Every Monday, Grace and Alex and Kell scour the news and record notes on what’s going on to kick off the week.

This week had a theme. Which was startups. Lots and lots of startups. Here’s the rundown:

• Markets are mixed this morning, with strong crypto trading results and wants-to-split-its-stock-so-it-can-pay-a-stock-dividend-shares-gain.html">big news from Tesla.
• The weekend’s leading conversation in the tech and startup world was about this analysis regarding crypto upstarts not giving out board seats to investors. Call it peak founder-friendliness? It’s also a huge risk, as investors have taken board seats for a reason, historically. All the same, you gotta win those deals.
• Y Combinator Demo Day is this week: We are going to see hundreds of startups make their pitch in rapid-fire fashion. Sure, many will have already raised capital, but the capitalist confab is still worth watching. I am looking for API-led startups and any hints about where DAOs are heading, personally.
• Zepto raised, which TechCrunch covered here, and I had a few thoughts about.

The big tech landscape is quiet this week thus far, which means we can focus in on startups. See you at demo day tomorrow!

Credits: Equity is produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. Bryce Durbin is our Illustrator. We'd also like to thank the audience development team and Henry Pickavet, who manages TechCrunch audio products.