Equity Monday: I hear this fintech thing is going to be big

Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.

This is Equity Monday, our weekly kickoff that tracks the latest private market news, talks about the coming week, digs into some recent funding rounds and mulls over a larger theme or narrative from the private markets. You can follow the show on Twitter here. I also tweet.

• Markets were busy, with Chinese tech stocks rallying and the rest of the world posting a mix of gains and losses. If you are bullish on public markets, excellent. But if you are bearish, don’t worry — there are diverse enough signals out this morning to satisfy any investing thesis.
• Facebook goes on American political TV: To talk about changes it is going to make to its product. A product that it built. It wants point for fixing the thing it made broken. Sure.
• And Tesla, after delaying the roll-out of a beta for Full Self Driving, is also being asked by some in India to build cars in that country.
• CRED is raising even more money, at an even higher valuation.
• Mono gets the Tiger imprimatur, which matters, as the startup could prove that the Plaid model will spawn regional players.
• French mobile gaming company Homa Games raised $50 million on the back of huge download numbers.
• And ahead we have the GitLab direct listing, and AvidExchange IPO.

Chat you on Wednesday!