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

For this week’s deep dive, Alex and Natasha and Danny decided it was time to chat about funding rounds. Yep, everyone's favorite topic, just in time for the return of our wonderful producer Chris.

To help us navigate these particular waters, we had our friend and friendly competitor Alex Konrad on the show. Konrad is a senior editor over at Forbes, and part of the founding duo behind the Midas Touch newsletter. We like him - and his puppy!

With four of us around the Zoom table, here's what we got into:

• An overview of the venture capital market in Q2. You can read TechCrunch's coverage of the global numbers here, and our further exploration of the US market here. TechCrunch has more coming on the matter, so stay tuned.
• While the show includes the staggering statistics on the current funding frenzy, we soon broadened the conversation to why it all matters.
• Consider this a peek into the reporter's notebook! We spoke about the supply and demand for covering funding rounds, the imbalance in who receives what money, and how an overall reader ad writer numbness to that $2 million pre-seed impacts the headlines.
• Which landed us into our final section: how to stand out in the overall deluge of funding rounds. Here we all had a take, because all reporters find different things interesting. Here we answer questions about what metrics to pay attention to, how to be more than a number in your pitch, and the value of talking about topics other than your startup's success.

Thanks again to Alex K. for joining the show! Find him on Twitter,https://twitter.com/alexrkonrad and check out his work at Forbes.

Chat with everyone on Friday, a show that is already coming together to be a scorcher. A bit like the weather. Except in San Francisco. Natasha is cold!

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.