainable. And it was not sustainable. And sure enough, the market shifted, everything changed. And things took a pretty dramatic turn and, you know, we saw it coming, but I don't think we quite expected it to happen as quickly as it did.”
2022 has been a hard year for fintech and Mary Ann has found herself writing some tough stories. What has she learned in the process?
“I think good journalism is not just covering all the positives, right? Funding rounds, unicorns, that's all great and it's important, but it's not all that's happening. There's unfortunately the ugly side of what's happening in the startup world. There's layoffs, there's shitty CEOs doing shitty things to employees, and we can't ignore that.”
The future of tech media, what good journalism really means… and a lot more!
"A few former employees reached out to me saying their company hadn't repurchased their options that like they said they would... So I asked the company about it... And then, a few days later, one of them said, ‘Hey, I got my money. And I wonder if anything to do with you.’ "
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Miguel Armaza is Co-Founder & Managing General Partner of Gilgamesh Ventures, a seed-stage investment fund focused on fintech in the Americas. He also hosts and writes the Fintech Leaders podcast and newsletter.
Mary Ann Azevedo, Senior Reporter at TechCrunch – The Good and Ugly Sides of Fintech, What Great Journalism Really Means, & Why Startups Represent Hope